“I know. I know. I was an idiot. But damn it, I’m trying to make it right, now. I’m willing to try, but you are determined not to let me.”
“Because I am tired of being a fool about you. Look at us—I give you an inch, and you jump a mile. I go to you for comfort, and you decide we are reconciled and send for our solicitor.”
Mac’s chest burned. “Comfort? Is that what last night was?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you like. You have a lofty opinion of yourself.”
“A lofty opinion, is it?” As happened when he got angry enough, Mac’s Scots accent banished years of English veneer. “I believe you were the one cryin’ out in climax four or five times last night. I remember. I was quite close to ye at the time.”
“One’s bodily reactions are not always under one’s control. That is a medical fact.”
“I did no’ couple with ‘one.’ I was with you, Isabella.”
Isabella’s face flamed. “You know you were taking advantage of my loneliness. I should have kept my door locked.”
Mac hauled himself across the landau into the seat next to her. She didn’t cringe away; Isabella would never show fear, especially not to him. “If ye say ye came to me for comfort, then you were taking advantage of me. I’m not blameless in this.”
“You’ve been following me about. You admitted it. Somehow you finagled yourself into my house and back into my life. I think I should have a say in that.”
“If ye think it through, ye live in my house. ’Tis my money that pays for the house and servants and pretty frocks. Because ye are still my wife.”
Isabella rounded on him. “Do you think I am not aware of that every day of my life? Do you know how weak it makes me feel that I live entirely on your charity? I could beg Miss Pringle to give me a job teaching younger students, but I have no experience, and I’d be living on her charity. So my pride remains in tatters while you pay all my bills.”
“Bloody hell.” Mac cast a glance out the window, but he found no help in the clogged traffic of Oxford Street. “I don’t give ye charity. Paying for your living is the least I can do for anyone fool enough to marry me.”
“Ah, so now I am foolish as well as weak.”
“You enjoy putting words in my mouth, do ye? Your method of arguing is to decide what I say as well as what you say. I might as well go fishing while you finish. Send me word when the argument is over.”
“And you try to win by shouting about everything but what it is you’ve done to make me angry in the first place! You decided to revoke our separation without bothering to tell me. Remember?”
Mac couldn’t deny the charge. He had hoped to put the revocation through so fast she wouldn’t have time to object. No, to be honest, he’d hoped Isabella would give him a big, warm smile and tell him she was glad he’d done it. She would be happy that they were truly together again.
Too fast. He’d rushed in before she was ready.
“Can you blame me for wanting this to be real?” The Scots started to fade as Mac tried to rein in his temper. “Haven’t we had enough time apart, Isabella?”
“I don’t know.”
She was so elegantly beautiful sitting there next to him, her red hair in perfect curls, her jacket hugging her lovely torso. How could any man not want her?
Mac could have divorced her for abandoning him, but he’d decided, even before Gordon advised him, that he’d be damned if he would give the world more food for vicious gossip. Divorce would have made Isabella a ruined woman, vulnerable to any unscrupulous man. And Mac would die before he let any man touch his Isabella. As much as she’d hurt him, Mac was happy to set up Isabella in her own house to live an independent life. He’d protect her from afar, watch over her as well as he could. He loved her enough to do that.
“I think we’ve spent plenty of time apart,” he said.
“But how do I know our time together now won’t be the same as it was before?” she asked, anguished. “With you coming and going without a word, you deciding when we’ll be together and when I need a rest from you? You don’t get to decide everything, Mac.”
Mac spread his arms. “Look at me. I’m different now. Never drunk. Home for dinner, in my place for breakfast. No carousing with my friends. I am the model husband.”
“Good heavens, Mac. You aren’t a model anything.”
“I want to be the man you want me to be: sober, dependable, reliable . . . God, all those boring adjectives.”
“You think that is what I want?” Isabella asked. “I fell in love with the charming, unpredictable Mac all those years ago. If I wanted dependable and dull, I would have banished you and pursued the men my father had chosen for me.”
“You are insanely difficult to please. You don’t want the wild Mac, but you don’t want the stay-at-home Mac, either? Is that what you are saying?”
“I want you to stop trying to be what you’re not. I predict you’ll become bored with your new role in a few months’ time. You alternately obsess over something and then grow tired of it and forget all about it. Including me.”
Mac regarded her in silence for a long moment. She colored under his gaze, but his anger had receded to hollow-ness. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “You are a fool, Isabella Mackenzie.”
“What?” She looked hurt.
“You have decided what kind of man I am, which makes it damned difficult to talk to you. You don’t believe I can change, but I already have. You simply won’t see it.”
“I know you stopped drinking. I’ve noticed that improvement.”
Mac laughed. “Stopped drinking? You make it sound so effortless. I was sick and disgusting for an entire year. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been using whiskey to blunt the pain of my own existence. I found myself facedown on a hotel room floor in Venice, hurting like hell, praying for the strength to not go in search of wine to ease the agony. I’d never truly prayed before. I was taken to chapel as a boy to mouth prayers, but this time I prayed. It was more like begging, actually. Quite an unusual experience for me.”
Isabella listened, her lips parted. “Mac.”
“I could tell you tales to make you blanch, my love, but I will spare you. The begging and praying didn’t last one night. I did it for many, many nights, never ceasing. And then, just when I thought it was over, and I felt better, another night would come. My friends thought they’d ‘help’ me from time to time by holding me down and pouring whiskey down my throat. They ceased when I discovered the trick of spewing it back, all over their fine clothes. Eventually, my friends deserted me. Every last man of them.”
Isabella’s face was white. “They had no right to do that.”
Mac shrugged. “They were wastrels and sycophants. Not a true friend among them. There is nothing like hardship to teach you who truly cares for you.”
“Did you have no one at all? Oh, Mac.”
“I did. I had Bellamy. He made sure I ate food and kept it down; he was the one who realized I could drink tea by the bucketful when water merely made me sick. I became quite the tea connoisseur, even beyond the haughty English who believe their knowledge of tea unsurpassed. An Assam tea brewed with jasmine is quite fine. You ought to try it.”
Isabella’s eyes were wet. “I’m glad Bellamy took care of you. I will tell him how grateful I am. He deserves a gift. What would he like, do you think?”
“I already gave him a large rise in wages,” Mac said. “And I lavish constant praise on him. I worship Bellamy as a god, which, I assure you, embarrasses the hell out of him.”
Isabella looked away. She was a regal, proud woman, and his wanting of her consumed every waking moment of his life. Staying away from her had been absolute hell, but when she’d left him, Mac had made himself let her, because she was right. If he’d gone back to her before withdrawal from drink had forcibly reformed him, he would have continued the pattern until he’d driven her so far away he could never have reache
d her again. Because he’d given her time to heal, he could now sit so close to her and drink in her scent.
Isabella looked out of the window for a long time, and when she finally turned to him, the rigid anger had faded from her eyes. “Whatever happened to your friend?” she asked. “The one you told me about at Lord Abercrombie’s ball.”
Mac went blank. “Friend?”
“The one who needs lessons in courting.”
“Oh, that friend.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, he is still anxious to learn courting techniques.”
“We began practicing them once before. Perhaps we should start over again?”
“Is that what you wish to do?” Mac asked. “Start over?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
Mac studied her in breathless silence. She looked back at him, her glittering green eyes so beautiful.
“In that case,” he said in a light voice, “we should forget all about what happened last night in your bedchamber. That was far too scandalous for a courting couple.”
She smiled a little. “Indeed. Quite improper. You must not mention last night to him.”
“I never breathe a word about what goes on in my bedroom to my friends. It is none of their bloody business.” Mac lifted her gloved hand, pressed a light kiss to it, and moved himself back to the opposite seat. “A gentleman should never occupy the same seat as the lady in a conveyance. He should sit with his back to the coachman, giving her the forward-facing seat.”
Isabella laughed. Damn, it was good to hear her laugh. “It will be amusing to watch you trying to be highly proper,” she said.
Mac pinned her with a look, no more teasing, no more cajoling. “If that is what it takes, I will do it. I want to win you back, Isabella. No matter if it takes me one year or twenty, I’m a patient man. I will win your heart again, I swear it. Even if I have to be so highly proper my ancestors turn in their graves to see me change myself for a Sassenach.”
Isabella smiled, but the look on her face told him she hadn’t given in. But her quiet acceptance of his presence for the rest of the ride and her errands that followed made him know that she’d give him a chance. She wanted him to try, and she wanted him to succeed. That, at least, gave him heart.
The next morning, a bouquet of hothouse flowers arrived with a note for Isabella. Isabella touched the blossoms, noting that the bouquet was small and tasteful—yellow roses, violets, and baby’s breath. No orchids or other exotics. The card was edged with gold and read, in Mac’s handwriting: I am most grateful, my lady, for the privilege of driving with you yesterday afternoon. Might you give me leave to walk in the park with you today, if the weather holds fine? I will call on you at three o’clock if that is convenient.
Your most obedient servant,
Roland F. Mackenzie
Isabella smiled to herself. Mac was certainly playing the proper gentleman, especially using his real name. He hated being addressed as Roland Ferdinand Mackenzie, or Lord Roland, preferring the nickname that had been pinned to him at the age of two, when he couldn’t pronounce any syllable of his long name but “Mac.”
“A gentleman sending you flowers?” Mac asked in a mock gruff voice behind his breakfast newspaper. “Is he a proper sort of gentleman?”
“I believe so.” Isabella sat down at her place, fingering the card, which she’d slipped into her pocket. “He has invited me to go walking with him this afternoon.”
Mac folded down one corner of the paper, giving her a stern look. “And what have you decided?”
“I will accept. Going for a walk in a public place will be most proper. And agreeable.”
“Be careful of his intentions. I’ve heard of this Lord Roland’s bad reputation.”
“I believe he’s reformed,” Isabella said. “So he tells me.”
Mac tsk-tsked. “Be on your guard, my dear. Be on your guard. I believe he paints women—with their clothes off.”
“Don’t overplay it, Mac.”
Mac grinned and raised the paper again. His smile could make a lady’s good intentions fly out the window. Mac had slept in his own room last night, and Isabella had lain awake for a long while trying to banish her disappointment.
At three o’clock that afternoon, the doorbell rang, and Morton glided up from the back stairs to open it. Mac, dressed in a fine afternoon walking suit, complete with hat and walking stick, stood on the threshold. “I have come to call upon the lady of the house,” he announced in grave tones.
Isabella stifled a laugh as she peered down from the landing. Morton disliked games, and Mac had to more or less insist before Morton would show him into the drawing room.
Morton came out again and looked up at her, aggrieved. “My lady . . .”
“Thank you, Morton.” Isabella gathered her skirts and glided down the stairs. “Indulge his lordship. He likes his bit of fun.”
“Yes, my lady,” Morton said mournfully and disappeared to the back of the house.
When Isabella entered the drawing room, Mac stood up, hat in hand. “My lady. I hope you are well.”
“Indeed. I am in good health and spirits.”
“I am pleased to hear it. Would you indulge me with your company in the park?”
“Why certainly, my lord. And thank you for the flowers. You were most kind.”
Mac waved his hand dismissively. “It was nothing. I heard you liked yellow roses. I hope they suited.”
“They suited me very well.” Isabella heard Aimee’s little voice in the hall, and she added, “Do you mind? Nanny Westlock says that Aimee needs to take some air, and I thought they could join us.”
A startled look flashed through Mac’s copper-colored eyes, but he covered it with another cool bow.
“Chaperoned by a nanny and a baby,” he muttered. “Ah, well.”
The weather was so fine that Hyde Park teemed with people. Mac dropped the pretense of being the proper suitor, tilted back his hat, and insisted on pushing the pram. Isabella strolled beside him, enjoying the sight of her broad-shouldered, kilted husband pushing a baby carriage. Miss Westlock dropped behind, a nanny indulging the master and mistress.
The Rotten Row flowed with horses and carriages, and the other paths carried families, walking couples, and nannies with children. Aimee sat up in her pram, holding onto the sides and looking about with interest. She was a robust child—hearty, Miss Westlock called her—and enjoyed peering at the world.
What Aimee felt about losing her mother, Isabella couldn’t fathom. Perhaps the child was too young to understand what had happened, but all in all, she seemed to accept with her change in fortune. She was happy to bestow loving kisses on both Mac and Isabella, and though she made it clear that she preferred Mac, she was now content to be left alone with either Isabella or Nanny Westlock.
Isabella wondered whether Payne, her true father, would attempt to wrest Aimee back from them. Isabella didn’t understand whatever strings Mr. Gordon had pulled to make the adoption legal, but he’d assured them that all would be well. Isabella still worried, though. Aimee did not need to be taken by a lunatic who set fires to houses and stalked women in parks.
“Mac, old thing!” A man’s voice rang out and Isabella looked up to see four gentlemen bearing down on them.
She stifled a sigh. They were Mac’s friends from Harrow and Cambridge, the boys who had worshipped Mac as their leader-in-crime during their school days. They were grown men now, but they’d collectively remained the wild tears who’d done anything to gain Mac’s approval.
The one who walked in front, a short, rather slender young man with blond hair, had become Marquis of Dunstan at age twenty-two. His Christian name was Cadwallader, and they called him Cauliflower or Cauli for short. The others were Lord Charles Summerville, the Honorable Bertram Clark, and Lord Randolph Manning. None of these gentlemen had passed Isabella’s father’s rigorous screening as possible suitors for her, and it had been these four gentleman who’d originally wagered that Mac would never “crash” Lord S
cranton’s ball and dance with his virginal daughter.
“Do my eyes deceive me?” Lord Charles Summerville screwed a monocle into his left eye and peered through it. “Good Lord, it is Mac Mackenzie walking a baby. From where did you steal the damned thing? Paying off a wager, are you?”
“This is my daughter,” Mac said coolly. “Miss Aimee Mackenzie. I’ve just adopted her. Pray watch your language in front of her as well as in front of my wife.”
Summerville guffawed while Bertram Clark bowed to Isabella. “Ah, the lovely Lady Isabella. How delightful to see you again. You dazzle mine eyes, my lady.”
Lord Randolph Manning gazed unsteadily at her. “I thought you well rid of this blackguard, Izzy. I’m devastated you’ve never sought solace in me. My door is always open, you know.”
“Randy Randolph,” Cauliflower chortled.
“Stubble it,” Mac said. “Insult my wife again, Manning, and your eye will learn the exact texture of my gloved fist.”
Manning blinked. “Good lord, what did I say?”
“Forgive my Lord Randolph,” Bertram Clark said to Isabella. Mr. Clark had the best manners of the lot but also the reputation for being the most dissipate. “He’s drunk, he’s an idiot, and he swoons at your feet. We all do, as you know.”
“It’s quite all right,” Isabella said. “I’m well used to his vulgar manners.”
The four men burst out laughing. “As erudite as ever,” Lord Charles said. “We’ve missed you, my lady. In truth, Mac, what are you doing with a baby?”
“I answered you. I adopted her.”
Manning blinked his hazy eyes. “Dropped a by-blow, did you, Mac? Your lady wife is a most forgiving woman.”
Cauliflower gaped, and Bertram Clark grabbed the back of Manning’s collar. “That’s it. Time to sober you up, old man.” He dragged Manning off, Manning spluttering and continuing to ask what he’d said wrong.
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