Chapter 14
“Would you like another cup of tea, Mairi?” Fenella asked, tucking in the throw around Mairi’s feet.
“I’m sloshing in tea,” she said.
She really should have remained in her room, but she was tired of her own company. The parlor had seemed a likely place to sit and read.
Fenella, however, was surfeiting her with kindness.
“What about some scones? Cook has just taken them from the stove.”
“Perhaps in a bit,” Mairi said.
“I could build up the fire.”
Mairi wrapped her arms around her waist, forced a smile to her face, and looked up at her cousin.
“I’m fine, Fenella, truly. Go do what you would do if I weren’t home.”
Being home during the day was such a unique event that they both had difficulty adjusting to it over the last week.
The men who’d attacked her had never been found, but she discovered them every night in her dreams. Her imagination had furnished them with shadowed faces, taloned fingers, and tall, hunched bodies. They screamed obscenities at her as they threw boulders, and she collapsed bleeding and in agony at their feet.
Each night she awoke sweaty and trembling. For the first time in her life she was afraid, and it enraged her. She wanted to be able to direct her anger toward a person or a tangible object. There was no one, except for the men who’d escaped detection. They could be anyone, even one of her sources. She could know them, do business with them, even talk to them from day to day.
She hated that idea. She couldn’t look at the world with constant suspicion.
For days after the attack she’d hurt all over. Raising her arms over her head had been excruciating. So, too, turning in a certain way. Gradually, however, her pain had eased. As soon as the bruising faded she’d return to the paper and forget about the whole horrible night.
She doubted if she’d be able to forget Logan’s tenderness, but memories like that were more troublesome than helpful.
So much so that she was almost grateful when Robert opened the sliding door, interrupting her thoughts. Her gratitude lasted only long enough for her to see the sheaf of papers in his hand.
He stared at her and she sighed, knowing they were about to have another one of his conversations. At least Robert didn’t treat her as if she were fragile.
“Are the ether supplies depleted? Must you buy the most expensive ink, Mairi? And the parts for the press. Are they entirely necessary?”
“Yes,” she said. “If the press is to run. It’s old, Robert, and it needs to be repaired often. If we could buy another press we wouldn’t have to spend so much in repairs.”
His eyes narrowed at that suggestion.
“You spend money like it’s air,” he said, a comment she heard often enough she could repeat it along with him.
If he could give her a suggestion that was worthwhile, she wouldn’t hate their encounters so much. But the newsprint she used was common enough, neither the worst grade nor the best. Ether was required to clean the type. Otherwise, the ink accumulated until the print was smudged. The ink was perhaps a little pricier than most, but it worked better with the old press. The parts were necessary, although she would admit they’d had to replace too many gears lately.
“Your father was a frugal man.”
She’d heard that statement before, too.
“You could rent out parts of the building.”
That was a new suggestion. She eyed him with interest.
“And charge your pressman rent for his room.”
She frowned at Robert. “His room is part of his salary.”
“You pay him too much.”
Her elderly cousin was lamentably out of touch with the cost of wages lately. He was still budgeting for thirty years ago.
“The income of the paper has suffered in the last week.”
“That’s because I haven’t been working,” she said. “As soon as I go back to reporting the news and writing broadsides, our income will increase.”
When he finally left the room, she sighed in relief. When Fenella appeared again, intent on hovering over her, she stood, the motion making her bite back the gasp a pain.
Fenella was instantly at her side.
She needed to get away. She needed to get out. She needed, most of all, to be alone.
“I’m going to the garden.”
“It’s much too cold,” Fenella said. “There’s snow on the ground.”
“I won’t be gone long,” she said, gathering up the blankets on the settee. “Just a few minutes of fresh air.”
“Shall I come with you?” Fenella asked.
“No,” Mairi said. “I’ll be fine. Truly. Just a few minutes of fresh air.” And solitude.
“Are you very certain?”
“Very certain.”
She escaped from the parlor before Fenella could say another word. Or worse, insist on accompanying her.
Fenella stared after Mairi.
Nothing she did seemed to make any difference. Mairi was still too quiet, too reserved, in a way she’d never been.
If Fenella had been set upon and attacked, she knew she would no doubt have acted the same. Still, it wasn’t like Mairi to be so reclusive.
She had remained at home for nearly a week, refusing to see anyone, even Allan. She’d relayed what information needed to be shared through Fenella. One of the women from the SLNA called on her, and Mairi asked Fenella to tell the woman she was not at home.
“I’m not up to seeing anyone, Fenella,” she said in a curiously flat voice.
“I’m sure she’s here to console you, Mairi. Don’t you think that’s worth a few moments of your time?”
Mairi hadn’t answered, only stared out the window of her bedroom.
At least she’d come down to the parlor in the last few days. That was a step in the right direction.
She turned as Abigail appeared at the door.
“There’s a man here, miss,” the maid said, bobbing a curtsy. “I think it’s the Lord Provost. He wants to see Miss Sinclair.”
A few minutes later Fenella smiled at their visitor, inviting him into the parlor.
When Harrison entered, he dwarfed the room. She did wish he would sit and stop looking so fierce.
She would have taken his hat but he wasn’t wearing one. Before she could offer to hang up his coat, he spoke.
“I’ve come to see Miss Sinclair,” he said, his smile lighting his face.
What a handsome man he was. The thought pinched, feeling disloyal to Allan. Shouldn’t she consider him the most handsome man in the world?
“She isn’t seeing anyone,” she said, wondering if she should offer him tea or coffee.
How on earth did she entertain the Lord Provost?
“I must insist,” he said, his tone cooling.
If it were up to her, she’d take him to Mairi right this moment.
“She’s refusing to see anyone,” she said. “Even her pressman.”
One of his eyebrows ascended upward.
“How is she?”
“She’s healing,” she said. “Today is better than yesterday and so much better than last week.”
“But she isn’t seeing anyone.”
“No.”
“Is she taking the laudanum?”
She suspected, before she shook her head, that he knew her answer.
“Is she sleeping?”
Now that was a question she hadn’t expected.
“I don’t think she is,” she said, surprising herself by answering him. Was she violating Mairi’s privacy in doing so? She hoped not, but something was wrong and maybe Harrison could help her cousin.
“I want to see her.”
She didn’t know how to convince Mairi. She eyed him. Just how stubborn was the Lord Provost?
“Mairi’s in the garden,” she said. “But she would never forgive me if I took you there myself.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
Thankfully, it seemed as if he did. She watched as he turned and left, grateful that he was as stubborn as her cousin.
Of course the latch to the garden gate was frozen solid, defying Logan’s attempts to open it.
The garden wall, however, didn’t look that high. He followed it midway to the front of the house. Here the bushes weren’t as deep. He wedged himself next to the wall, found a foothold, and lifted himself to the top.
Thankfully, the Sinclairs hadn’t reinforced their wall with spikes or wrought iron. He threw his leg over, feeling the rough surface tear at his trousers. If his constituents could see him now they’d label him a loon. Worse, a man not in complete control of his faculties.
Had he been quite sane since meeting Mairi Sinclair?
He eyed the expanse of lawn beneath him. The garden was larger than he thought, and his quarry nowhere in sight. Had he climbed the wall at the same time she decided to return to the warmth of the house?
The flower beds looked as if they had been piled high with mulch before the snow obscured them. He was surprised at the number of plantings as well as the careful paths between what must be a spectacular garden in the spring and summer. He was startled to see a large fountain not far away, but blessedly not beneath him. He was willing to climb a garden wall but not break his fool neck.
He was losing his mind.
He made the jump with only a slight jar to his pride as he caught his coat on an ice-encrusted rosebush.
He could just imagine the headlines from her paper: Lord Provost Offends Citizen’s Privacy. She’d probably write a poem about him crawling over the wall like a spider with clawed hands, bulging eyes, and a mouth filled with rotting teeth.
If that didn’t frighten the children of Edinburgh, nothing would.
“There is, I take it, a reason you’re invading my garden.”
He turned to see her sitting there in a puddle of fading light. She was bundled against the chill with a cloak and two striped blankets but still looked miserable, like one of the children in Old Town huddled against a wall.
Her face was drawn and too pale, making the blue and yellow bruise on her cheek even more shocking.
He remained in place only because of years of training at standing on stages, behind podiums, answering questions and being shouted down. Otherwise, he would have gone to her, picked her up and sat down again with her on his lap. Only then would he have gathered her in his arms.
Did she understand that there were times when she needed to be protected and perhaps pampered a little, too?
“It’s too cold for you to be sitting in the garden,” he said.
“Thank you for the information. Is that why you jumped over the wall? I don’t need a guardian. Too many other people are more than willing to put themselves in that role.”
He bit back his smile. She was testy. That was a good sign. At least she wasn’t quiet and hurting.
“You’re still not well,” he said.
“I haven’t been sick. I was injured, not bedridden. What are you doing in my garden?”
“Coming to see you.”
“I don’t want to see you.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“But you jumped over my wall and now you’re here despite my wishes.”
He hadn’t exactly jumped, but he didn’t tell her that. He only smiled. Even bruised and battered, she was indefatigable.
“You’re an impossible man,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “Are you that way with everyone or is it only me?”
He regarded her for a moment and then gave her the truth.
“I think it’s mostly you,” he said. “Something about you makes me want to get nose-to-nose with you. I enjoy arguing with you although I can’t say it’s a normal preference. In fact, I don’t feel that way around most women. With any other woman.”
“How fortunate I am,” she said.
“Why don’t you want to see me?”
“Vanity,” she said so quickly he knew it was a lie. She lined up her excuses like toy soldiers, always at the ready, self-protection at its finest. “I’m not looking my best.”
“You don’t give a flying farthing about your appearance,” he said, marching up to her.
Her eyes widened as he bent down and placed both hands on either arm of her chair.
He wanted to smile when he should have offered comfort, but he never acted the way he should around her.
Up close, her bruising was worse. He wanted to soothe her in some way, take away the pink in her eyes that spoke of too little sleep.
“I could shout and someone would come running,” she said. “They’d escort you out of my garden.”
“I’ll be leaving soon in any case. I came to see how you were faring. Once you tell me, I’ll take myself off. Are you still in pain?”
“I’m not going to tell you. You’ll drug me again.”
“Which means you are. Where?”
She didn’t answer but she also didn’t protest when he repositioned the scarf closer around her throat. She was going to take a chill if she sat out here much longer.
He should be about his work. He had the voluminous paperwork of the Edinburgh and Leith Sewerage Act to study. The river was in bad condition, worse than it had been before the passing of the act. He’d been petitioned to bring the matter before the Government Commissioners on the Pollution of Rivers who were due to visit Edinburgh this week.
He had a full schedule, subject to last minute appearances by constituents, royal appointees, or commissions whose sole mission in life was to clog council meetings with their own personal projects.
Still, he wasn’t leaving until he got his answers.
“Tell me how you feel.”
When she remained stubbornly silent, he smiled.
“You haven’t been producing any broadsides lately,” he said. “My reputation hasn’t been assailed once. I came to reassure myself that you are well. I’m staying until you tell me.”
Her eyes snapped at him. “Do you invade people’s homes to check on each of the citizens of Edinburgh? How fortunate we are to have such a caring Lord Provost.”
“Thank you,” he said, studying the darkness beneath her eyes. “Why haven’t you been sleeping? Is it pain? Or have you been having nightmares?”
“How do you know?”
“It’s what’s normal in this case. Especially for a woman like you.”
She scowled at him. “What does that mean?”
“You’re used to coping with situations on your own, handling matters. When you can’t, it must be frustrating. Frustration has to be expressed in some way, such as being unable to sleep and being rude.”
“Rude?”
“Argumentative,” he said with a smile. “Belligerent. Antagonistic. Are you that way with everyone or is it just me?”
She frowned at him again but didn’t answer, choosing, instead, to stare pointedly at the house. Was she summoning someone to her rescue with the power of her thoughts? If anyone could do it, it would be Mairi Sinclair.
Why did she feel so singular, unique among his acquaintances? Why did he anticipate seeing her, when it would’ve been so much wiser to ignore her presence, even to pretending she didn’t live in the same city?
She argued like any councilman he knew, cogently and yet with a challenge. A tilt of her head, a glimmer of smile, her blue eyes lighting on him and then away—they all fascinated him.
He wanted to frame her face in his hands to study it in more detail, find the reason he was bewitched. Although her mouth was lush and inviting, he’d never been enthralled because of a mouth before. Her deep blue eyes were beautiful, her lashes thick and long. Not once in his life had he ever been so intrigued by a woman’s eyes that he acted the idiot. Her figure, hinted at by the very proper clothing she wore, was enough to fuel his dreams, but not sufficient to render him foolish. Her mind was quick, her words sharp and biting or sweet and kind.
He realized what it was, finally. It was the whole of her, the totality of Mairi Sinclair that ensnared him from the first.
Her smile made him want to laugh.
He had the strangest thought that she was freedom. She was a breath of wind in a stuffy room, a Highland chill after a heated summer. She was everything that shocked him, startled him, and was alien to him.
Being with her made him feel alive and more himself than at any other time.
He leaned closer until their faces were only inches apart.
“Why don’t you want to see me, Mairi?”
Why didn’t she want to see him?
Because he weakened her. Because seeing him standing there, hatless, his cheeks bronzed by the cold, his eyes twinkling at her, was just too much.
He made her want to cry.
He made her want to lean into him and let him protect her again.
She wanted to kiss him, and wasn’t that senseless?
“Does it matter now? You’ve burst in where you weren’t wanted.”
“You could offer me tea and hospitality,” he said.
“I have no intention of doing that.”
He only nodded, still too close. “I didn’t think you would.”
Why should that remark annoy her so?
How, for that matter, had he known she hadn’t been sleeping well?
“Why are you sitting out here in the cold?”
“I wanted a little solitude,” she said. A remark that made the corners of his mouth turn up.
What an impossibly handsome man he was.
“I wish you’d leave,” she said. “You can use the gate this time.”
To her disappointment, he straightened. He smiled at her, showing white, even teeth, the grin of a predator. She had the sudden thought that she was his prey. Shouldn’t that have made her call out for James or Robert? Instead, she remained silent.
“I’ll leave if you go inside,” he said. “Besides, I want to see you walk.”
“You want to see me walk?”
He nodded, the smile slipping from his face. “Your leg was injured. How is your chest?”
She looked at the gray and unremarkable winter sky, wishing a lightning bolt would strike him. Very well, not a direct strike, but perhaps something close enough that he would be startled or would flee.
No, Logan Harrison would never run away from anything.
“I know where I was injured,” she said. “I’m fine. I’m healing well. I’m cared for with the greatest concern. I’m absolutely sotted with kindness.”
“It’s loathsome, isn’t it?”
To her surprise he was smiling at her again. The expression should not be able to lighten her mood but it strangely did.
She nodded. “I do wish people would go away,” she said. “Fenella is the kindest person. She’s too kind. She’s forever hovering. Are my pillows plump enough? Do I want something to eat, drink, read?”
“Is it difficult to be grateful?” he asked.
She sighed. “I’m forever apologizing. I shouldn’t have spoken at the meeting. I shouldn’t have put myself in danger. The only reason I haven’t had to apologize for being at your house is because no one knows about that.” She frowned at him. “You won’t say anything, will you?”
He shook his head.
She lay her head back against the chair. “Good.”
“Will you go inside now?”
“Yes, since my nose is numb. I was going before you suggested it.”
He only grinned.
“Did you really come just to see how I was?”
She shouldn’t have asked the question. She knew that the minute it left her mouth, but he didn’t ridicule her for it.
Instead, he extended both of his hands. She unwrapped her arms from beneath the blankets and placed her fingers on his palms, feeling his heat against the chill of her skin.
“I am going to be fine,” she said, allowing him to pull her up. “Truly.”
“I’m glad,” he said.
He was standing much too close.
“I would hate for my nemesis to be ailing in any way.”
“Am I your nemesis?” she asked faintly.
“I’ve never thought so, but I believe that was your intent.”
“You’re an obstinate man,” she said. “Much too used to getting your own way.”
“Not with you, though.”
“No, not with me.”
Then why was she standing there, close enough to feel his breath on her forehead, close enough to see the pulse pounding in his neck?
Reaching up, she gathered his muffler, ensured his throat was covered, the mirror of his earlier gesture.
The man changed her. He made the air feel charged like just before a thunderstorm.
When she turned and walked away, leaving the blankets in a puddle on the lawn chair, she was conscious of his gaze on her. She refused to limp. But the ache in her chest wasn’t caused by her assailants. No, that was something else entirely, and all because of Logan Harrison.