from nerves herself, mostly when Sir Compton spent time with his mistress in Inverness, had commented sourly on my lack of sensibility on more than one occasion.
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘And my cousin Ellen?’
Mr Sinclair smiled. ‘Miss Balfour is delightful,’ he said.
I felt an unexpected rush of jealousy and wished I had not asked.
The conversation waned. Mr Sinclair seemed disinclined to speak any further of my relatives, and I was sufficiently discouraged to think of my dour uncle and delicate aunt that I did not persist in my questioning. It did not sound as though a very warm welcome awaited me at Glen Clair, and I wondered once again why they had offered to take me in.
That night we stopped at the inn in Sheildaig, a building of whitewashed stone on the harbour. The bedchambers were clean and the linen fresh, if threadbare. I wanted to open the window, because the room felt stuffy and unaired, but when I pushed the creaking casement open the smell of gutted fish blew in and overwhelmed me. It takes a great deal to put me off my food—grief had certainly increased rather than diminished my appetite—but the rotten fish smell almost robbed me of any. I washed and went down to the parlour, where I took a little bread and cheese for supper and then retired for the evening. Mrs Campbell seemed relieved to see me go, for I think she was exhausted from a day’s travel on poor roads. Mr Sinclair got politely to his feet and came to the bottom of the stairs with me to light my candle, then wished me a goodnight.
A thunderstorm was brewing as I prepared for bed, the wind rising from the west battering the eaves and whistling through the cracks in the windowframe. When I was undressed to my shift and petticoats I did not immediately get into the bed, but sat on the window seat with my elbows on the sill. The stinking harbour was in darkness now, and the view was a deal more appealing than the smell had been. Half the sky was clouded over with the gathering storm, and the rain was sweeping in over the islands out to sea, but to the north the moon rode high on ragged clouds, attended by a scattering of stars and laying its silver path across the black waters. I stared, enchanted.
The noise from the taproom downstairs was growing now as the fishermen came in. I was tired from the jolting of the coach and my head ached. I took my tincture of lavender from my bag and rubbed my temples, breathing in the sweet, strong scent. Tomorrow a carriage would come to meet me and take me to Glen Clair and my father’s family. Mrs Campbell would return to Applecross on the drover’s cart. And Mr Sinclair…Well, from the conversation I had overheard between him and Mrs Campbell earlier, I understood that he was posted to a naval station some way up the coast at Lochinver, but since the signing of the Treaty of Amiens the previous month he had been granted some leave.
I wondered idly where he would be spending it, and with whom. Perhaps he would choose to spend the time with his family at Strathconan? Or perhaps he might go to Edinburgh to enjoy the entertainments of the city? Inexperienced as I was, I did not for a minute doubt that Neil Sinclair lacked for female companionship when he had the opportunity.
There was the scrape of a step in the inn doorway beneath my window. The lantern swung in the rising wind. A movement caught my eye and I looked down. Neil Sinclair himself was in the street directly below my window. He was looking up at me. And in that moment I realised what I must look like, with the candlelight from my chamber window no doubt turning the thin linen of my shift quite transparent and my unruly red hair loose about my face.
Neil Sinclair did not look away. He held my gaze for what seemed for ever, as the hot colour flamed to my face and my traitorous limbs turned to water. I could not move. Then he smiled, his teeth showing very white in his dark face, and raised a hand in deliberate greeting.
Suddenly freed from the captivity of his gaze, I stumbled back from the window and closed the shutters with such a sharp snap that I almost pulled them from their hinges. I realised I was shaking. Of all the foolish, immodest and downright dangerous things to do—leaning from my window like a wanton Juliet! I should have realised that someone might see me. I should have thought how abandoned I would look. But the trouble with me, as I already knew, was that I almost always acted first and thought later.
There was a knock at the door. Assuming that it was Mrs Campbell, come to help me with my laces, I went across and opened it.
Neil Sinclair stood there. I realised that he had come directly up to my chamber. Though I had been thinking of him only a moment before, I could not have been more shocked had it been Mrs Campbell herself running down the inn corridor in her shift.
Before I could prevent it, he stepped inside the room and closed the door.
I found my voice—and grabbed my gown to my chest to cover my near nakedness.
‘What do you think you are doing, sir? Leave this room at once!’
He smiled again, that lazy, intimate smile that had such a distressing effect on my equilibrium. I felt my legs tremble a little.
‘Do not be afraid, Miss Balfour,’ he said. ‘I merely wish to speak to you.’
‘This,’ I said, ‘is not the time nor the place to talk, sir. You are no gentleman to stand there staring at a lady in a state of undress!’
He gave me a comprehensively assessing glance that started on my heated face and ended with my bare feet, and he made no attempt whatsoever to disguise the fact that he was enjoying looking.
‘No gentleman, perhaps,’ he murmured, ‘but a man nonetheless.’
My hands clenched on my gown. I would have slapped his face to emphasise my point except that that would have necessitated dropping the garment and revealing even more of myself to his gaze. I was not exactly over-endowed with a bosom, but there was enough of it that I did not wish to expose it to him. Whilst I hesitated with this ridiculous dilemma of to slap or not to slap, he spoke again.
‘And I am beginning to think that you are no true lady, Miss Balfour.’
I froze, astounded. ‘I beg your pardon, Sir?’
‘No lady would see fit to undress and then lean from the window of a tavern in her shift, like the veriest wanton.’
I blushed hotly, the pink colour flooding not only my face but prickling the skin of my chest and shoulders as well. Having so pale a complexion can be such a curse.
‘That was a mistake!’ I said furiously. ‘I did not realise—’
His dark brows rose in quizzical amusement. ‘Indeed. You are wild, Miss Balfour, whether you realise it or not.’
We stared at one another, whilst the air between us seemed to sing and hum with something I did not understand. I was woefully inexperienced in the ways of men, but I could see desire darkening his eyes and I could feel an answering warmth in the pit of my stomach. I was shivering as though I had an ague, the goose pimples rising on my bare skin, but at the same time I felt hotter that I had ever felt before in my life. The fire hissed in the grate and the wind battered at the window, and I seemed sensitive to every sound and every sensation and most particularly to the turbulent heat in Neil Sinclair’s eyes.
‘You need not travel on to Glen Clair tomorrow,’ Neil said softly. ‘There is nothing for you there. Come with me to Edinburgh instead. You will have a house, with servants to attend you and fine clothes and jewellery. I would come to you often.’
I drew a deep breath. My heart was hammering. ‘Are you by any chance asking me to be your mistress, Mr Sinclair?’
