The Virgin of Clan Sinclair Read Online Free Page A

someone had entered, she sighed in relief.
    They would be on their way shortly and Edinburgh was just a few hours away. She could bear anything for four hours.
    She lay there with her arms crossed over her chest, wondering if her hands would begin to tingle because of the constriction. The pose reminded her of how Eudora had been buried.
    Even in death Eudora had been beautiful and poised.
    Tall and statuesque, with a regal looking face and demeanor, Eudora was everything she was not, elegant, graceful, and attuned to people. Eudora knew, immediately, if someone was out of sorts, sad, or happy. She exerted herself to please others and they rewarded her with praise and admiration.
    Ellice knew she was only granted confused glances.
    When she was younger and living in London, she was guilty of a great many societal faux pas. She spoke without thinking and she fidgeted endlessly. Now, after years of training herself, she remained silent for the most part and tried very hard to remain outwardly calm.
    However, she wasn’t feeling excessively calm at the moment.
    Her poor sister had been relegated to a hurried funeral and burial surrounded only by her immediate family because of the way she died. Everyone had been afraid of smallpox. Fear of the contagion seemed to cling even to the dead.
    She’d stood there at Eudora’s grave, knowing that nothing would ever be the same. Nor had it been.
    At the moment, she could almost imagine herself dead as well.
    What if someone locked the compartment? Would this carriage prove to be her last resting place? Would she lie here forever, the spiders casting their webs around her decaying body?
    Mairi wouldn’t have been afraid. But then, Mairi probably wouldn’t have hidden in a compartment. She would have demanded that the owner of the carriage give her passage to Edinburgh. For that matter, she would have demanded the same of Macrath, her brother.
    Mairi was her idol.
    Mairi demanded the world give way. She didn’t remain silent in the face of opposition. She didn’t worry about how to silence Brianag and her mother. She simply accomplished it.
    Everything Mairi wanted, she achieved. She’d married a man who made Ellice’s heart flutter almost as much as Macrath. Logan was the epitome of all things manly and brave. As the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, he had cut a formidable figure. For Mairi, he’d resigned his position and become a private citizen again.
    Love could do that to a man.
    Of course, neither Mairi nor Logan would admit that’s why he’d done as he had. But it had been obvious at their wedding that the two were deeply in love, enough for each to sacrifice for the other.
    She sighed, wondering if she would ever feel that emotion. At least she’d been able to channel her feelings into her manuscript. If the hero looked a little too much like a compilation of Logan and Macrath, tall, broad-shouldered, with strong features and black hair, that was to be understood. She was surrounded by handsome Scottish men.
    The heroine didn’t look anything like her. No, that would have been too odd. The heroine was a brave and courageous woman of great beauty, who used her appearance to bend men to her will. She was an earthy seductress with auburn hair and penetrating green eyes that could see deeply into a man’s soul.
    When she smiled, men wanted to fall at her feet. When she kissed them, they sighed in delight. When a man touched her, Lady Pamela breathed words into his ear, taunting him to continue.
    She never worried about her virtue, her unmarried state, or her future. She lived life to the fullest, plucking from each day a memory to mark it as different from the others.
    A thump above her head brought Ellice back to her surroundings. The sound made her think someone had placed something on the seat above the compartment. Was it something heavy? Would it prevent her from opening the lid once they’d arrived in Edinburgh? Would she be trapped here forever?
    She squeezed her eyes