Free The Virgin of Clan Sinclair by Karen Ranney Page B

was not going to talk about Virginia. Instead, she started walking again, pacing, trying to ignore him.
    He made the shadowed room seem full somehow, as if he’d come with ghosts and they’d drifted off his shoulders to settle in the corners.
    “Why does Sinclair insist on hanging this here?”
    The question caught her off guard. She glanced at the painting he was studying, then smiled. The work had been done by an artist Macrath commissioned during the building of Drumvagen. The painter had captured the scaffolding, the wagons carrying the stone and wood to finish the interior of the house. The ocean was serene, the sky a brilliant blue, and the workmen and craftsmen looked like ants as they toiled in the bright afternoon sun.
    “Drumvagen is his dream,” she said. “Anyone who talks to him for more than a minute or two understands that.”
    She walked closer to the fireplace.
    “You were going to live here, though, weren’t you?”
    He glanced at her. “I doubt it would have ever come to pass,” he said.
    “Why did your father never finish the house?”
    Macrath had told them all about the earl who’d begun Drumvagen but walked away after a dispute with the architect.
    He smiled. “My father was a stubborn man in some respects and showed remarkable lassitude in others. Drumvagen was an impulse.”
    “Well, I shouldn’t say this, perhaps, but I’m glad. Otherwise, Macrath would never have found Drumvagen in ruins and made it what it was.”
    “A case of something good coming from folly. Could you not see your way clear to doing the same?”
    “Are you saying my book is folly?” She didn’t know whether to be insulted or pleased. He turned, faced her and folded his arms.
    “I warn you, Miss Traylor, that I wield a significant amount of influence.”
    “Am I supposed to be afraid of you?”
    “Change the hero’s appearance, then. Agree to publish the book anonymously.”
    Slowly, she shook her head.
    “Why the devil are you being so obstinate?” he asked.
    No one had ever called her obstinate before. She’d been considered conformable, easy to sway, a malleable personality.
    He took a step toward her. She didn’t move away. How very tall he was, and in this light almost dangerous looking. His eyes were such a glorious shade, merging with the encroaching shadows.
    “I can buy up every single copy and have them burned,” he said, his voice low. “Or I can simply give you the money not to publish it. Wouldn’t you prefer to have the funds?”
    She really must step back. He had the strangest effect on her. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, wrap her legs around his waist, entwine her arms around his neck and demand he kiss her.
    The scent of heather perfumed the air because Brianag insisted on filling vases with heather cut fresh every morning. Yet she still smelled him, a combination of leather and lemons.
    She took a step back and he matched her movements, stalking her.
    “I can give you a substantial sum,” he said, naming an amount that made her gape. “In exchange, you would give me the book. A fair trade, don’t you think?”
    Once, their family had been on the threshold of poverty. She wasn’t supposed to know it because her mother had made such an effort to hide the knowledge.
    The idea of having that much money at her disposal now was heady.
    She could live the rest of her life on the amount he’d mentioned. She could have her own establishment and live as she pleased. She could pen a dozen books featuring Lady Pamela and a man who looked nothing like the Earl of Gadsden, but her hero would speak like him, have that inflection in his voice when he was being sarcastic, that upturn of his lips that didn’t mean amusement as much as disdain. But he wouldn’t have gray eyes as hard and as brittle as shale.
    She looked away, toward a shadowed sideboard and the murky mirror above it. The gilt frame looked dull, their figures barely visible, dark gray against a backdrop of nearly