Free The Witch Of Clan Sinclair by Karen Ranney Page B

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.
    L ogan’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