The Devil of Clan Sinclair (CLAN SINCLAIR #1) by Karen Ranney EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Karen Ranney
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
London, England
July, 1869
The ferns near the window wiggled their fronds as if they wanted to escape
the room.
Virginia Anderson Traylor, Countess of Barrett, wiggled on the chair and
wanted to do the same.
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She sat in the corner of the parlor, swathed in black. Her hands were
folded on her lap, her knees pressed together, her head at the perfect angle.
How many times had she thought about this scene? In the last year, at
least a dozen or more, but in her imagination she’d always been surrounded
by weeping women rather than sitting a solitary vigil.
She stood, unable to remain still any longer. She’d been a good and
proper widow for nine hours now. For the last four, she’d watched over her
husband’s coffin alone.
Her thoughts, however, had not been on her husband.
A dog howled, no doubt the same dog that howled for three nights
straight. Ellice, her sister-in-law, thought he’d announced Poor Lawrence’s
death.
The parlor where she sat stretched the length of the town house. Two
fireplaces warmed it in winter, but now it was pleasantly temperate. The
room had been refurbished with the infusion of money she’d brought to the
marriage. The wallpaper was a deep crimson, topped by an ivory frieze of
leaves and ferns. Four overstuffed chairs, upholstered in a similar crimson
pattern as the wallpaper, squatted next to a tufted settee. A half-dozen
marble-topped tables, each adorned with a tapestry runner, filled the rest of
the available space, their sharp corners patiently waiting to snare a passing
skirt.
No doubt Enid meant for the room to be the perfect showplace in the
Earl of Barrett’s home. What her mother-in-law had accomplished,
however, was a parlor reeking with excess. Even the potpourri was
overpowering, smelling so strongly of cloves that her nose itched and her
eyes watered.
The coffin was crafted of polished mahogany, wider at the shoulders and
narrow at the feet, with three brass handles on each side. A round brass
plaque over where Poor Lawrence’s heart would be was engraved OUR
BELOVED.
Not her beloved, and he hadn’t shown much love toward his family. The
hyperbole, however, was expected of them. So, too, all the mourning rituals
that would be carried out in the next year.
Perhaps Lawrence had arranged for his own coffin and the plaque was a
last thumb in the eye to his wife, mother, and sisters.
For her sitting, she’d insisted the top of the coffin be lowered. The other
members of the family would probably want to view Poor Lawrence once
more.
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