“I’m pleased that your high opinion of yourself has returned.”
Mac dropped the brush and caught her shoulders, never mind that he smeared yellow paint on her black gabardine. He studied her intently, the strange look still in his eyes.
“My love, Ian told me right after your father died that I needed to bare my soul to you. Well, here it is, the good and the bad of it.” He pointed to the portrait. “That’s my soul right there, crying out for you.”
Isabella looked at it again. The woman who was herself through and through smiled out at Mac.
“I don’t understand. It’s just a picture of me.”
“Just a picture.” Mac laughed, but tears wet his eyes. “It is just a picture. Of you. Painted by me, with love in every stroke.” He drew a breath. “That’s what I didn’t understand before. This is why my talent went away and now has come bursting back.”
He looked so joyous that Isabella wanted to kiss him, but she still didn’t understand. “Explain?”
“I can’t, love. I always thought my ability came from astonishing luck, or a drunken stupor, or lust for you. When I painted the erotic pictures, I assumed they came out well because I wanted you so much.”
She shot him a sly look. “But you discovered you didn’t want me so much?”
“No, I want you all the damn time.” His fingers went to the nape of her neck, caressing, warming, loosening her.
“You were explaining.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t the lack of drink that took away my ability, love; it was my own bitterness. I know that now. Once I sobered up I couldn’t shut out my anger at you for leaving me, and at myself for causing it. I buried my love, because it hurt me too damn much to feel it. And my paintings were awful. When I decided to let myself love you—just love you, what you are, no matter what you thought of me, it came flooding back.” Mac drew another shaking breath. “I think I can paint anything now.”
Isabella’s heart squeezed with sudden happiness, but she said, “There’s a flaw in your reasoning.”
“Can’t be. It’s what I feel.”
She shook her head. “You painted beautifully before you ever met me. I’ve seen your paintings from that time. They are excellent. Don’t pretend they’re not.”
“I think then I was in love with life itself. I was young, out from under my father’s fist, finally free of him. I could do anything I pleased. But then I met you, and my world came crashing down.”
Isabella wished she could fix this moment in time, with Mac’s body hard against hers, his eyes filled with naked emotion.
“Why did we make ourselves so unhappy?” she asked, half to herself.
“You were an innocent, and I was a debauched rake. I think it was inevitable that it wouldn’t work.”
Isabella slid her hands across his bare shoulders. His skin was warm and firm, muscles solid beneath it. “You make yourself out to be such a bad man, but you’re not. You took care of me from the night you met me, and you’ve never stopped. You take care of everyone you love.”
Mac looked affronted. “I am a debauched rake, my darling. I’ve spent years cultivating my disreputable reputation. Remember how I taught you to take whiskey neat and sit on my lap and kiss me in front of my friends?” He deflated, the humor leaving him. “I wanted to make you bad like me, because I knew I’d never be good enough for you.”
“You were always good enough for me,” Isabella said, her heart in every word.
“Sweetheart, you wound me. A rake has his pride.” Mac slid her hands from him and held them in his. “I’m busy baring my soul to you, Isabella. Let me continue.”
“If you wish.”
Mac took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sank to his knees. The movement hurt him, she could tell from the way his grip tightened on her hands.
“Look at me.” Mac spread his arms, still holding her hands so that their arms moved out to the sides together. “What do you see?”
Her blood heated. “A very handsome man I happen to be married to.”
“A wasted man. I am nothing. I can make pictures come out of my hands when I’m not feeling sorry for myself. That is all there is, what you see here at your feet.”
“No . . .”
Mac’s voice went hard. “All there is, Isabella. Everything else—the joker, the wild bohemian, even the debauched rake—is what I’ve pasted on to keep the world from overrunning me. But it’s all fake. I use that façade to keep you from seeing and despising me.”
She smiled. “If I believed that, I never would have married you.”
“I didn’t give you much bloody choice, did I? You were right to leave me, because I took what you gave me and threw it carelessly away. And now here I am, charging in and telling you that you’ll take me back, whether you like it or not.”
Mac released her, letting his hands fall to his sides. His eyes held undisguised fear and love, and a pain she’d never seen before. “But this time, it is your choice,” he said. “If you don’t want me back, I’ll go. I’ll take care of you as I did before, without obligation, without you having to bother with me and my obsession for you.”
Obsession. Isabella had seen the paintings in Payne’s hideaway in the rookery in Marylebone, the pictures of herself that had made her ill to look upon. They were destroyed now, but they’d been painted from obsession.
Her gaze slid to the painting Mac had just finished, and beyond that to the stack of the nude paintings he’d turned to the wall so that no servant who chanced up here would see them.
Mac had painted all of those pictures of her from love. Payne had painted from crazed jealousy and a strange need. There was a difference, and it was plain to see from the picture that now rested on Mac’s easel.
Mac loved Isabella, truly loved her.
It was obvious in everything he did.
“Mac,” she said in a quiet voice. “Being with you has always been my choice.”
Mac looked up at her with such stark astonishment that her eyes brimmed with tears. “No, I forced the choice upon you,” he said.
She smiled, feeling her mouth shake. “No. You never did. I chose.”
Isabella touched Mac’s face, loving the hardness of his jaw, the rough of his whiskers.
“Bloody hell,” he whispered.
“Poor Mac. You are on your knees for nothing.”
A sudden, rakish smile split his face. “Not for nothing, my sweet. I’ve decided to do it properly this time.”
He was decadent, which made Isabella adore him. He was also half-naked with a gypsy scarf on his head, which made her crave him. She suddenly wanted more than anything to fall against him and have the pair of them land in a happy tangle on the floor.
“Do what properly?” she made herself ask.
“Court you. I’m supposed to be the model gentleman courting a lady, remember? Spilling out my heart in my studio is not the way.”
“I like it,” Isabella said. “It’s perfect.”
Mac’s eyes darkened. “Do not tempt me to ravish you until I’ve done this properly. I’ve never done anything properly with you.”
“Very well, if you must.”
“Isabella Mackenzie.” Mac took her hands again, still on his knees. “There is something important I would like to ask you.”
Isabella’s heart beat swiftly. “Yes?”
“I’ve asked some friends to help me. Will you walk with me over to the window?”
“As you wish.”
It was difficult to be calm while he was being so mysterious. He rose with some difficulty, and Isabella pretended she didn’t notice the soft grunt as he got to his feet. She followed him across the room to the window, whose curtains had been pulled back to let in the light.
Mac flung open the window, and early November air poured into the room. He leaned out and shouted, “Now!”
A band struck up a tune. Isabella peered around Mac and saw the little Salvation Army band, directed by the lady sergeant, pumping away enthusia
stically. Next to it stood Cam and Daniel and Mac’s club friends.
They were holding something. At Mac’s bellow, they unrolled and held up a banner that read: “Will You Marry Me?—Again.”
Isabella burst into tears. She turned around to find Mac next to her on one knee, something clutched in his hand.
“The first time I had no engagement ring,” he was saying. “I made you wear one of my rings, remember? It was so big you had to hold it on.” Mac opened his hand, which contained a thin gold ring encrusted with sapphires and one large diamond. “Marry me, Isabella Mackenzie. Make me the happiest man in the world.”
“Yes,” Isabella whispered, and then she turned and shouted it out of the window. “Yes!”
The crowd below cheered. Daniel whooped and punched the air, and Cam was laughing as he dropped the banner, drew out his flask of whiskey, and toasted them.
Mac got to his feet and crushed Isabella against him. “Thank you, my love.”
“I love you,” Isabella said, her heart in every word.
He nuzzled her. “Now, about that baby we were trying to conceive.”
Isabella went hot with excitement. She’d kept the secret for a week now, wanting to make certain Mac was fully healed before she sprang the news on him. “I don’t think it will be necessary to try any longer.”
Mac jerked back, a frown on his face. “I don’t under—” He stopped, not smiling, not angry, just still. “What exactly do you mean?”
“I mean what you suppose I mean.”
The tears that flooded Mac’s eyes were echoed by her own. “Oh, God.” Mac clasped her face between his hands and pressed a hard kiss to her lips.
He released her, turned back to the window, and shouted out of it, “I’m going to be a father!”
Daniel started dancing around, using the banner like a matador’s cape. Bertram Clark cupped his hands around his mouth. “Quick work, old man!”
Mac slammed down the window. He pointedly snapped the curtains across it, shutting off the view, though Isabella could still hear the happy sounds of the brass band.
Mac scooped her to him in strong, strong arms. “I love you, Isabella Mackenzie. You are my life.”
She simply looked at him, beyond words.
They never made it to the bedroom. The paint-smeared gown and Mac’s kilt came off, and he slipped the ring onto her finger as he kissed her on their way down to the floor.
Epilogue Lord Roland F. Mackenzie and his wife announce the birth of a daughter, Eileen Louisa Mackenzie, in the small hours of the twenty-second of July, Anno Domini Eighteen Eighty-Two.
SCOTLAND, NEAR KILMORGAN CASTLE,
SEPTEMBER 1882
Mac slathered paint on the canvas, ignoring the screams echoing around him. His entire being was transfixed by the green and black shadows of the valley that stretched all the way to the loch in the distance.
Nearby, his wife, younger brother and sister-in-law, nephews, and two children fished, watched fishing, or ran about screaming. At least, Aimee ran about. Ian’s little boy and Mac’s little girl were old enough only to lie in their baskets waving their fists. All three were screaming, however.
Ian was in the painting, standing in a stream in a kilt and loose shirt, his fishing pole steady. Beth and Isabella were the picture’s foreground, two ladies sitting on a picnic blanket, heads together. The two babies’ baskets lay next to them. Daniel headed after Aimee, making her squeal in delight as he chased her. Dogs milled about, all five of them, loping from the ladies to Ian to Daniel and Aimee to Mac, and then starting all over again.
Mac painted with vigor, trying to capture the exact moment of shadow before the ever-changing Scottish sky turned the picture into something new. At last he gave a sigh of satisfaction, threw down the brush, and stretched his arms.
“Gracious, it’s about time you finished,” his lovely red-haired wife said. She’d left off her mourning black for her father about the same time their baby had been safely delivered. Today Isabella wore a gown the color of the summer sky, while Beth sat next to her in bright pink. Two flowers on a Scottish meadow. “I’m famished.”
“We waited for luncheon for you,” Beth said. She started setting out plates and cups that the cook at Kilmorgan had tucked into a very large picnic basket. “Ian, time for lunch!” she called.
Ian kept on fishing without turning around.
“I’ll fetch him,” Mac said. He swept up his daughter, Eileen Louisa, and gave her a sound kiss. The little girl stopped screaming and blinked at him.
Mac tucked Eileen into the crook of his arm and waded out to Ian. The stream was shallow here, burbling over rocks and forming deep pools where fish liked to hide.
“The ladies want their lunch,” Mac said to him.
Ian didn’t turn. His attention was fixed on the swirling water, watching the pattern the eddies made.
“Ian.”
Ian pulled his attention away from the water and focused on Mac. Exactly on Mac, looking into Mac’s eyes. Ian had become much better at that in the last year.
“The ladies want their lunch,” Ian repeated in the exact tone Mac had used. “Good. I’m hungry. You took a long time painting.”
Mac shrugged. “I wanted to get it right.”
Ian hauled in his line. He gazed a moment at Eileen before reaching out and carefully chucking her under the chin. He’d been learning how to do that too. Eileen kicked her feet and let out a burble of approval.
“You and Isabella have been happy?” Ian asked Mac as they started back.
“Since we’ve been married again, you mean?” Gordon had been ecstatic to reverse their separation, and Mac had made a festival of it at Kilmorgan, with guests and flowers and all the trimmings.
Ian frowned, waiting patiently for Mac to answer the question.
“Very well, my wise little brother,” Mac said. “Yes. We are reconciled. We are happy. Ecstatically happy, especially of late.”
He put his heart in every word. Throughout the past year, Mac had alternately worried himself to death over Isabella and been extremely excited about the coming baby. He’d nearly smothered Isabella with his protectiveness, he knew from her exasperated looks, but he was damned if he would let her go through losing another child. And he would never leave her alone again.
The day of Eileen’s birth had been the most joyous of Mac’s life. He’d entered Isabella’s bedchamber to find his wife propped up in bed holding Eileen, smiling her triumph. Mac had wanted to paint her like that, a new, deeply happy mother with her babe in her arms, her red braid snaking over her shoulder like a rope of flame.
Isabella had been aghast, sure she looked a mess. To Mac, she’d never been more beautiful. Mac had taken up little Eileen and kissed her tiny forehead, thanking God for her and his wonderful wife.
“In fact,” Mac went on, barely able to contain his delight. “Isabella told me this morning that child number two will be with us sometime next year.”
He couldn’t keep the wide smile off his face. He and Isabella had celebrated the happiness of that announcement quite thoroughly.
“I am supposed to say congratulations, aren’t I?” Ian said, breaking Mac’s thoughts. “Then, you are to say congratulations to me.”
Mac raised his brows. “Oh really, old chap? You too?”
Ian nodded. “Beth also will have a child.”
Mac laughed uproariously and clapped Ian on the shoulder. “Our timing is impeccable, brother.”
“It’s only odds,” Ian said without changing expression. “We each enjoy going to bed with our wives, and we do it as often as we can. The probability of another conception, given the time since our first children were born, is high.”
“Thank you for that analysis.”
“You’re welcome,” Ian said in all seriousness, although Mac swore he saw a gleam of humor in his brother’s eyes.
“What about you, Ian?” Mac asked. “I spilled my heart to you. Your turn. Are you happy?”
For
answer, Ian shifted his gaze to Beth. At that moment, both ladies laughed. Isabella threw back her head, exposing her white throat, her red lips wide with her smile.
Likely the two ladies were making fun of their men. Not that Mac minded.
Beth lost her hat and screeched as one of the dogs gleefully grabbed it in his mouth and ran away. She leapt up and chased him.
Ian gave Mac a grin, his eyes lighting with more joy than Mac had ever seen in them. “Yes,” Ian said. “I am happy.” He turned and ran to help rescue Beth’s hat.
Mac walked over to the blanket, bouncing Eileen in his arms, and dropped next to Isabella, who was still laughing. “What is funny, my darling?”
“Highlanders and their legs.”
Mac studied his sun-browned legs stretching out from his kilt. “What’s wrong with our legs?”
“Nothing at all, Mac dear. Beth is thinking of writing an article on Scotsmen.”
Mac watched Beth running after the dog, her skirts in her hands, Ian cutting the chase short by grabbing the dog’s collar. Beside Mac, Ian’s son dozed off in his basket.
“Really, what is wrong with our legs?” Mac repeated.
“Nothing at all.” Isabella sent him a smoldering look. “I like to think of them wrapped around mine.”
Mac covered Eileen’s ears. “Really, my dear, you are unseemly.”
“I’d like to be even more unseemly. Next time, perhaps we should picnic on our own.”
“I could arrange that.”
“I find it odd that being with child makes me so randy,” Isabella said thoughtfully.
Mac wanted to laugh at her choice of words, but he heated under her smile. She was so beautiful sitting here with him, the sun on her brilliant hair, her green eyes like emeralds in shadow.
“I’ll not argue with you,” Mac said.
“Good.” Isabella gave him a wicked wink and reached for Eileen. “Perhaps we can make a start while everyone is chasing the dogs.”
Mac looked over at Ian, who was trying to persuade the dog to give up the hat. Daniel had caught Aimee and was tossing her in the air. Beth stood back and watched Ian, hands on hips, a loving smile on her face.
Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage hp-2 Page 27
