The Devil of Clan Sinclair Read Free Page B

for privacy.
    She wanted to apologize for intruding. Instead, she handed him the broadside.
    “It’s about a murder of a young boy.”
    “Are you given to studying murder?”
    She sighed. “I’m not very brave,” she confessed. “I don’t think I could bear an actual murder. But I do like reading about things that would terrify me otherwise. Besides, I’m very interested in what’s going on around me. How can anyone not want to know what’s happening in the world?”
    “I thank providence for people like you.”
    “Do you?” she asked, surprised. “Why?”
    “I own a company in Scotland that prints broadsides.”
    She sat back, clasping her hands together on her lap. “Are you jesting? Or making fun of me? I realize a great many people don’t think highly of broadsides, but why would you say such a thing?”
    He handed back the paper, smiling at her. “I wouldn’t think of making fun of you,” he said. “What man in his right mind would ridicule a beautiful woman?”
    Now she truly knew he was jesting. No one ever called her beautiful. Smart, perhaps, when she was dressed in the fashions her father had ordered. Perhaps even handsome when her hair was done correctly and she stood straight and tall, as her governess always instructed. But she’d never been called beautiful. Not even once, by the kindest person.
    Her cheeks warmed and she was instantly filled with two conflicting wishes. She wanted to flee as quickly as she could. Yet she wanted to stay and talk with him at the same time.
    “It’s called the Sinclair Printing Company,” he said. “We operate in Edinburgh. Have you ever been there?”
    “This visit to England is my first outside New York,” she said. “I’m from America.”
    “I discerned that,” he said with a smile. “From your accent. It sounds almost English, but it’s not.”
    “You are not the first person to say that,” she said, looking down at her reticule. “My nurse was English and maybe I speak the way I do because of her. But everyone else has an accent, too. Such as yours. I could tell you were from Scotland.”
    He leaned his head back against the chair, his hands resting on the arms, the pose of a man at ease.
    She didn’t feel the least relaxed.
    For the first time since she’d come to England, she was speaking with a truly handsome man. Even better, he was talking to her, and they were conversing about something more important than the weather.
    “Do you print newspapers as well?”
    “We do. Well, I don’t. I don’t run the company anymore. I’m involved in something else.”
    His name was Macrath Sinclair and he was in London, he told her, to escort his sister.
    For the next hour they talked of politics and broadsides, books and plays. Each thought London overwhelming at times, with traffic an endless obstacle. Each thought Londoners unbearably arrogant, topped only by the French, who were arrogant and smelled bad. Neither had an affinity for English food, or the melodramas of the day, preferring to read instead. His humor was dry yet he was polite enough to laugh at her few jests. They talked of everything, some subjects not considered proper in mixed company. She was, however, as she’d told him, fascinated with history and, too, intrigued by English politics.
    “I’m an American,” she said, “and supposed to mind my manners. I’m not to be too inquisitive.”
    “Have you always minded your manners?”
    She smiled. “I have, yes.”
    “That’s right. You’re not very brave. Are you really so cowardly?”
    She sighed again.” I hate heights,” she said, “and spiders.”
    He merely smiled at her, so charmingly that she found herself breathless.
    With great regret, she left him finally, glancing back as she made her farewells, thinking that the miserable voyage to England had been worth it if only for this night.

Chapter 3

    London
    July, 1869
    T he eastern sky was growing pink. A day would pass, then another, and finally Poor