Return to Clan Sinclair (6 page)

 

C
HAPTER
N
INE

M
acrath was pacing.

That he was pacing in front of her was a sign to Virginia of how distressed he was. Normally, he did everything in his power to prevent her from becoming worried. As if his children didn't do that every single day.

Did it have to do with Carlton? Her son had been suspiciously well behaved for the last few days, but he'd also been cloyingly present. Usually, she had to go in search of her youngest child. Now he was always underfoot. That, too, was odd.

His birthday wasn't coming up, so his good behavior couldn't be ascribed to wishing for an expensive present from Edinburgh. Had Macrath promised him some reward if he behaved himself?

“Were you like Carlton when you were younger?” she asked, not the first time she'd thought such a thing.

The question did exactly what she wanted it to do, stopped him in mid-­pace.

He turned and stared at her. “No,” he said, his tone disbelieving. “I was working too hard.”

“Maybe that's what you need to do for him,” she said calmly. “If there's nothing he can do to help you here, maybe Mairi and Logan have duties.”

“What do you think he could do, sell newspapers on the corner?”

“Why not? It's better than spending all his time trying to escape Drumvagen, don't you think?”

He looked away, then back at her. “Do you think he's bored?”

She folded her hands calmly and nodded. “I think he's as intelligent as you were, Macrath. I think that's what's at the root of all of this. Give him a job. Give him something to do.”

“He doesn't do what his tutor tells him to do as it is.”

“No doubt because he finds other things more interesting. How many times have you found him in your laboratory?”

“Too many to count.”

“Then have his lessons taught there. Talk to his tutor, see if you can make the lessons have more meaning to Carlton. Instead of learning about Spain and England's wars, what about teaching him about the trade we do with Australia?

He frowned at her. It was such a ferocious expression, she might've been disturbed had she not been the recipient of its cousin over the years.

“You're much too intelligent for the likes of me,” he said.

She smiled back at him. “Only occasionally, my love,” she said. “Now tell me why you're pacing.”

She reached for her knitting, finding it a wonderful way to focus rather than to stare at Macrath. Not that he wasn't attractive enough to look at every day, but doing so only led to other things. Desire was occasionally unwelcome in the middle of the day, especially with three children and various nurses, tutors, and servants about.

Sometimes Drumvagen was filled with too many ­people, especially when she hungered for her husband. Therefore, it was much easier to focus on her knitting then Macrath.

“Are you leading up to telling me why Bruce is here?”

Macrath started pacing again. Back and forth he strutted, his arms behind his back, as intent on his progress as the head rooster in their barnyard. Woe be unto those who ventured into his territory without permission. He'd peck you on the legs and fly up and try to batter your face with his wings.

Macrath was just as territorial.

He didn't look at her, which was a clue.

She put down her knitting, watching him.

“I haven't forgotten about Paul Henderson, you know.”

That certainly made him stop. He turned and stared at her.

“Did Bruce tell you?” he asked.

She stared at the ceiling, huffed out a breath, then looked at him again. “Really, Macrath, that's almost insulting. Bruce has a very large detective agency. In America. Why would you hire someone to make inquiries in America? There's only one person who would interest you, and that's Paul Henderson. No one had to tell me. I figured it out all by myself.”

“Forgive me, Virginia.”

“For what? Underestimating my intelligence or for keeping it from me? I think it's two apologies you owe me.”

“Very well, you're right,” he said with a smile.

“Is he here?”

For a moment she wondered if he would answer her.

“Yes.” He threaded one hand through his hair. “We don't know exactly where, but he's in Scotland.”

“Is that why we went to Edinburgh? So you could warn Mairi and Logan?”

“Partly,” he said. “Partly to draw him out. I wanted him away from Drumvagen.”

“The children,” she said. Up until this exact moment, she had been relatively calm, but now fear filled her stomach, icing it over. She felt vaguely nauseous and cold.

“He wouldn't do anything to the children, would he?”

“Not if he wants to live another day.”

“How can a man be so obsessive? Ten years have passed, Macrath.”

He smiled. “The right woman will make any man obsessed,” he said.

His look warmed the ice just a little.

“We can't let Alistair go back to school yet. Is that why you've delayed his return?”

He nodded.

“We have to find Henderson, Macrath,” she said.

Images flooded into her mind. That terrible time when Paul had drugged her and taken her aboard ship, so close to raping her she'd had nightmares for weeks afterward.

“I want a big knife,” she said. “The largest one we have in the kitchen.”

At his look, she frowned. “I will not allow my children to be harmed, Macrath. Not by Paul Henderson or anyone. If necessary, I will protect them myself.”

He came and stood in front of her, grabbing her knitting and tossing it to the floor. Before she could protest his treatment of her latest project, he hauled her up into his arms and hugged her tightly.

“I love you, Virginia,” he said. “From the very first moment I saw you, I think I loved you then.”

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel comforted and safe, if only for a moment, in Macrath's arms.

P
aul Henderson stared out the window of the train, feeling anticipation tingle through him. Ten years had passed since he'd stepped foot on Scottish soil. Ten years, but he returned to this godforsaken country a successful man. A wealthy man who'd come about his riches legally.

­People said he was a risk taker, and he was. He had nothing to lose. It was easy to take a bet and double it, be it railroads or silver. His wealth had diversified since he'd taken advantage of America's more egalitarian society. Now he was welcomed wherever he went simply because he was wealthy, not because his father had a title.

In that, he and Macrath Sinclair were alike.

Sinclair's father had been a newspaperman, living close to the edge of penury all his days. While his father had been a chimney sweep, asking no more from life than to send lads up into tiny smoke-­filled vertical coffins.

He'd wanted more from the beginning. Now he had it: a private car, a secretary who doubled as a bodyguard, a valet to ensure he was well dressed, a cook who traveled with him. His cabin aboard ship had been a large one and he'd eaten at the captain's table.

No one knew he'd once been a servant in London. Most of his acquaintances thought there was some mystery about him because he'd let drop certain facts they could gather up together in a loosely constructed story of their own making. He might have been the son of an earl or a duke's progeny. Perhaps he was the illegitimate product of a royal's indiscretion.

All his early self-­taught lessons on deportment had served him well. He had the manners and the bearing to be anyone he wished.

Even someone Virginia would admire.

He couldn't forget her.

The one woman he'd wanted, the only one to reject him. All these years, she'd stayed in his mind like a loadstone, an impetus, a motivation to be more than he ever dreamed of being. He would explain it all to her. Virginia, who knew his beginnings, who knew who he really was, would understand better than anyone how far he'd come.

He wanted her. He longed for her. Even when he bedded another woman, hers was the face he saw.

Over the years, his hair had silvered, giving him a distinguished appearance. He was still a young man, with a young man's needs and wants and ardor. He would prove that to her, too.

This time, no one would know he had anything to do with Virginia's disappearance. To that end, he'd interviewed ten likely candidates in Inverness. Three of them were more interested in their payment then their task. Three were so dumb that even after explaining what he wanted done, they still didn't understand. Three were too intelligent, so much so he hadn't even gone into what the task was, for fear they'd report him to the authorities. The last had proven to be a worthy surrogate with a giant's build.

The man would go to Drumvagen and fetch Virginia for him. He'd given the man a detailed drawing of Drumvagen, including the grotto where he could gain admittance to the house. Before leaving Scotland he'd make sure the man went back to Inverness. There was no reason for him to remain in the vicinity or to tell anyone about the nature of his employment.

The other servants—­valet, cook, and secretary—­knew nothing of the reason for his trip to Scotland, and he intended to keep them ignorant.

He wasn't going to be foolish like he'd been in the past. He wasn't going to concentrate on getting Virginia out of Scotland as much as convincing her of his sincere feelings. Last time, he'd moved too swiftly and scared her. This time, she would know how much he loved her before they ever set sail again.

But first he would take care, seduce her with gentleness, convince her with reason. He would demonstrate to her just how much she meant to him and how unforgettable she'd been all these years.

He wasn't going to resort to force like he had in the past. He was going to take Virginia to his house and convince her, by any means necessary, they'd wasted a decade of their lives. But it wasn't too late. They could still find happiness together. All she had to do was to give him a chance to prove it. He would bring her the world if she wanted it. He could afford to take her anywhere, live anyplace she chose. Her future was not limited to Scotland.

He would take her to his home in Philadelphia, to the mansion he'd built with her in mind. He remembered the town house where they had once lived, and there were certain details common to both homes: the fan light above the front door, the brass knocker, the delicate roselike shade that was her favorite. He'd had rosebushes planted all over the grounds. She would love the home he'd created for her.

His investigation told him she'd had two more children. But they were of an age when they didn't need their mother. She was free now, as free as he was, to pursue the happiness that had eluded them. She would understand, as soon as he had a chance to explain it to her.

He would show her how much he loved her.

By the time they left Scotland she, too, would be regretting the waste of the last decade.

 

C
HAPTER
T
EN

“I
t's a wondrous place, isn't it?” Bruce said from behind her. She turned, her skirt twirling about her ankles. He was dressed, but it was evident from his wet hair he'd been swimming.

“I didn't get a chance to admire the grotto the other day,” she said, her face flaming. She had been too busy fixated on something else: him. “It's truly a miracle of nature, isn't it?” She moved to stand below the opening in the ceiling. Sunlight beamed down on her, encapsulating her in a golden glow.

When she turned to look at him again, he was studying her.

“What?” she asked. She rubbed at her nose and then her forehead. “Have I something on my face?”

“Beauty,” he said.

He mustn't say things like that.

He strode past her, turned and held out his hand. “Come, I'll show you the beach.”

She shouldn't take his hand. She shouldn't be lured anywhere with him. Still, she put her hand in his, their palms pressing together. His skin was warmer than hers.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

He smiled. “Edinburgh. One of my operatives thought he sighted Henderson.”

Had her question revealed how much she'd missed him the past two days? How much she thought about him? She'd been worried he'd taken off for some imaginary duty to avoid seeing her, but the look in his eyes now proved her fears were ridiculous.

His glance warmed her down to her toes.

“I should run in the other direction,” she said. “As fast as my feet can carry me.”

“And I as well,” he said, smiling at her. “You take my mind from my work, Ceana Mead. I missed you. I wanted to do my duty and hurry back to Drumvagen.”

Her heart was thudding so hard she felt breathless with it.

“Did you?”

He nodded.

“Did you miss me?” he asked.

How much braver he was than she.

She nodded.

“Now I'm back, I'm wondering how I'll be able to sleep with your door only a few feet away. Then I think of Macrath and how he's not only my employer, but my friend. I doubt he'd approve of my taking advantage of his hospitality.”

His hands slid around her waist. Gently, he pulled her toward him.

“Quite a dilemma, don't you agree?”

Wordlessly, she placed both her hands on his shirted chest. If she splayed her fingers she still wouldn't reach from arm to arm. How very tall he was, and strong. Look how he'd caught Carlton on the day she first saw him.

He wouldn't come to her because of honor. Would she go to him because of need?

Stepping back, she straightened her skirt, ran her hands down her bodice, fiddling with the cuffs. She really was tired of black, but she would have scandalized her Irish family if she'd chosen to wear any other color.

Once a Mead widow, always a Mead widow.

She would have to return to her life. Or go back to Ireland long enough to explain her desertion and get her daughters. He'd be gone back to America by then and this interlude would be nothing more than memory.

Glancing up at him, she wanted to urge him to stay.

His face was arranged in stern lines, a muscle playing in his cheek. She wanted to touch his full lips, brush her fingers over his mouth. She was enchanted with him, to the detriment of her immortal soul and any sense of decency she once possessed.

She glanced at the passage back up to the library. She really should leave him and take care never to be around him alone.

Instead, she allowed him to spirit her from the grotto to the beach.

The wind was blowing so fierce it made patterns in the sand.

She let go of his hand, turned her back to the worst of it, trying to tame the tendrils of hair brushing against her cheeks.

He seemed impervious to anything nature could throw at him. Standing there, tall and broad, he reminded her of tales she'd always heard of Highlanders.

“Did your family come from Scotland?” she asked.

His bright grin had the ability to lift her heart. How foolish she was.

“I was wagering how long it would take for someone to ask.”

“Macrath or Virginia didn't?”

He shook his head.

She studied a rock near her foot. It looked just like a turtle, complete with a tiny little head and pointed tail. Her youngest daughter would have tucked it into her pocket and kept it on a shelf in her bedroom. She bent and retrieved it, brushing the sand away and dropping it into her pocket.

“A weapon?” he asked.

She smiled, shook her head, then said, “No, a present. For Nessa. She likes all things turtle-­shaped.” She retrieved the rock and opened her palm to show it to him.

He stroked his finger over the humped back.

The moment was too poignant. She couldn't help but think of his lost family and her own darling children.

Of the two of them, she was so much more fortunate. A word she would never have used a few weeks ago to describe herself. But she had a family here in Scotland, and one in Ireland as well. She was surrounded by love and all she had to do was recognize it.

She would have curved her hand around the rock and dropped it back in her pocket if he hadn't suddenly placed his forefinger on the inside of her wrist. Two of his fingers stroked across the tender skin there, as if encouraging her heart to beat faster.

She stared at his broad hand, the fingers callused as if he were no stranger to manual labor.

“Do you hate war?” she asked.

“Another question I've never been asked,” he said. “I understand war. I understand the politics that encourages one faction to fight another. I accept it the same way I do cruelty, knowing human nature is not always pretty. But hate? That would be as worthless as hating rain or the cold of winter. It simply is.”

“I never thought you a fatalist, Bruce.”

“It's my Highlander blood,” he said. “To answer your question, my family came from Scotland, from the Highlands. Pushed out by sheep like hundreds and thousands of other Highlanders.”

“And they settled in Boston?”

“Not originally,” he said. “Canada first and then a branch of the family moved to America.”

“Preston isn't a very Scottish name.”

“My mother was Moira McElwee. My father's family came from the border. She used to accuse him of being mostly English, while he always said she was a stubborn Scot.”

She wanted to ask but was afraid to.

“I lost them both during the war. Nothing to do with the fighting. My father died of heart trouble and I think my mother just willed herself to die not long afterward.”

He finally dropped his hand and she returned the rock to her pocket.

“If Nessa collects turtles, what does Darina like?”

She shouldn't have been surprised he remembered her children's names. She suspected he didn't forget very much.

“Animals,” she said. “She rescues everything she can find, and there are a great many animals around Iverclaire. Our little cottage is the home of two cats and one very hairy dog. She's nursed an owl back to health and he rewards us by sitting on a tree not far away and hooting all night.”

He smiled, then reached out to tuck a tendril of hair behind her ear.

She should have moved away from his touch. She should have told him to keep his hands to himself. Instead, she just looked up at him. Caught by emotion, she was held silent by the need to offer him comfort.

To anyone else he was probably strong and forbidding, but she'd seen through to the heart of him. She wanted to hold him and take away a little of his pain, as he had unexpectedly eased hers.

He took her elbow and guided her close to the cliff where the earth was hollowed out and the overhanging grass provided a little shelter from the wind.

Leaning closer, he shielded her. She placed her hand on his chest, feeling the warmth of him. He was so alive. He was so real, so much a man, surely any woman in his vicinity would be aware of him.

“Will you kiss me?” she asked, feeling brazen and daring.

“Are you tempting me, Ceana Mead?”

She felt like a creature of the wind or the sea, a goddess of either or both. Right at this moment there was no need for earthly laws or social rules of behavior.

She reached up, placed her hand on the back of his neck and drew his head down. Lifting her face up, she watched as he came closer, noting when his smile faded.

When his mouth claimed hers, she sighed.

What kind of hedonistic creature had she become? To crave the touch of this man, to think about his kisses to the exclusion of any common sense? She didn't care. She entwined her fingers behind his neck, holding onto him because he was a force greater than any wind or swirling sand.

“I want you,” he said, lifting his head. “I've wanted you ever since I saw you. I haven't been able to forget the night we were together. I want you in my bed for days on end. If anyone knocks, I'll tell them I'm otherwise occupied. For the first time in my life I'm willing to push aside my obligations. What kind of magic do you hold, Ceana Mead?”

She lowered her forehead until it rested against his shirt. A hollow cavern opened up in her chest. He couldn't say such things, but oh how glad she was he had. He'd given her power with his admission. She was no longer just a widow, a woman to be pitied for her loneliness, but one who inspired lust.

Kiss me again.
She didn't realize she said it aloud until he smiled, wrapped his arms around her and lifted her to his kiss.

Take me here against the good earth of Drumvagen. Take me here with the ocean only feet from us, with the lichen-­covered stone formations proving this was an ancient place.

Her cries would be silenced by the seabirds above them, by the oncoming rushing tide. Their joining would be as elemental as nature itself.

Instead, he stepped back and shook his head, more in control of his needs than she.

His finger traced a path from the corner of her lips to her temple.

“Ceana.”

“Bruce,” she said, smiling.

For a moment it felt like the world was held at bay. No past existed for either of them. No future beckoned, filled with responsibilities and obligations. There was only the wind, the sound of the waves wetting the sand, and the cry of seabirds.

Her heart felt squeezed as tears threatened.

She closed her eyes and stepped into his embrace, feeling his arms tighten around her.

Please let her remember this moment for the rest of her life. Never let her forget him and the great gift he'd given her. She was alive. She could feel. She could choose whatever direction her life took her.

C
eana was magic.

She was sorcery and witchery and something Bruce had never before felt. She stripped his mind of every cogent thought. She made him feel, and he'd gone for so long without feeling anything he was raw in her presence.

Kissing her was as necessary as breathing. Holding her in his arms made him somehow feel complete.

Sometimes she would look at him and he was struck breathless by her beauty. Her annoyance made him question himself. Her anger made him instantly defensive. Her passion pushed him to the edge of his restraint.

Every one of her emotions was met by one of his. With her, he couldn't maintain the equilibrium he always had. She wasn't like other women and he wasn't the man he'd always known himself to be when he was around her.

Why had it been so important for him to come to Scotland himself? He'd never even given it a second thought. Once he discovered Paul Henderson had left America, he'd packed his own bags. Not because Macrath Sinclair was one of his best clients. Not because the man maintained an empire and a sufficiently large retainer with his firm. Not even because he wanted to see the homeland of his ancestors. Why had he come to Drumvagen at the exact time Ceana came home?

He might have to believe in Fate.

He wanted to tell her things he'd never mentioned to anyone else. He wanted to lay himself bare and have her judge him, when he'd never cared about other ­people's opinions before. In the short span of two weeks he had come to look for her, to anticipate seeing her, to thinking of her too much.

When she mentioned returning to Ireland, his mood was affected and his thoughts blackened. He had the feeling once she went back, he would never be the same.

He didn't want to see her wearing black. Nor did he want to be curious about the man she'd married. He envied Peter Mead, and had rarely envied anyone in his life.

Yet she'd come to his room, the greatest gift he'd ever been given. Now she demanded kisses and he willingly obliged, only to be trapped in a net of desire.

How could he allow her to return to Ireland?

For long moments he held her. Then, just when he couldn't imagine ever releasing her, she stepped back.

Her cheeks were rosy, her mouth trembling. He wanted to kiss her again, but if he did he didn't think he could stop.

“Do your daughters have your beautiful blue eyes?”

She glanced away.

“No,” she said. “They have Peter's brown eyes. And his red hair.”

She looked back at him, placed her palms on his cheeks and studied him intently. “Your eyes are a beautiful shade. Not quite brown. Not quite gold. From the first moment I saw you I thought they were like whiskey in sunlight.”

He had rarely been the recipient of compliments, especially from a beautiful woman. He felt his face warm.

She laughed and wrapped her arms around his waist, tempting him to take her right there on the beach.

He bent his head, lay his cheek against her hair, hearing the wind and the waves.

The door to his heart opened, the rusty hinges dissolving as he realized that, despite all the odds, he'd somehow fallen in love.