Mac saw Isabella’s back stiffen, but she gave no other indication she’d heard as she glided out of the station. Mac patted Mrs. McNab’s hand, thanked her for her advice, and strode after Isabella.
He wasn’t quick enough to get into the coach with her and Ian and Beth, so he rode in the second chaise with Hart. He didn’t see Isabella when they reached the house, but Kilmorgan Castle—not really a castle anymore but a sprawling monstrosity of a house—was so gigantic, she could be anywhere. He changed out of his soot-stained suit in his own wing of the house then knocked on the door to the chamber next to his. This room used to be Isabella’s, but he found the suite empty, the bed stripped, the grate cold.
“She’s staying in a chamber down the hall, milord,” Evans said, walking by with an armload of dress boxes. “Her ladyship’s instructions.”
Two weeks ago, Isabella’s decision to use a different room might have angered Mac; now it amused him. If she thought moving down the hall would thwart him, she was sorely mistaken.
He continued his search for her and at last found her on the top floor in his studio. She stood with her back to him, studying three canvases propped against the far wall. Mac could see them quite clearly, the three paintings of Isabella that Mac had done in secret before his studio burned down.
“Bloody hell.”
Isabella heard Mac’s low exclamation but didn’t turn. She couldn’t turn from the three images of herself that glowed like goddesses from the canvas.
One painting showed her face, neck, and hint of bosom, her hair piled high and laced with yellow roses, as it had been the night of Lord Abercrombie’s ball. Another showed her sitting on the floor, bare with her legs stretched out, her hair obscuring her face. The third had her asleep, head on her arm, red hair curling over her naked body.
“I never sat for these,” Isabella said without turning around.
“No.” Mac closed the door. “I painted from memory.”
The pictures were done in muted hues highlighted by Mac’s characteristic touches of reds and yellows. The women in these paintings lived and breathed, were real. They were her.
“When?” she asked.
“In London, before my house burned.”
“Three paintings in a week?”
“I was inspired.” Mac’s voice was tight. “And they’re not really finished.”
She finally turned to look at him. Mac remained by the closed door, his hands stuffed into his pockets. Gone was the charming, smiling man who’d determinedly chased her these last few weeks. Here was the somber Mac she’d seen since their separation, the one who’d abandoned drink and his arty set, who’d holed himself up at Kilmorgan or his London house and stayed put.
“These aren’t for that wager you made, are they?” she asked. “The one about the erotic paintings?”
He looked outraged. “Good God, no. Do you think I’d allow blackguards like Dunstan and Manning to cast their lust-filled gazes upon my wife? If you think that, you don’t know me at all, Isabella.”
She hadn’t really thought that, but Mac had changed so much in the last three years, she could be certain of nothing. “Did I ever really know you?”
“I thought you did. Once.” Mac moved to the paintings. “I’ll destroy them.”
Isabella stepped protectively in front of them. “You will not. These are beautiful.”
His brows shot up. “You are happy that your estranged husband painted pictures of your naked body? Perhaps to gaze at what he couldn’t have?”
“Is that why you painted them?”
Mac scrubbed his hand through his hair. “No. Or yes. I don’t know. I had to paint them. They clawed their way out of me. But they’re not important now. I’ll have Bellamy burn them.”
“No.”
“Sweetheart, they’re the idle indulgences of a frenzied mind. Or do you mean you’d rather rip them apart yourself? I have a knife about somewhere.”
“You will not destroy them, because they’re the best things you’ve ever painted.”
Mac ran his hand through his hair again. “I agree, they’re not bad.”
“Not bad? Mac, they’re genius. They’re the same kind of picture you did the day after I married you. When you first showed me your studio, I was awestruck. Miss Pringle taught us all about great art, and I saw that yours was too.”
Mac made a derisive noise. “These are hardly Rubens or Rembrandt, my dear.”
“No, more like Degas and Manet, like Mr. Crane said.”
“Crane would flatter an ant that tracked paint across a canvas if he could obtain a commission on the sale. Besides, you name highly scandalous and despised men. Respectable society shares your opinion that I’m in the same class as they.”
“Will you take this seriously? These are lovely paintings, and I won’t let you burn them or cut them up or anything else. In fact, if I have to buy them from you to protect them, I will.”
“You know I never sell my paintings. Have them if you like them so much.”
Isabella chewed her lip. Mac always brushed off compliments to his talent with carelessness, or so she had thought until she’d realized that it simply didn’t matter to him what other people thought. Mac loved painting for its own sake and had no interest in what the world said about what he produced. That was why he gave the canvases away and didn’t fight for the approval of the Royal Academy. Mac had no self-pride about his genius. It was simply a part of him, the same way his eyes were the color of copper and his voice retained a slight Scots accent.
“You truly don’t care what becomes of them?” Isabella asked.
Mac’s gaze went to the paintings with a kind of hunger. “Of course I don’t care.”
“That is a lie, pure and plain.”
“What do you wish me to say? That yes, these are the best things I’ve ever done, that they come from part of my soul that craves what it can’t have? That they scream what I see when I look at you?”
Isabella’s face heated. “I only meant you should admit that they are good.”
“They are bloody wonderful. They’re the only things I’ve been able to paint in years.”
Isabella stared. “In years? What are you talking about?”
Mac turned away, rubbing his head again as though it ached. “Why do you think I’ve not fussed about this chap who’s forging my work?—not until he burned my bloody house down, anyway. I wasn’t joking when I said he painted better than I did. You saw that travesty I was doing of Molly. I haven’t been able to paint anything since I stopped floating through life on malt whiskey. Everything I attempted after I sobered up was horrible. I conclude that my talent lay in drink, and without it, my ability is nothing.”
“Not true—”
“Of course it’s true. The last things I painted were Venetian canals until the sight of a gondola made me physically ill. I threw the last painting and my remaining bottles of Mackenzie malt into the Grand Canal the same night. Never tell Hart about the whiskey, by the way—he’d kill me. I headed back to England after that and found that I couldn’t paint a stroke. Mind you, in the first months of temperance, my hands were too shaky to let me hold the brush, let alone button my own shirt.”
Isabella had a sudden and vivid image of Mac alone in his studio at the top of the Mount Street house, angrily hurling canvases across the room when the paint would no longer form into beautiful pictures. The realization must have broken his heart.
“You never told me,” she said.
Mac laughed. “Told you what? That I was a wreck of a man whose dust you should have shaken from your boots long ago? Even when I grew used to being sober, I couldn’t paint a shadow that wasn’t muddy, a line that wasn’t wrong.” He blew out his breath. “Then I did these.”
And they were genius. When Isabella had first entered the room, the paintings had been hidden inside the large wrapped bundle she’d seen Bellamy lug into her London house after Mac’s fire. She hadn’t paid attention, but today when they’d arrived at
Kilmorgan, she’d gotten curious as to what Mac had been working on. She’d found Bellamy up here unpacking things and had urged the man to unwrap the paintings.
Bellamy must not have known what the pictures were, because when they came out, he turned red, mumbled something, and hastened out the door.
At first Isabella had been angry. What business had Mac to paint her without telling her? It was as though he’d peeped through a keyhole and drawn what he’d seen.
Then it had struck her how extraordinary they were. Mac’s talent shone in every brushstroke, every color. The Royal Academy had never admitted Mac’s work, claiming that his paintings were base and scandalous, but the Royal Academy could go hang as far as Isabella was concerned.
“Is that why you said you’d forfeit that wager?” Isabella asked. “Not because you couldn’t paint an erotic picture, but because you couldn’t paint at all?”
“You saw.” Mac met her gaze squarely. “I’d rather forfeit and let them laugh at me than reveal what has happened to my talent.”
“You won’t forfeit,” Isabella said. “You’ll win that bloody wager. If all you can paint is me, then you’ll paint me.”
Mac’s neck reddened with sudden anger. “The hell I will. I told you, I will not let my so-called friends look at paintings of you. These weren’t meant for anyone’s eyes but mine.”
“You can paint a body without putting in my face, can’t you? You can change the color of my hair. Or hire Molly when you go down to London again and paint her head in for mine. I don’t care.”
“Paint to order? Choose limbs and heads to suit the viewer? God save us.”
“For heaven’s sake, Mac, these aren’t for a Paris exhibition. They’re to win you a wager with a few obnoxious men at your club. Show them the pictures and then rip them up if you like. I’ll not have you ridiculed by soft-handed lordlings who have nothing to do all day but think of ways to mock others.”
Mac’s smile returned, with a flash of his old wickedness. “My, you are protective of your wreck of a husband.”
“If I can help you shut Dunstan’s and Randolph Manning’s jeering mouths, I will.”
“I promise you, I care nothing for what those fellows think of me.”
“I know you don’t, but I hate the thought of them laughing at you, saying you’re soft and weak and . . . and . . . impotent.”
Mac burst out laughing. Still laughing, he laid his arms loosely on her shoulders. “If you want to persuade me to paint erotic pictures of you, my love, I certainly will not argue with you. I’d be mad to argue. But you leave it up to me whether I want to win the blasted wager.”
When he looked like this, like the old Mac, charming and smiling and daring her, Isabella wanted to weave her entire life around him and never mind anything else. The knowledge that marriage with Mac hadn’t ever been easy faded to nothing in the face of his smile. She’d loved him then, and she loved him now. She had never stopped. But choices—choices were hell.
“Very well,” she said. She knew her tone was too capitulating, because Mac’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “It’s your wager. Do as you like.” She slid out from under his touch as a brassy sound floated up the corridor outside. “Goodness, is that the gong for supper? I haven’t even changed my frock.”
Mac stepped between her and the door as she tried to leave. His eyes sparkled dangerously. “I’ll keep you to your word, my wife. We meet here, tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Will that be too early? Will her ladyship have had ample time to rise and have breakfast?”
“Nine o’clock. I’ll be finished with my morning ride by then.”
“Nine it is.” Mac cocked a brow. “Don’t bother to dress.”
Isabella flushed, but she kept her voice cool. “I’ll wear my thickest dressing gown. I know you always forget to feed the fire when you’re working.”
Mac’s gaze moved down her throat to her bosom, as though he could see through her gown to what he would paint tomorrow. “As you wish. Until then, my lady.”
“Until supper, you mean. Unless you intend to hide in your room and not join us at table.”
Mac grinned again. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Isabella gave him a quelling look as she swept by, but his dark gaze had her heart racing. No man could look at a woman like Mac could. He made her feel desired, coveted, wanted. He looked at her as though he imagined her naked and hot on the floor underneath his equally naked and equally hot body. He was a wicked man, and he wanted to do wicked things to her.
Mac laughed behind her, as he always did when she walked away in high dudgeon, because he knew quite well that Isabella wanted to do equally wicked things back to him.
Chapter 12
The coolness between our Lord and Lady in Mount Street has apparently thawed, like welcome spring after a harsh winter. The Lord announced to all and sundry that a small Mackenzie was due to make his debut at the start of the next Season.
—May 1877
Mac prepared his canvas and the setting well in advance, wanting to be ready when Isabella arrived so she wouldn’t have time to change her mind.
If she came at all. Isabella hadn’t spoken directly to him at supper, though she hadn’t bathed him in the frosty silences she’d given him in Doncaster. She chattered with Beth, exchanged opinions with Hart, pulled Ian into the conversation.
Mac had watched Ian, marveling at the change in him. His soul-wounded younger brother, who could withdraw into himself until no one could reach him, had been talkative—for Ian—a smile touching his mouth whenever he looked across the table at his wife.
True, Ian still had trouble meeting anyone’s gaze but Beth’s; true he hung on Beth’s words, watching her lips as though he liked the shape of them. But he followed the threads of conversation with the rest of them better than he had before. No withdrawing, no “muddles,” as he called them, no sudden tantrums. He gazed at Beth in undisguised love, Ian who’d always had trouble expressing his emotions. Beth had rescued his little brother, and Mac would always be grateful to her for that.
Ian caught Mac watching him as they ate and threw him a triumphant glance. Bloody cheek. After his brothers had struggled to reach Ian for years, two beautiful women had opened the world to him—Isabella with the love of a sister; Beth with the love of a wife. And damn it, wasn’t Ian smug about that?
Mac retired to his studio after supper and started preparing for the next morning. He snatched a few hours of sleep on the divan he’d set up there, then rose and dressed in his painting kilt, boots, and kerchief to protect his hair long before Isabella was due to enter.
When, at precisely nine o’clock, Isabella did open the door without knocking, Mac was bent over his worktable mixing paints. He didn’t look ’round as she closed the door. Something silken rustled, and his hands started to shake.
“Good heavens, it’s actually warm in here,” Isabella said in wonder. “I wore my warmest dressing gown, but it seems you stoked the fire.”
Mac kept his gaze resolutely on the paint he mixed. “Bellamy did. Can’t have her ladyship catching her death, can we? Lock the door, love, unless you want members of my family blundering in to catch you in your altogether.”
The lock clicked, and Isabella’s dressing gown whispered as she crossed the room. “Am I to sit here?”
Mac busied himself mixing the exact shade of yellow that had made him famous. “Mmm hmm.”
“I’ll just make myself comfortable until you’re ready, then.”
Mac worked his palette knife through the paint in hard strokes. He dribbled in some green—far too much. Damn. He threw the batch into a scrap bucket and started again.
“My ride this morning was quite fine, thank you,” Isabella said, the blasted dressing gown rustling some more. “Such brisk weather. Refreshing.”
A touch more cadmium yellow and it would be perfect. “Mmm hmm.”
“Hart rode with me. We had a long conversation. He asked me if I thought it a good idea if he married a
gain.”
Mac’s muscles worked as he kneaded the large glob of paint to just the right consistency. Anyone who claimed painting wasn’t hard work was a bloody fool.
Isabella went on. “We also saw a few pigs flying. Which likely explains what I’m doing up here with you in nothing but a dressing gown.”
Mac finally turned.
Isabella was sitting on the edge of the chaise like a debutante at her first tea party. She had her feet primly on the floor, her hands in her lap. Her red hair was pulled into a simple knot, a few tendrils escaping it. The dressing gown was voluminous, but the silk clung to her bare body, and a curve of breast peeked coyly from the opening.
Oh, God.
Mac had set the backless chaise in front of a crimson brocade curtain. One end of the chaise was raised so a lady could recline, half-sitting, half-lying. Mac had piled it with white silk draperies and cushions of brilliant gold. A bowl of bright yellow roses stood on the table next to it. Some of the rose petals had already drooped and fallen.
He drew a sharp breath and made himself turn away. “Lie down and pull the white cloths over your middle. I’ll begin in a minute.”
He’d barked similar instructions at many a model, feeling nothing as they slid out of their garments and draped themselves over whatever piece of furniture he’d provided. To Mac models were things of light and shadow, lines and colors. The best ones could breathe life into those lines and colors—without talking, wriggling, whining, or trying to flirt with him.
He moved to his easel with his charcoal pencil, keeping his gaze on the canvas. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Isabella calmly undo the fastenings that held her gown closed. His heartbeat rocketed.
You’ve painted her before. This is a picture, nothing more.
“Like this?”
He had to look—how was he supposed to paint her without looking at her?
Mac looked. And stifled a groan.
Isabella lay propped on one elbow, her body half-turned toward him, the white sheet trickling across her abdomen. Her creamy breasts were tipped with dusky red, and coppery orange prickled from between her thighs. When they’d first married, Isabella had been eighteen, and her breasts had been high and round, firm little peaches. Six and a half years later, her breasts hung a little lower and her hips were rounder—womanly curves replacing the straight lines of the girl. She was so beautiful he wanted to weep.