Chapter 8
“Yes, Mrs. Hargrove, I understand your concerns. I must repeat, however, that the Gazette did not intentionally insult Provost Harrison.”
“He is a great man, Miss Sinclair. A credit to Edinburgh. We are fortunate to have him. Your brother should have known that. I’m disappointed. Very disappointed.”
Mrs. Hargrove was wrapped up against the cold in a frayed black coat that hung below her ankles and looked to have belonged to her late husband. Along with a succession of multicolored knitted scarves, she wore a black bonnet from another decade, adorned with blowsy black fabric flowers that needed desperately to be dusted or replaced.
Despite her penury, the septuagenarian stopped into the paper every week to purchase either a broadside or the newest edition.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, dipping her head in a gesture of subservience.
She walked Mrs. Hargrove to the door. When she saw James pull the carriage to the curb, she grabbed her cloak, deciding that something must be done.
She marched into the press room. “I’m leaving,” she told Allan.
He only nodded, not saying a word about the number of people still outside.
“I’ll put a sign on the door that we’re closed,” she said. That way, he wouldn’t be forced to stop tinkering on the press.
He only nodded.
When she told James their destination, he raised his eyebrows. She readied herself for an argument, but to her surprise he only shrugged.
A few minutes later they were parked outside Logan Harrison’s home.
That morning a gear had shattered on the press. They wouldn’t be able to publish any broadsides or the weekly edition of the paper until the part was available.
Fenella was acting oddly around her.
She wasn’t sleeping well.
None of which she could lay at Harrison’s feet.
But the other? Yes, he was most definitely responsible for that.
Between fielding questions and hearing complaints, for two days she hadn’t been able to get much work done. Long lines of people had appeared first thing in the morning and they didn’t stop coming until dark, all of them complaining about the broadside she’d written about the saintly Lord Provost.
For the first time in her life, she dreaded going to work. Nothing she’d ever written or reported had created as much ire as that poem.
They’d lost twenty subscribers, and they only had three hundred to start. She was never going to make a success of the newspaper this way.
Why had she never realized that, to the citizens of Edinburgh, Logan Harrison was nearly a saint? She hadn’t lied to him. She had never, at least not until meeting him, been involved in politics. But surely she should have known about his reputation. According to the people who had come to the paper, he was concerned about people’s welfare. He enacted reforms. He ensured that each individual who had ever come in contact with him—and from the number of people in her office, that was a great many—remembered him not only for his generosity of spirit but also his charm.
Was she the only person in the world who hadn’t been charmed by the Lord Provost?
She wished she’d never encountered the man.
But the very last straw had come this morning when she visited Mr. Donovan, only to have the man nearly slam the door in her face.
“I’ve nothing for you today,” he said, his chin jutting out.
He was turning back to the interior of the tavern when she stopped him.
“I haven’t seen you for a few days, Mr. Donovan. For you not to have any information is odd.”
“Would you be having me make up things, then?” he asked, frowning. “Like you do?”
That’s when she knew.
“The Lord Provost told you not to talk to me, didn’t he?”
“A finer soul you’ll never know. I’d watch your words before you start imagining stories about him.”
Logan Harrison had evidently threatened Mr. Donovan, and probably most of the men who’d been too busy to speak with her in the last two days.
Tucking her notebook into her reticule, she frowned back at him. “You’ll not be advertising with me either, then?”
“I’ll not,” he said, his gaze focused on the neighboring building, the yard of which adjoined the alley.
“I never wrote anything untrue, Mr. Donovan. You know I don’t do that.”
He finally looked directly at her. “I used to think that, Miss Sinclair. I wonder, now, if being a woman has changed your thinking.”
It was beginning to, in ways he probably didn’t realize. His prejudice, and that of the other men, was cementing her resolve.
She was declaring war on stupidity.
All these years she’d been very careful to act behind the scenes, to allow Macrath to be the figurehead. He was more than willing to cede the power to her and intervene when it was necessary. But now she no longer wanted anyone, even Macrath, to fight her battles for her.
Yesterday she’d received a letter from the Scottish Ladies National Association. The woman had written:
Miss Sinclair, it is imperative that women such as you, in positions of power and influence, come out to support other women. I am gratified to know another woman in publishing, as my dear friend Mary Louise Booth is the editor of Harper’s Bazar in New York . . .
The letter writer went on to ask her to speak publicly. Until this morning she had every intention of writing the woman and telling her she couldn’t possibly do so. Her forte was in the written word. Besides, she wanted to remain in the background.
That was before the meeting with Mr. Donovan. Now she was determined to go through with it.
Just as intent as she was in stopping Logan Harrison.
His house was of deep red brick trimmed in black, with a peaked roof and three rows of small paned windows. On either side of the black door was a brass lantern now flickering a yellow welcome against the gray sky.
Stately and magnificent, the house lorded it over the rest of the neighborhood. She had the sudden and inexplicable image of the emblem of Scotland itself, a lion rampant, right paw raised, claws extended.
She should have brought Fenella with her. Or Abigail at the very least. But either woman would probably have tried to talk her out of confronting the Lord Provost.
If he were a gentleman, she wouldn’t be here. She’d sent him a letter, asking him to call on her at the paper. While she would have preferred to meet him on her home ground, the man had ignored her. She was forced to go to him, either to his office or his home. She’d chosen the house simply because there would be fewer people present.
Her humiliation was already at grandiose levels.
The carriage door opened and James stood there.
“Are you certain about this, Mairi? Do you think it wise?”
“Probably not,” she said.
She could admit that writing the broadside had resulted in consequences she hadn’t considered. Logan Harrison had to be persuaded not to continue to punish her. Otherwise, the Gazette would go bankrupt.
If she had to apologize, she would.
James shook his head, but he didn’t say anything as she left the carriage.
To her surprise, he accompanied her across the street and stood at the bottom of the steps.
“I’ll just wait for you here,” he said.
She clasped her reticule in her hands and faced him. “Do you never grow tired of minding me?” she asked.
A sliver of a smile curved his lips but he didn’t answer.
“Will you tell Macrath?”
“Mr. Sinclair doesn’t want to know what you do each day. I only inform him of circumstances that might prove important or a danger to you and your cousin.”
“Would this be one of those circumstances?”
He only smiled at her.
With a roll of her eyes, she turned and went up the steps, her gaze intent on the crimson velvet curtains behind the sparkling glass of the nearest window.
The brass knocker was in the shape of a wolf’s head, with its open jaws revealing very sharp teeth.
She grabbed the wolf’s snout and let the knocker fall.
Logan’s favorite room in his house was the library, a place where those books he loved were featured among those things he treasured. Bits of his past sat on the shelves along with items he’d discovered on his travels: a bowl from the set of china his mother had loved, purloined from his sister-in-law and now used to hold potpourri scented with oranges and cinnamon; a bit of coral he’d taken from a Spanish shoreline; a corner of crumbled brick from a thousand-year-old Italian church, and a shard of stained glass from the same church, given to him by the priest in remembrance of his visit.
Periodically, Mrs. Landers would go through his shelves and straighten the books, but he’d invariably take one out and lay it down on his desk. Or make his own sort of order through the stacks. He never organized by title or author, but by subject or interest. Did he like the book? Did it make him smile in some way? Incite a hunger or a need for further knowledge? Those books were always closest at hand.
He often worked in his library, finding it a more peaceful place than his office in council chambers. There, anyone was liable to knock on the door and ask for his time. Here, only two people did so—his majordomo and his housekeeper—and neither bothered him without a good reason.
When Rutherford interrupted him, he was surprised.
“You have a visitor, sir.”
Rutherford’s grayish face was arranged in a disapproving look. His shock of thick white hair was never in disarray. His suit was never marred by a speck of lint; his shoes always bore a mirror shine. He was the perfect majordomo, as proper as a Queen’s servant.
Logan had the feeling that he often disappointed Rutherford.
Now the man’s mouth was turned down and his eyes narrowed so much, Logan was surprised the man could see.
“A visitor?” He’d dismissed Thomas an hour earlier and he wasn’t expecting anyone. “Who is it?”
“A woman, sir,” Rutherford said, trembling with disapproval. “Who was quite rude when I stated I would have to announce her.”
He put down his pen, made a neat stack of his correspondence, and placed it on the left side of his desk.
He didn’t know any woman who would call on him at his home. No, he knew one who might dare.
“Does she have brown hair and piercing blue eyes?”
“She has an aggressive manner, sir, and was quite ill-mannered. I believe she does have blue eyes and unremarkable brown hair.”
“Show her in, Rutherford,” he said, wondering at the surge of anticipation he felt.
Rutherford nodded, his mouth looking even more grim as he bowed, stiff with dignity, and left the doorway.
He heard footsteps, sat back in his chair and waited for her.
She didn’t disappoint.
Mairi Sinclair stood in the doorway frowning at him in much the same manner Rutherford had only a moment earlier. This time, however, Logan smiled.
“Why aren’t you wearing a bonnet?” he asked.
“I hate them. Why do you care?”
“I’m curious.”
“About me? Shall I be overjoyed that the Right Honorable Lord Provost evinces some interest in the hoi polloi? Mark this as a day of—”
“Forgive me for interrupting you, but why are you here?”
She stared at him.
Did no one ever stop Mairi Sinclair in mid-tirade?
“It’s not fair to use your position to try to intimidate me,” she said.
He settled back against the chair. “All I asked was why you were here.”
She huffed out a breath. “I don’t mean now,” she said. “I meant in the last two days.”
“What have I done in the last two days?”
She had the most remarkable eyes. They animated her face. Angry, she was even more impressive. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes flashing, and that full-lipped mouth thinned.
“My sources refuse to speak to me,” she said. “My revenue has dropped to what it was five years ago. I’ve lost subscribers. You can’t threaten my sources. You can’t tell people not to talk to me.”
“Have you had dinner?” he asked.
She stared at him as if he’d lost his sanity. Perhaps he had.
“Would you care to eat dinner with me?”
“Of course not.”
“You don’t break bread with your enemies? Sometimes, it’s the best way to form an accord.”
Her eyes darted around the room. “Am I supposed to form an accord with you?”
“Take the opportunity,” he said.
“I’m not here to eat with you, Harrison.”
“No, you’re here to chide me for something I haven’t done.”
Her words had evidently seared her tongue because she didn’t speak.
“Come have dinner with me. A peace offering, if you will.”
“It wouldn’t be proper.”
“Who’s to know? You’re already here.”
“My driver. Your staff.”
“My staff is the essence of discretion. Would you like me to talk to your driver?”
Her eyes blazed at him. “Why is it that men think they can do something a woman can’t do? If I wanted my driver’s discretion, I would certainly be able to convey that to him.”
“Then will you?”
One hand fluttered in the air as if to dismiss him with a gesture. He liked seeing Mairi Sinclair annoyed, and somehow inviting her to dinner had done just that.
“It’s not a large meal,” he said. “We’re having potato soup. Do you like it? It’s my favorite.”
He stood and came around his desk.
“You’re wearing a kilt again,” she said.
He was still wearing a black jacket atop a blue and green kilt, his sporran hanging from a gold chain. His stockings were white, the cuffs of which were lined with the same blue and green tartan. He’d been required to open a hospital this afternoon and people liked seeing him in formal regalia.
“Are you wearing anything beneath it?” she asked, tilting her head back to smile thinly at him. “Custom would dictate not, but I can’t envision the Lord Provost bare-arsed for all to see. What if a wind blew?”
Her smile was edged with daring, as if she expected him to be shocked by her comment.
“Why don’t you see, lass?”
He shouldn’t have been surprised when her smile broadened and she took a step toward him, but he was.
Her hand stretched out, trembled just a little as she touched his hip.
His smile faded.
Silence stretched between them, marked by the soft whir of the mantel clock.
She gathered up the material of his kilt with one hand. When her fingers touched his bare leg, he felt a current passing between them. Did her fingers scorch his skin or was that only foolishness?
His eyes never left hers.
In a second she would touch him, yet he didn’t pull away or caution her.
She moved her hand, her fingers trailing over leather.
Her eyes widened.
So did his smile.
She jerked her hand back.
“It’s a truss of a sort,” he said.
Clasping her hands together, she stared down at his sporran. Covered in rabbit fur, it was adorned with three large tassels, each bearing an identical crest, that of his office.
“Have you been injured?”
His laughter swept through the room like a wave.
“No, but if I didn’t wear one, I’d be bruised.”
She frowned up at him.
“I’m large enough that I can’t be swinging about,” he said. “Now, shall we go in to dinner?”
While she looked a little dazed, he bit back his laughter, took her arm and headed toward the dining room.