Chapter 20
“Are you going to tell me where you were last night?” Fenella asked, her hazel eyes dark and flat like a stone.
“I was at the paper. We had a large order of brochures to print,” she said.
“You’re lying.”
Surprise held her mute. She disliked lying to anyone, and lying to Fenella seemed doubly wrong. But to be called on it was even stranger.
Fenella had never once doubted her word.
“You weren’t at the paper,” her cousin said. “You weren’t at the paper, because I was.”
She stared up at Fenella, not understanding.
“Allan and I were there. In his room.”
Every thought flew out of her mind. In the stillness, she stared at her cousin, a curious bubble of silence surrounding them.
“We wanted a place to be alone.”
Should they be having this conversation so close to Robert’s room?
Mairi walked down the hall, opened Fenella’s door and waited until her cousin joined her. After Fenella entered, she closed the door softly, trying to marshal her thoughts.
“Are you saying that you and Allan . . .” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
Had the world turned on its axis? Fenella, shy and quiet and unassuming, was as guilty as she of aberrant—and some might say abhorrent—behavior?
And with Allan, which made it only worse. She wasn’t at all certain Allan was to be trusted.
“Yes,” Fenella said. Twin splotches of color bloomed on her cheeks.
“Fenella, how can you do such a thing?”
“I find that a little incongruous, Mairi, since you’re tiptoeing through the house holding your shoes. Where have you been?”
Fenella sat on the edge of her bed, one arm wrapped around a bed post, her gaze direct and unflinching.
Mairi looked away, inspecting Fenella’s vanity. Sparkling bottles and pots sat on a lace doily. Not a speck of dust could be found. The lamps were pristine; the windows shone, as did the mirror. Her embroidered bed linens matched the immaculate antimacassars on the reading chair. Fenella’s room was always neat, always smelled of roses, and was always a haven, at least until now.
“Allan asked me to marry him,” her cousin said, further surprising her.
Her world was upside down. Nothing was making any sense.
“I love him, Mairi. You have to know that. I want your blessing but I’ll marry him without it.”
She abruptly sat on Fenella’s reading chair.
“I know you’re hurt. I know you thought I would always live here, but I want my own home, Mairi. My own family.”
She could only blink at her cousin. “I’m not hurt,” she said. “I just never thought about you leaving.”
Fenella’s smile was kind and strangely maternal, as if she were Mairi’s mother, accepting her daughter with all her sins and loving her regardless.
“That’s because you don’t really notice people, Mairi. You don’t see them. It’s only the paper for you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? You don’t go anywhere unless it has something to do with the paper. You don’t socialize. You don’t entertain. Everything is centered around the Gazette.”
Since she hadn’t noticed that Fenella was interested in Allan, there was nothing she could say to that criticism.
“I’ve written Macrath,” Fenella said.
Was the whole world in communication with her brother? She was certain Robert complained about her weekly. James was no doubt going to regale Macrath with her exploits, and now Fenella? What was Macrath, some sort of puppet master who dictated the actions of everyone in the household?
“Are you certain you know Allan as well as you think you do?” she asked, and then told her about the letters.
“You think Allan would have done something like that?”
“I don’t know,” Mairi said. “I hope not but I don’t know anyone else.”
Fenella stood, moved to the other side of the room, as far away as she could get.
“Don’t do anything to him, Mairi, or I’ll go to Macrath about that, too.”
She didn’t know whether to be hurt or angry. Fenella’s words stung.
“You wanted to know what I was doing tonight, Fenella? I was making new friends,” she said. “I was with the Lord Provost. With Logan.”
Fenella stared at her. “All night?”
“Yes,” she said.
Fenella’s wide-eyed glance goaded her, but she wisely refrained from telling her cousin more. Let her guess that she and Logan were lovers, if that word adequately described what Logan was. He was like a thunderstorm and she parched earth.
“Mairi, is that wise?”
“No wiser than your relationship with my pressman,” she said.
Suddenly, she wanted to guard her emotions and her thoughts, keep them hidden from her cousin. She wanted to tell Fenella that she would be fine. Perhaps she would even take another lover after Logan, become known as the very shocking Miss Sinclair. No one need worry about her or chastise her because she was more interested in ideas than people.
She willed her lips to curve into a smile, and banished even the thought of tears.
Without another word, she retreated to her bedroom. Once inside, she dropped her shoes and her bonnet, flattened herself against the door, both arms outstretched like a living barrier. No one would breach her privacy. Not a person in the household would dare.
Fenella’s words felt like arrows that had found a perfect target. Maybe her cousin was right. She’d been so single-minded in pursuit of her own goals that she’d never noticed other people close to her.
What else had she missed?
Allan loving her cousin, for one.
She’d never seen hints of their relationship, and she should have. She most definitely had not been aware of what was going on in her own world.
At least the world of the Mairi Sinclair she’d known herself to be a few weeks ago. Who was she now?
She unbuttoned her cloak and draped it over the end of the bed before sitting beside it.
Perhaps the Gazette had always been the reason she attended an event. Because she was probably too direct and less charming than she should have been, people did not gravitate to her in social settings. Only two reasons prompted them to do so: they wanted to be featured in a column or pass along some information to the public. People did not, however, want to become friends with her. Tell Mairi Sinclair something of an intimate nature? You might as well run through Edinburgh shouting the story.
Fenella was her only friend, someone she trusted implicitly.
Hurt sat like a lump in her stomach.
She hadn’t closed the drapes the night before, and dawn thrust broadswords of pink and blue from a rising sun. A new day, one in which she was mired in a bone deep confusion.
“You’re late,” Mairi said when Allan finally entered the pressroom a few hours later.
He only nodded in response, which surprised her. She expected him to say something in defense of himself, but he merely donned the apron to protect his clothes from the ink spatter, and moved to the press.
“Do you hate working for a woman?” she asked.
He glanced over at her and frowned. “Have I given you reason to think so?”
“That’s not quite an answer.”
He jerked the tie of the apron into a bow and answered her, “No, I don’t hate working for a woman.”
“Do you hate working for me?”
“What’s this about, Mairi?”
His pleasant, agreeable face was folded into a frown. She realized that she’d not often seen him out of sorts.
“Would you tell me if there was something you didn’t like?” she asked. “If there was something that made you angry?”
“I told you I thought the broadside was a bad idea.”
He had, but he’d still helped her finish it.
She didn’t want him to be responsible for the letters. Not for Fenella’s sake but for her own. She liked him; he was a good worker, and she’d grown accustomed to the feeling of safety she felt around him.
“Do you think running a paper is woman’s work?” she asked.
To her surprise, he smiled. “Not until I met you,” he said. “But you seem to enjoy it and the Gazette is a good paper. One with a future.”
“Do you really think so?”
He nodded. “Have I done something, Mairi?”
She wiped her hands on the rag beside the press, walking to the line of shelves. She studied a few of the crates as if she were looking for something. She needed the time to come up with the right way to broach the subject.
“I’ve been getting letters at home,” she said. “I’ve only seen one, but there have been two, I understand.”
“What kind of letters?”
“The kind you don’t want to read aloud,” she said. “Not highly complimentary of me.”
He frowned. “Does it have something to do with your SLNA work?”
“Perhaps. Or the broadside I wrote. Or a column. Or simply because someone doesn’t like me.”
The idea that it could stem from her work with the SLNA appealed to her. If someone could assault her for what she said, then it was certainly possible for someone to write her nasty letters for the same reason.
At least that way the letters wouldn’t be from someone she knew.
“And you thought they came from me?” He rotated the wheel of the press, studying her.
“If I did, I wouldn’t be leaving you in charge.”
“In charge?” His eyebrows drew together. “And where would you be going?”
“To Drumvagen,” she said. “I need to see my brother.” She also needed to escape Edinburgh, but that wasn’t a confession she’d make aloud.
Moving to the other side of the room, she pulled the apron off her head, hanging it on the hook where it belonged. She turned and studied him in the light from the windows.
How many nights had they worked together? How many times had they laughed over something or discussed the news? He knew her as well as anyone, because he knew the Mairi of the Edinburgh Gazette. Here at the paper she was her truest self.
Please, God, don’t let her be wrong. If he was responsible for the letters, she didn’t think she could bear it.
Sometimes, however, she had to believe. When circumstances were against her, when people urged one way of thinking, she had to listen to her own counsel. Something told her that Allan hadn’t written those letters, and she was going to act as if he were innocent.
She turned and looked at the board where she pinned their next projects. Two broadsides were due as well as the next edition of the Gazette. In addition, three brochures and notices of meetings had been promised, for free, of course.
“We’ll do the notices, and the brochures can wait until I return. We’ll postpone the next edition as well.”
He nodded, turning the wheel of the press. The clacking sound was strangely reassuring, as if the press was happily talking to her.
When Macrath had purchased Drumvagen and wanted her and Fenella to move to his new home, she’d asked him, “What would I do if I left Edinburgh?”
He hadn’t an answer for her. But they’d both known she was talking about more than the city. Edinburgh was her home, but the Sinclair Paper Company was her life.
If she could stay in this room, she’d be happy. But that’s what Fenella had accused her of, wasn’t it? Everything in her life had narrowed to the Gazette.
Until, of course, Logan Harrison.
She hadn’t thought of the Gazette last night, or her reputation, or subscription numbers, columns, or broadsides. Instead, she’d been a woman enthralled, captivated, and enchanted.
Reason enough to want to flee Edinburgh as fast as she could.
“She’s gone?”
Fenella clasped her hands together, prayed for composure, and addressed a very irritated Logan Harrison.
“She’s left Edinburgh.”
She’d never seen anyone’s face turn to stone the way his did.
“Where has she gone?”
Should she tell him? Or keep Mairi’s privacy?
“She’s gone to visit her brother,” she said, the decision having something to do with the intensity of his gaze. “At Drumvagen. Would you like her address?”
“I know it,” he said. This time his smile was more genuine. Or perhaps it was simply because the ferocity had left his eyes. “How long will she be gone?”
“A fortnight,” she said, although it was little more than a guess.
The idea that her cousin had engaged in an illicit relationship with this forceful man was startling.
The day was too cold and blustery to stand here with the door open. She invited him inside, wondering if Cook had baked that morning.
To her relief he declined.
“Thank you,” he said, nodding at her again. Then he turned and left, heading for the stately carriage on the curb.
Was the Lord Provost in love with Mairi? Is that why he seemed so surprised at the news that she’d left Edinburgh?
If so, she could certainly understand his bewilderment. Love made fools out of everyone.
Even men like the Lord Provost.
Going to Drumvagen was like stepping back in time. Macrath’s home crouched at the edge of the sea, sufficiently far from any train depot that the only way to get there was by carriage.
Normally, the drive took four hours. Today, however, the distance seemed to fly by as quickly as the time. The skies were clear with no hint of snow and the winter winds subdued.
As they were nearing Drumvagen, Mairi reached up and opened the grate, calling for James to stop.
The carriage slowed. She gathered up her skirt, wishing she hadn’t chosen to wear one of her better dresses, but she hadn’t planned on walking through the Scottish moors.
Ellice sat on an outcropping of rock. She might have been a statue, she was so still. The girl’s shoulders were slumped and her head half bowed, staring at a clump of gorse.
There was something so abject about Ellice’s posture that Mairi could neither ignore her nor pretend she was invisible.
Although there was no relationship between them, even that of marriage, she liked the girl and felt they were friends. Ellice was her sister-in-law’s sister-in-law. Virginia had been married before Macrath, and her husband had died. Ellice was the eighteen-year-old sister of that first husband.
After Virginia and Macrath married, both Ellice and her mother had come to live at Drumvagen. The arrangement had worked out well for the two English women, at least on the surface. But it was almost as if the gods, having seen how happy Virginia and Macrath were, wanted to add spice to their lives. The spice, in this case, was Virginia’s former mother-in-law, Enid, Ellice’s mother.
Mairi grabbed her skirts with both hands, watching the ground for stones and holes. She didn’t want to scrape the leather of her new shoes or twist an ankle.
At her approach, Ellice turned and smiled.
“Sometimes prayers are answered,” she said.
“I’ve never been the answer to a prayer,” Mairi said.
“Not specifically you,” Ellice said. “Anything that could resolve the situation.”
The past two years had been eventful and difficult for the younger woman. Ellice had lost her older sister, nursed her mother back from deep grief, and moved from London to Drumvagen. Her entire life had changed, the circumstances enough to make her sad or even angry.
Ellice had been neither.
Instead, her wide brown eyes studied everything, and she watched people with great interest, rarely commenting until her opinion was solicited. Even then her thoughts were measured and considerate, as if she had a mental filter through which all her words flowed.
When Mairi first met Ellice on the occasion of Macrath’s wedding, she’d been amused by the girl’s incessant curiosity. She was placed in service to help answer a few of Ellice’s innumerable questions about Drumvagen, Macrath, the family, Scotland, and a dozen more subjects.
Lately, however, Ellice had been less curious or perhaps just more restrained. She wondered if it was because Ellice had been told that no one approved of a curious woman.
She went to stand in front of the girl. “Are they at it again?” she asked.
Enid, having been the mistress of her own establishment in London, was expected to play the part of cherished family member. In doing so, however, she was no longer able to dictate the rules of the household, supervise the menus, or approve expenditures. Such a change in roles might have been difficult for anyone, but Enid had found it impossible. Not because she disliked Virginia but because her battles weren’t with her former daughter-in-law.
Enid despised the housekeeper, Brianag.
Brianag reciprocated in kind.
“I’ve never seen any two people so ill suited to be in the same room,” Ellice said. “I try to leave when that happens.”
Whenever they were in earshot of Virginia or Macrath, Enid and Brianag maintained a perfectly agreeable tone while sniping at each other. The minute Virginia or Macrath left the room, voices were raised and the sniping turned to all out war.
For hours each woman nominally tried to ignore the other. Then something would set one of them off and the battle raged.
Ellice swept her skirts away from a rock strangely shaped like a footstool and Mairi dusted off the surface before sitting.
“What is it now?”
“Food,” Ellice said, tapping at one of her bodice buttons. “Mother says she can no longer tolerate Scottish cooking. Brianag served her haggis for breakfast.”
Mairi laughed, hating haggis herself. “So what did Enid do?”
“She told Brianag that we come from a long line of English witches and she was going to recite a spell.”
“A spell?” That sounded a little desperate, even for Enid.
Ellice sighed. “Mother’s running out of threats. Most of the time, Brianag just laughs at her. This time Brianag told Mother that she was going to kirk to pray for her, then tell Macrath that she’d have nothing to do with an ungodly woman in the house. She refused to serve her dinner.”
“I admire your mother,” Mairi said. “Brianag is frightening.”
Ellice glanced down at her. “The most frightening person I’ve ever known,” she said. “If I were a child, I’d have nightmares about her.”
“Has she done anything to scare Alistair?” she asked, speaking of her nephew. He was nearly three now, and no doubt spoiled, but such a darling child that it didn’t seem to matter.
“She dotes on him. So does Mother. I think that’s what started the whole thing this time. Mother said something or did something that violated one of Brianag’s superstitions. I think we need a list of things we should or should not do,” Ellice said, staring off toward the ocean.
“Even if you had one,” Mairi said, “I doubt it would matter.”
“Is it because we’re English?”
“No,” Mairi said. “It’s because you’re there. I’m as Scottish as Brianag. But we clash as well.”
The woman was phenomenally devoted to Macrath and would hear nothing bad ever said about him. Unfortunately, she felt the same way about Drumvagen and Scotland. Even a mild comment such as, “It’s a cold day today, isn’t it?” would result in a glower and a mumbled threat along the lines of refusing fuel for the fire. “We’ll see how cold you’ll be then.”
Her brother, unfortunately, had almost as much devotion for Brianag. Whenever Mairi complained to him, Macrath would shake his head and say something along the lines of, “She’s very well respected.”
Was it respect or fear? Was the rest of the staff as cautious about the housekeeper as she was?
Whenever she broached the subject of Brianag to Virginia, her sister-in-law got a wild look in her eye as if she wanted to escape the room immediately. She couldn’t blame Virginia. She probably had that same look.
She turned her head, looking toward Drumvagen, now hidden behind the pines. She really wasn’t in the mood for more drama, but it seemed as if she had no choice.
Standing, she held her hand out for Ellice. “Come on, we’ll face them both together.”
Ellice sighed again as she plucked at her left cuff with her right hand. “She’s my mother, but she can be very trying.”
An apt description, but she decided not to say that to the girl.
“Brianag can be as well,” she said.
Ellice allowed herself to be pulled from her perch and accompany Mairi back to the carriage.
December in Scotland could be dreary. The mornings were gray and often the sun didn’t burn away the clouds, leaving the afternoons the same. The days were short, with snow in the air and sometimes on the ground. So far this year they’d been spared, but it was only a matter of time until everything was coated in white.
Drumvagen, however, was an oasis of green, the massive house surrounded by tall pines. Built of gray brick only slightly darker than the white-flecked ocean to her right, the house was square, with four tall towers on each corner. The dual staircases in front curved from the broad portico to the gravel approach, welcoming a visitor like outstretched arms to Macrath’s magnificent home.
Because they were family, James pulled around to the back of Drumvagen. Before they were out of the carriage, Mairi heard the shouting.
“Macrath and Virginia are at Kinloch Village,” Ellice said. “The two of them have been going at it all day.”
Mairi had the uncharitable thought that at least Brianag was fussing at Enid and not her. Normally, the housekeeper didn’t have any qualms about telling her what to do and how to do it whenever she visited Drumvagen. If Brianag was focused on Enid, perhaps she would be left alone on this visit.
As they left the carriage, approaching the back entrance, she realized why she could hear them arguing so well. The two women stood in the middle of the laundry yard.
“You’re a harridan!”
“At least I’m not a tumshie Sassenach,” Brianag replied more calmly.
They were probably close in age, but in appearance they were opposites. Enid was short and plump, and Brianag tall and thin.
Mairi had the strangest notion that if they were chess pieces, Brianag would be the queen and Enid the pawn. That didn’t mean, however, that anyone should underestimate Enid. The Dowager Countess of Barrett had kept her own establishment after having been widowed for a dozen years, negotiated a marriage for her invalid son and, when faced with penury, revealed the true extent of her manipulative powers.
Brianag, on the other hand, was rumored to be a wise woman, dabbled in healing, and was knowledgeable about anything to do with Kinloch Village and its environs. She also had a very bad habit, when irritated, of retreating to a peculiar type of Scottish the locals spoke, which meant that the servants understood her but no one else did.
The two women were well-matched in temperament, will, and determination. They were also very tiring to be around.
She and Ellice exchanged a look.
“Awa and bile yer heid,” Brianag said, catching sight of them. She smoothed her apron down with both hands and smiled.
The sight of Brianag smiling was daunting indeed.
Drumvagen’s housekeeper was as tall as Macrath. Pink cheeks adorned her square face. Her nose was knifelike, too narrow to fit well on her face. Two vertical lines were etched between her deep-set brown eyes, giving her a glower even when she was in a good mood, a rarity for Brianag.
Her hair, brown threaded with gray, was normally arranged at the back of her head in a severe bun, but now several tendrils escaped, giving her an uncharacteristic disheveled appearance.
Her mouth was thinned in a smile as she approached them. Mairi didn’t trust that expression because Brianag had never hesitated in conveying how she felt, and her feelings did not lean toward affection.
“Mairi,” Enid said before Brianag could speak. “How delightful that you’re here.” The Dowager Countess of Barrett, short, stocky, and determined, nearly skipped to reach her first.
Enid’s face was plump, her face, although lined, appearing younger than her years. Now a triumphant smile curved her lips as she enveloped Mairi in a fulsome hug.
Brianag frowned impressively.
Ellice’s eyes twinkled as she moved away, leaving Mairi in the middle of the two women.
She had the thought that perhaps Edinburgh, with all its complications, might be a calmer place than Drumvagen.