The Witch Of Clan Sinclair Read Free

imposing.”
    “He was certainly that,” Fenella said on a sigh.
    “I’m surprised he didn’t throw us down the stairs.”
    Fenella’s eyes widened.
    “He seemed very polite, Mairi.”
    Mairi nearly threw her hands up in the air.
    “I wanted to hear Mr. Hampstead. Not go all agog over a man.”
    Fenella’s face turned a becoming shade of pink, and Mairi knew she shouldn’t have said what she had. Her cousin had a delicate nature, one that required diplomatic speech. She always had to rearrange the words she was going to say before talking to Fenella, for fear of offending her or hurting her feelings.
    “You have to admit he is a handsome man,” her cousin said. “He’s tall and has such broad shoulders. And his mouth . . .” Fenella sighed again.
    “What’s wrong with his mouth?”
    “Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it,” Fenella said, sounding as love-struck as a silly girl. “He looks like he’s about to say something shocking.” She glanced over at Mairi. “Or kiss you.”
    Rather than just sit there and listen to Fenella wax eloquent over the Lord Provost, she pulled out her notebook and began to write down the conversation as she remembered it. Thankfully, she had a very good memory from years of practice recalling tidbits and snippets of information.
    She didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

 
    Chapter 2

    “I would talk to you,” Robert said when she and Fenella arrived home.
    “Could it wait?” she asked, striding through the kitchen still smelling of tonight’s dinner of mutton and onions. She’d taken time off to hear her favorite author speak, reasoning that she could write about the lecture for the paper. Since she couldn’t do that now, she had to find something else for the new edition.
    Fenella moved past her, smiling apologetically as she whisked a maid from the room. At least there wouldn’t be any witnesses to this dressing down. Normally, Robert didn’t care where or when he criticized her.
    After Macrath had purchased a home far from Edinburgh, he wanted her and Fenella to join him. She refused to leave the city, so they’d compromised. He purchased a large home for them, and instilled Robert, their second cousin, as chaperone and financial advisor, and their driver, James, as spy.
    Mairi had told her brother that she and Fenella were capable of protecting themselves, however weak and defenseless he thought they were. Macrath had only smiled and done as he wished.
    Robert was her daily trial.
    The man’s face bore evidence of each of his years, the last few making their mark with more impact. The pockets beneath his eyes sagged more each day, as if his face couldn’t bear the weight of his skin.
    His beard, thin and pointed, made his face appear even longer and accentuated the down-turned corners of his mouth.
    His hair had thinned considerably in the last year, but he still maintained the notion that no one but he could tell, wrapping long strands around the top until they covered most of his bald pate. He was endearingly vain about his hair, but seemed not to notice when he’d splotched ink on his cuffs or shirtfront.
    He was a private man, one who occupied a large room on the second floor surrounded by those items he’d brought from Inverness. For most of his life he’d lived with his sister, the woman dying shortly before he came to Edinburgh. No doubt Robert was another cause of Macrath’s, another person who’d been helped from a bad situation by her brother’s effortless kindness.
    She only wished Robert had gone to some other distant relative.
    But for all his dour appearance and personality, Robert was a man of great joys. He loved growing things. When he was not hunkered over the Gazette ’s books, laboriously entering and grumbling over each expenditure, he was in their garden, transforming it into a place of beauty. Even in winter he was busy, readying the hardy shoots in the shed built for him, and laying out the beds in plans he worked on almost