Chapter 26
To Mairi’s dismay, sleep wasn’t easier in her own room than it had been at Drumvagen. Instead, she lay staring up at the ceiling illuminated by the bluish white glare of moonlight. She could hear Fenella and Ellice giggling down the hall, but gradually even the sounds of amusement faded, leaving only the sigh of the wind against the windows as company.
The hole in her chest expanded, growing larger and larger until she could envision a giant black space in the middle of the mattress encompassing everything, even her.
She missed him.
There, a confession she should have been too wise to utter even to herself.
He was close. Close enough for her to walk to his house if she was thoroughly foolhardy. In her imagination, she dressed and donned her cloak and her gloves, roused James from his room above the stable. She would caution him to secrecy, knowing that it meant nothing because he would tell Macrath. Now she simply didn’t care. She would laugh at his threats and race to the carriage, waiting impatiently.
She wouldn’t bother to explain herself to Logan’s majordomo or Mrs. Landers. Instead, she would run up the stairs to Logan’s room, throwing off her cloak and her clothes.
He would rise in his bed, surprised at her appearance.
Wicked and wanton, she would mount him, keep his head still for a kiss.
She’d take advantage of him, stroke her hands over his arms and chest, let her fingers dance along his skin, and incite shivers where she touched him. She’d inhale his moans and kiss him until he was senseless. Only then would she take him into her body and hold him there until the pleasure was so great she had to have her release.
The thought of being so abandoned was hardly restful or conducive to sleep.
After a while she sat on the edge of her bed, then went to her secretary, placing her hands flat on the surface where she’d written the broadside about him. If she wrote another about the Lord Provost, what would she say? What would she accuse him of? Stealing her sleep, perhaps. Infusing her mind with all sorts of wicked images, none of which she could easily banish.
She sat, laid her head down on her folded arms and sighed, thinking that she was sad sight indeed, a woman in thrall to a man.
Surely, though, men felt the same way. She would discount Calvin for the moment. He wasn’t the epitome of all things good about men, being as disloyal as he’d been. Did Allan feel that way about Fenella? Perhaps one day, if she had enough courage, she would ask him.
Her father had loved her mother long after she died in childbirth. He spoke of her often, and whenever he did, it was with a smile.
Perhaps, in her reporting, she could ask the men with whom she conversed how they felt about their wives. She would use the information for a future column of the Gazette. Surely women would be interested to hear what opinion husbands held.
She picked up her pen and jotted that idea down, along with another. She would ask Fenella her thoughts about love. What did it feel like? Was it a general ache in the body? Was it a burning sensation in the stomach? Was it a cacophony of thoughts that flew about in the mind like bats escaping from a cave? Was it the sudden inability to form a cogent thought?
Or was she ailing in some way?
Going to Drumvagen had not been the least bit relaxing. She’d been miserable there, and even more unhappy after Logan left.
Now, despite her plans for the Gazette, she wasn’t as enthused as she should have been. Why wasn’t the paper enough? Why was she so jealous of Fenella? Why did she feel so ancient when Ellice looked at her with admiration in her eyes?
Something must be done. She couldn’t allow this malaise to continue.
One way or another, she had to revert to her normal self. The Mairi Sinclair who was enthusiastic about each day, who knew exactly where she was going in life, who fretted about her restrictions but found a way around them nevertheless.
She removed her nightgown and began to dress, irritated with herself, Logan Harrison, and life in general. James was not going to be happy, but like it or not, he was going to have to drive her to the newspaper.
“I’ll not leave you,” James said, opening the carriage door.
“Allan is here. You don’t have to stay.”
“It’s the middle of the night. I’ll not leave you.”
“Very well,” she said, “but you’re not going to sit out here. It’s too cold. Come with me.”
After she unlocked the door, he followed her inside, where she led him to her father’s office.
“You can stay here,” she said. “It’s warmer than sitting outside in the carriage.”
He nodded and settled behind her father’s desk.
Work had always been a panacea. She’d always found comfort in the pressroom, being able to immerse herself in a story, a broadsheet, or reading through the submissions to the paper.
Tonight, however, she roamed through the room, feeling the cold of the night that even the lit brazier in the corner couldn’t dispel.
She loved the look of the Edinburgh Gazette. She loved that it had been founded thirty years earlier, that it bore the Sinclair name on its masthead. It was created from thoughts converted to words, and printed using metal on paper. Each issue took her breath away.
Somehow, however, the paper wasn’t enough. When had that happened? When a certain tall and broad man had crossed her path, grinning at her until her heart stuttered?
She missed him.
Dear God, she missed arguing with him, touching him, anticipating his kiss, his comments, his stubbornness.
What was she going to do?
Work—that was all she had left.
Allan slept above. Could he hear her? Would he come to see what the noise was and why the lamps had been lit?
Perhaps he would keep James company.
Still clad in her cloak, she removed her gloves, wandering from the shelves along the walls to the massive press in the middle of the room. Allan had taken advantage of her absence and cleaned the plates and the mechanism. Her fingers trailed along the metal, feeling no trace of oil or ink.
She would need to talk to him in the morning, ensure that he knew she welcomed him into the family, another person to whom she owed an apology or an explanation.
She should just print an announcement and distribute it like a broadside:
To the whole of Edinburgh, I’m sorry.
For daring to be more than just a woman. For wanting to be treated like a man, or at least with the same respect. For having dreams beyond my sex and my station. For being rash and improvident. For allowing a charming smile to lull me into being fascinated by a man.
She should concentrate on the next issue of the paper. From her pocket she withdrew those submissions she’d read at home. There were enough to fill six columns, at least. She’d let other writers talk for her during this edition, and next edition she’d make the announcement about the Gazette.
Would she lose all their subscribers?
Her sources might disappear completely. Would they be as reluctant to talk to her as they’d been after her broadside about Logan?
Perhaps she should tell them that she’d been with him one night, his mistress for an evening, his paramour for a certain number of hours. Knowing the high esteem in which the inhabitants of Edinburgh held their provost, perhaps it would elevate her standing.
After removing her cloak, she hung it on a peg near the door. Walking to the typesetting area, she stared at the rows of letters and phrases. These, too, had been cleaned. She placed the papers where she could read them, began with the first column, the movements of her fingers learned from when she was a girl, standing in front of her father and taught how to see the type in reverse.
The first article was one on the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and how each Scot should become involved in their campaigns.
She saw something out of the corner of her eye and glanced in that direction, thinking it might be James or a querulous Allan, coming to ask why she was at the paper in the middle of the night. Neither man appeared.
Turning back to her typesetting, she focused on her task, but not for long. The light in the hall was too bright to be a lamp. She smelled it before her conscious mind could accept its presence: fire.
Fire was their greatest enemy. Not only did they store newsprint on the second floor, but vats of ether used to clean the type were kept in the back along with other chemicals needed to run the press.
James was in the room closest to the storeroom.
She threw down the type and ran toward him, only to barrel into him as he was coming out of the office.
“Allan’s upstairs!”
James thrust her in the direction of the building entrance and raced up the stairs.
She stood there for a moment, then ran into the pressroom, grabbing the buckets of sand they kept there for just this purpose. One she emptied in the hall before the pressroom. A second she poured around the press, hoping it might keep the fire from it. The press and type were the most valuable items in the whole building.
She could hear the fire now. How strange that she’d never realized fire had a voice. It grumbled like a querulous Robert, creeping ever closer.
Logan hadn’t told his driver to go past the paper on his way home. But he hadn’t told the man to go straight home, either, so he was amused to note that they were nearing the Sinclair Printing Company. Evidently, his behavior of the last week had formed a habit.
He wasn’t certain he wanted to see the building.
She hadn’t yet returned, and her absence was eating at him. Mairi had never struck him as a coward, however. Sooner or later she would have to return to Edinburgh, and when she did, he was going to start courting her in earnest.
As they passed the building, Logan pushed the grate aside, calling for his driver to halt the carriage. A flickering yellow light beyond the windows confused him. Just as he realized what he was seeing, the sound of a woman’s shout skittered down his spine.
He opened the carriage door and began to run.