The Virgin of Clan Sinclair (23 page)

“I nearly lost you again, my love,” he said softly.

She shook her head. He’d always been able to bring her to tears with his words. “You think it’s your fault?”

“If you hadn’t been with child, you wouldn’t have nearly died in childbirth. If I hadn’t bedded you, you wouldn’t have been with child.”

He was such an intelligent man that when he uttered a stupid comment it was a surprise.

She didn’t quite know what to say to him so she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his head down for a kiss.

This time, however, he stepped back, removing her arms, smiling gently at her.

“I love you too much,” he said.

When he left their bedroom she could only stare after him.

Something must be done.

Chapter 26

S
he took the shorter way around to the library by cutting across the courtyard. Halfway to the building she wondered if Ross would reject her. Would the scene of such initial joy also be the place where he rebuffed her?

She halted halfway there, turning and staring at Huntly’s edifice, once again reminded of the British Museum. Perhaps she was just one more exhibit. Statue of Lonely Countess, circa 1875. Mark the female’s lost look, the distance in her eyes, the frozen tears on her cheeks.

Lady Pamela wouldn’t tolerate such treatment. Lady Pamela would demand her rights as a wife. She would seduce Ross until he was captivated. He’d come crawling back to her on his knees, begging for one more chance.

“Please Ellice, forgive me, but smile at me, I beg you.”

She would turn and look at him, groveling at her feet. Perhaps she’d pity him for the sincerity of his apology. Perhaps she wouldn’t because of all the despair he’d caused her in the last week.

The sad and unchangeable fact, however, was that while she might yearn to be Lady Pamela, she wasn’t. She was simply Ellice Traylor Forster, the Countess of Gadsden, and a more miserable creature she couldn’t imagine.

Changing her mind about the library, she turned and was heading back across the courtyard when a wagon pulled out from behind the East Building. Her mother-in-law stood atop the back steps, a gauzy shawl around her shoulders, her hair coming loose from its bun. A bright smile wreathed her mouth and made her blue eyes sparkle as she waved with the tips of her fingers at a departing wagon. The Dowager Countess turned on the steps then, looked down and saw Ellice. “My dear,” she said, “you’ve come to visit. How lovely!”

She was well and truly trapped.

Rather than explain that she was feeling abjectly sorry for herself and not wishing any company, she pasted a smile on her face.

“I haven’t come at a bad time?” she asked, grabbing her skirts with both hands and mounting the wide steps behind the building.

She concentrated on her footing. When she looked up as she was climbing steps she sometimes grew dizzy. Her mother said it was because she’d ruined her eyes reading so much. Ellice had bitten back a comment that she’d rather read than concentrate on the infinitesimal stitches in needlework. That was a truly eye-ruining exercise.

However, needlework was more proper than writing, wasn’t it?

Why was the world divided into what she should do and what she most wished to do?

“Did you have some more wool delivered?” she asked the older woman at the top of the steps, remembering when the countess couldn’t say good-bye to her family because she was expecting a shipment. Was she involved in trade?

“Oh, no,” the countess said, laughing gently. “That was a shipment of brass pots. Quite lovely things from India. Do you want one?”

“Um, no, but thank you.”

“Mr. McMahon brought them. He’d just acquired a few and thought I would like them.”

“Did he?”

“He’s the most wonderful merchant,” the older woman said, leading her into the house.

As her mother-in-law was extolling the virtues of Mr. McMahon—more than any merchant surely deserved—Ellice looked around, eyes wide. What had Ross said about it? She couldn’t remember, only that he didn’t like coming here. She could well imagine why.

She wondered if she looked as surprised as she felt. She tried, very hard, to rearrange her features so they wouldn’t give anything away, but it was so difficult, given the cluttered condition of her mother-in-law’s home.

Had the older woman taken up residence in the East Building because of all her possessions?

She could barely navigate the hallway because of the crates and baskets stacked there. When she followed her mother-in-law into the parlor, she couldn’t help but stare.

Where another person might have had a few tables and lamps, her mother-in-law had ten. Bird cages hung from the ceiling and were stacked in the corner, each and every one of them filled with a canary or budgie. Three carpets, one atop the other, stretched over the wood floor, and wherever there might have been a spare inch of space there was instead a copper or brass pot filled with ferns.

Upholstered chairs were stacked on top of each other in the corner.

“There’s no room to set them out,” her mother-in-law said. “I need another two parlors, I’m afraid.”

“How many do you have?”

“Four in all. This part of Huntly was designed to hold different branches of the family. Wasn’t that clever of Ross’s ancestors? Unfortunately, however, the family has died out in the meantime. All that’s left is Ross.” She smiled brightly. “And you, of course. You may be the answer to a mother’s prayer.”

Was she supposed to fill Huntly with children? Would any one woman be up to that task?

“Ross says I have too many things,” the countess said, looking around her.

Ellice fervently agreed with her husband. She grabbed her skirts with both hands and made her way to the settee. Grabbing an armful of pillows, she deposited them on a facing chair, cleared off the space of small brass cups, and sat on the green velvet.

Dust and feathers floated in the air. Didn’t the countess find it difficult to breathe? The smell wasn’t obnoxious, though, because of the potpourri containers on the table, pierced brass fixtures emitting something that smelled heavily of cinnamon.

The first question that came to mind was why the countess owned so many things. The second thought was that it was none of her concern. Still, she was curious. Did the woman really like all those birds? She counted to thirty before giving up.

“Who feeds them?” she asked, looking at all the cages.

“I do,” the countess cheerily said. “Every morning. I do need help cleaning the little darlings’ cages. That is a chore in itself. But I take great pride in their health. I think how a person treats an animal to be a mark of character, don’t you?”

She nodded. She’d never been able to abide a person who was cruel to any animal.

“I’m so glad you came to see me,” the countess said, leaning forward to grab an oversize bell on the table. When she shook it, the noise woke all the birds at once. The resulting cacophony prevented Ellice from hearing what the other woman was saying. The noise didn’t seem to disturb the countess at all, who kept talking.

When the squawks and screeches subsided, she smiled. “I’ve rung for tea. I haven’t had a visitor in so long that I have forgotten how to be polite. Oh, except for Mr. McMahon,” she added.

“Did Mr. McMahon bring you the birds?” Ellice asked.

“Oh, yes. He brings me everything. He owns the most wonderful emporium. I must simply take you there one day. Do you like Edinburgh?”

“I’ve only been there a few times,” Ellice said. “But I found the city to be fascinating.”

“It is, of course, if you like cities. I find that all those people are a bit frightening.”

Ellice just smiled. She was finding the conditions of her mother-in-law’s home to be more frightening than any crowd of people.

“How are you settling in at Huntly?”

What did she say that could be complimentary and yet not a lie?

“It’s very large.”

“It’s an elephant of a house,” her mother-in-law said, surprising her. “Ross loves it, of course, but visitors have a tendency to gape. When I first came here I thought I’d never learn all the rooms or find my way.”

“Did you?”

Her mother-in-law laughed. “No, which is why I’m living here. I know this house very well. I don’t get lost, and if I want to go to the parlor I don’t have ten to choose from.”

Perhaps she could find a place to spend time as well, somewhere not as imposing.

“I’ve often thought the house was built to impress, but then the family history is impressive. Did you know that the family fought on the Royalists’ side during the civil war? At one point there was even talk of a Forster being sentenced to death. But during the Restoration, the family fortunes turned. James Forster became a knight and the Lord Clerk Register of Scotland.”

She smiled at Ellice. “A great many Forster men have been in service to their country.”

“Is that why Ross wants to be a representative peer?”

“What a very astute question. I quite like you, my dear.”

She also felt a sense of kinship with her mother-in-law. If that feeling could extend to her husband, she’d be happy at Huntly.

Ross, however, wasn’t speaking to her. He didn’t even remain in the same room.

She pushed the thought away as two maids emerged from a doorway she hadn’t seen.

For the next several minutes she and her mother-in-law occupied themselves with tea and scones. She hadn’t eaten much that morning and now found herself famished.

She took a sip, a mixture of black tea and something more fragrant, perhaps chamomile. This, too, was overlaid with the scent of cinnamon.

Across the room, three shelves were filled with an assortment of stuffed birds. Evidently the countess didn’t see the odd juxtaposition of dead birds in the same room with dozens of live ones. She counted at least three pheasants, two quail families, and a half-dozen hawks. In addition to the birds there was a creature that looked like a mad chipmunk, rearing up on his hind legs, claws extended like he was trying to escape the glass dome surrounding him.

“Now,” the countess said a few moments later, “let me answer your question about Ross.”

Placing her cup on the tray before her, her mother-in-law turned and regarded her. Her blue eyes were soft but held a world of pain. A strange thought to have amid the excess surrounding them.

“I’m not a very clever woman,” the countess said. “But I am a kind one. I’ve found that kindness is a greater asset than cleverness.”

Since Ellice had always been surrounded by clever people who were also kind, she didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, her mother-in-law didn’t seem to expect a response.

“How much do you know about Ross’s father?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Ellice said, realizing it was true. Ross never talked about his father.

“Ours was an arranged marriage, something planned from my birth. No one knew that I was madly in love with Thomas from the moment I saw him.” She plucked at her skirt with one hand. “Love is a very strange emotion, don’t you think? It makes you miserable and fills you with delight at the same time.”

The older woman glanced over at her. “Do you love my son?” Before she could formulate a reply, the countess shook her head. “No, don’t answer that. It’s none of my concern. All that I hope is that you, too, are a kind person, Ellice. He so needs a little kindness.”

Once again she didn’t know what to say.

“I wasn’t clever enough or beautiful enough to keep Thomas. Oh, he did his duty by me. But once he had his heir, he looked to other women.”

The countess closed her eyes, took another deep breath, then opened them again.

“You don’t know any of this, do you?”

Ellice shook her head, placed one hand on the velvet cushion beside her, fingers absently stroking the softness.

“Perhaps the greatest kindness I could give you is to leave you in ignorance,” the countess said.

Ellice stood then and walked to the far end of the room and the windows overlooking the courtyard. “Everyone is leaving me in ignorance, I’m afraid.” She could see the library from there. Was he working inside or had he left Huntly? Was he visiting Edinburgh?

“You’ll find that I’m invariably nosy, my dear. It’s one of my failings. Why do you look so sad?”

She turned, facing her mother-in-law. “Do I? I haven’t the slightest idea why, your ladyship.”

A lie, and it seemed the older woman knew it.

“You have a mother,” the countess said. “So I will not ask you to call me that. But could you not call me Janet?”

Ellice nodded.

“Now, tell me why you’re so sad.”

“Did he love her very much?”

Janet didn’t answer her. Instead, she sat back, sipped at her tea and studied the far wall. Finally, she looked back at Ellice.

“Come and sit, my dear. We must have a very difficult conversation, you and I.”

She didn’t want to return to the settee. She wanted to leave this room with its overpowering clutter and this woman with her glistening eyes.

But she had vowed to be a woman of courage. Slowly, she walked back and sat, waiting for the countess to speak.

“Cassandra was an exceedingly kind woman,” she said. “A beautiful woman as well. She was clever, too.” Janet smiled. “There were times I almost wished to hate her. A beautiful, kind, and clever creature. It hardly seems fair, does it?”

“I have been surrounded by women like that all my life,” Ellice said, thinking of Virginia and Mairi.

She didn’t want to hear about the paragon of virtue who was Ross’s dead wife. How, though, did she silence the countess? She was at fault for voicing a question she shouldn’t have asked.

“I thought, at first, that it was a blessed marriage,” the countess said. “Ross felt for her what I felt for his father, a sort of uncomplicated adoration.”

She smiled, and Ellice thought it was a strangely sad expression.

“Lovers are allowed to be fools for a certain amount of time, I think. Perhaps a year. Certainly not longer and in some cases much sooner. In my case,” she said, glancing at Ellice, “it lasted much longer. But it was a willful blindness. My son was never a fool, Ellice. He’s not given to much emotionality. I credit his father’s overemotionality for that.”

Janet held out the teapot. “More tea?”

Once their cups were refilled, her mother-in-law seemed reluctant to continue.

“My mother says she loved my father but they never seemed to talk to each other,” Ellice said, staring into her cup. “My brother never pretended to love his wife, but now she’s madly in love with her husband and makes no pretense about it.”

“And you? Have you ever been in love?”

There was that question again. How would she describe her feelings for Ross? A delirium, perhaps, one that was keeping her confused. He’d introduced her to the joy of passion and then ignored her.

Janet placed a hand over hers.