Chapter 2

Chapter 2

London

A year earlier

When they'd arrived in London, Virginia had no idea she'd be heartily tired of the city within the month.

Tonight's ball was the third in two weeks, and the tenth engagement. Through it all, she saw the same people in different attire. The muscles of her face ached from smiling. Her feet hurt from walking on hardwood floors in her thin kid slippers.

She wanted to put her feet up, first, and second, she couldn't wait to read the broadsides her American maid had smuggled to her. Her father had come to her room, interrupting them, so she'd folded them quickly and stuffed them into her reticule, and all night she'd been dying to see what the talk of London was now.

She slipped away, retreating to their host's library. Settling into the corner of the settee and tucking her feet beneath her, she retrieved the broadside and smoothed it with her fingers.

On Monday an inquest was held at the National School, before Mr. Worley, coroner, to inquire into the cause of the death of Thomas Newbury, a boy who was found dead with his throat cut in a pea-field, near Haversham.

A sad, a cruel dreadful deed,

To you I will unfold, The murder of a little boy,

As base as e'er was told;

Murdered by a cruel man,

At Haversham we hear,

Near the town of Newport Pagnell,

In the county of Buckinghamshire.

"There's a better light over here," a masculine voice said.

Startled, she dropped the paper, then bent to pick it up, pressing it against her chest.

"I do apologize," she said. "I thought the room was empty."

She glanced toward the two massive leather chairs arranged in front of the fireplace. The speaker wasn't visible.

"As you can see, it's not," he said.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your ..." Her words trailed off.

"Reverie? Contemplation? Solitude?"

"Yes, all that," she said. "Your musing. Your considerations. Perhaps even your meditations."

He peered around the side of the chair, his smile surprising her. Or was it his intent blue eyes she saw first?

Her father always said she looked half finished. God had certainly taken the hue from her pale blue eyes and given it to this man. His eyes were such a startling blue she noted them from across the room.

The color reminded her of midnight over the Hudson, when the sky seemed like a curtain behind which a celestial lantern hid, revealing the night to be not black at all, but a deep and rich blue.

"My escape, most like," he said. "Are you doing the same?"

"I'm afraid I'm doing worse than that," she said.

An eyebrow lifted. "Are you absconding with something belonging to our hostess?"

"Of course not."

She debated whether to confess. To her father, a broadside was coarse and common. No one in proper company ever confessed to reading them. Nor was she to associate with people who did so.

"I was reading a broadside," she said. "About a horrible murder."

"Were you?" He didn't frown in dismay at her. Nor did he suddenly seem coolly aloof. He merely relaxed there, a handsome stranger who had evinced more curiosity about her than anyone had since arriving in England.

She stood, walked to the two chairs, and without invitation sat in the one beside him. What a handsome man he was. His mouth and eyes seemed paired in humor. His face was lean, the planes of it sharpened rather than shaped. Nothing about him was soft or genial, but she wanted to smile at him as she stared.

While she couldn't tell since he was seated, he seemed to be tall. His shoulders were broad enough, taking up the width of the chair. His legs were stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. If there had been a roaring fire in the fireplace, she could understand why he'd escaped the entertainment. Since the evening was a temperate one, he must have retreated here for privacy.

She wanted to apologize for intruding. Instead, she handed him the broadside.

"It's about a murder of a young boy."

"Are you given to studying murder?"

She sighed. "I'm not very brave," she confessed. "I don't think I could bear an actual murder. But I do like reading about things that would terrify me otherwise. Besides, I'm very interested in what's going on around me. How can anyone not want to know what's happening in the world?"

"I thank providence for people like you."

"Do you?" she asked, surprised. "Why?"

"I own a company in Scotland that prints broadsides."

She sat back, clasping her hands together on her lap. "Are you jesting? Or making fun of me? I realize a great many people don't think highly of broadsides, but why would you say such a thing?"

He handed back the paper, smiling at her. "I wouldn't think of making fun of you," he said. "What man in his right mind would ridicule a beautiful woman?"

Now she truly knew he was jesting. No one ever called her beautiful. Smart, perhaps, when she was dressed in the fashions her father had ordered. Perhaps even handsome when her hair was done correctly and she stood straight and tall, as her governess always instructed. But she'd never been called beautiful. Not even once, by the kindest person.

Her cheeks warmed and she was instantly filled with two conflicting wishes. She wanted to flee as quickly as she could. Yet she wanted to stay and talk with him at the same time.

"It's called the Sinclair Printing Company," he said. "We operate in Edinburgh. Have you ever been there?"

"This visit to England is my first outside New York," she said. "I'm from America."

"I discerned that," he said with a smile. "From your accent. It sounds almost English, but it's not."

"You are not the first person to say that," she said, looking down at her reticule. "My nurse was English and maybe I speak the way I do because of her. But everyone else has an accent, too. Such as yours. I could tell you were from Scotland."

He leaned his head back against the chair, his hands resting on the arms, the pose of a man at ease.

She didn't feel the least relaxed.

For the first time since she'd come to England, she was speaking with a truly handsome man. Even better, he was talking to her, and they were conversing about something more important than the weather.

"Do you print newspapers as well?"

"We do. Well, I don't. I don't run the company anymore. I'm involved in something else."

His name was Macrath Sinclair and he was in London, he told her, to escort his sister.

For the next hour they talked of politics and broadsides, books and plays. Each thought London overwhelming at times, with traffic an endless obstacle. Each thought Londoners unbearably arrogant, topped only by the French, who were arrogant and smelled bad. Neither had an affinity for English food, or the melodramas of the day, preferring to read instead. His humor was dry yet he was polite enough to laugh at her few jests. They talked of everything, some subjects not considered proper in mixed company. She was, however, as she'd told him, fascinated with history and, too, intrigued by English politics.

"I'm an American," she said, "and supposed to mind my manners. I'm not to be too inquisitive."

"Have you always minded your manners?"

She smiled. "I have, yes."

"That's right. You're not very brave. Are you really so cowardly?"

She sighed again." I hate heights," she said, "and spiders."

He merely smiled at her, so charmingly that she found herself breathless.

With great regret, she left him finally, glancing back as she made her farewells, thinking that the miserable voyage to England had been worth it if only for this night.