Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction: Mackenzies (Mackenzies Series Book 9)

by Jennifer Ashley

  “All artists do self-portraits,” Alec said. “The great Rembrandt did dozens of them—sketches, studies, paintings of himself in different costumes, making different faces. Daft people say it was vanity, but I think the man was trying to learn to draw many different expressions and was too dirt poor to pay a model.”

  “I am not the great Rembrandt,” Celia pointed out. “I am an Englishman’s daughter with rudimentary skill.”

  “Ye let me be the judge of your skill, lass. I’m the master here. Now.” He pointed at the blank paper. “Draw.”

  Celia touched her pencil to the page. Her first stroke was shaky, but Alec watched her grow intrigued as she went along, her determination to get the lines right, the proportions correct. He noticed when she ceased seeing her reflection as herself and regarded it as a living being to be rendered on the paper. Her eyes fixed as she concentrated, the tip of her tongue coming out to touch the corner of her lip.

  A lovely young woman. Alec was partial to them. He’d have to watch himself.

  “Now then. Tell me about this rake ye refused to run away with.”

  The pencil jerked. Celia hastily lifted it so she wouldn’t mar the page, and then she returned to the drawing, becoming absorbed once more in the task.

  “The Marquess of Harrenton,” she said as she sketched. “He has several immense estates of thousands of acres each, with fine manor houses all over England. He is Whig to the core, a staunch supporter of my father, and an odious man who smells of fish oil. The sordid story, which I am certain you will hear from anyone with a penchant for gossip, is that I was found in a compromising position with him. All would have been well if I had married him, but I refused his gracious offer. Therefore, I am disgraced and ruined, not to mention ungrateful and spoiled.” She added a line that defined a curl drooping to her forehead, the stroke swift with indignation.

  Alec’s anger rose. Compromising position? What did that mean? Had this marquess touched Celia, pinned her against him while he groped her? More still?

  Rage climbed as the image came to him, and he overlapped it with one of himself seizing the marquess and slamming his head into the floor. That anyone would dare touch this gentle, pretty young woman made redness dance before his eyes.

  He forced himself not to move, but when he answered, his voice was hard. “I’m glad you refused. No lady should be married off against her will to an odious man who smells of fish oil.” Who would be dead soon, if Alec had anything to say about it.

  Celia glanced at him in surprise. “Well, you are the only one who believes so. Even my brother told me I was ungrateful. I could have been mistress of properties greater than those of my father, a hostess without equal, he said. Though my father’s sister left me a small legacy in trust, so I am not penniless, it is nothing to what settlements the marquess could have made. Lord Harrenton is thirty years my senior, my brother reminded me, and so I might not have had to put up with him long. I ought to have gritted my teeth and borne him.”

  “No’ much of a marriage,” Alec said his anger remaining high. Bloody cold English and their bloody cold ideas for matchmaking. “A business arrangement, that is.”

  “Is it so different in Scotland? Are ladies allowed to choose their own mates?”

  Alec had to shake his head. “Not so different. Fathers marry off daughters to strengthen ties to families or to rub rival families’ noses in it. My mum defied her family and took up with m’ father—she was to have been married into a different clan. In the old days the lasses had no choice. These days … well, I’m not much in Scotland these days, so I don’t know, and I have no sisters. Just as well. I doubt my father would have allowed the poor things to marry anyone.”

  “Did you marry by choice?” Celia asked. “Or was it arranged?”

  The image of Genevieve, bright like a shooting star and burning out as quickly, flashed into Alec’s head. Her laughter, her white-hot tempers, her vividness—he’d known her so very briefly that some of the memories were slippery, elusive.

  “She was a French dancer, and we married on a whim. Ye should have heard my father roar. I left it to my poor younger brother to break the news. The only thing that calmed him was wee Jenny. Now he’s a proud grandfather.”

  Alec forced his tongue to still. His father, as far as Englishmen knew, was dead, on a list of those fallen at Culloden. So were Alec Mackenzie, Will, Malcolm, and Duncan. Dead and gone. Dust.

  “She certainly is a lovely child.”

  Alec snapped out of his thoughts to find Celia’s eyes on him again. She smiled, her face softening from her shy wariness.

  “Aye, well,” Alec tried to sound modest while his heart swelled with pride. Jenny was a bonny lass, there was no denying it. “She’s sweet-tempered, that’s a fine thing. Though not when the teeth are poking through her gums and making her howl in pain. Strong voice she has.” Alec gave up on modesty and ended with a boast.

  “You look after her well,” Celia said. “For the teething, try chamomile. You steep it in water then mix it with ice—I know Lady Flora has a steady supply of ice, even in the heat of summer. Let Jenny suck on the concoction. It should soothe her.”

  “You know much of physic?” Alec asked, studying her. “Ye don’t look like a midwife. Or the doctors who swan about London in their sedan chairs handing out diagnoses like badges of honor.”

  Celia shook her head. “Only what my nanny taught me. Every lady has some knowledge of the stillroom, and every estate has one. Who knows how far away the nearest doctor or surgeon might be?”

  “Indeed.” There had been a stillroom at Kilmorgan Castle, where their cook had prepared vile-tasting remedies to feed the brothers when they’d been sick. Gone now, with the rest of the bloody place.

  The stark image of destroyed Kilmorgan recalled Alec to what he was about. He was here to pump this young woman for any information—any inkling of knowledge—of Will. He had no business making a friend of her, no business getting ready to defend her honor against this bloody, vile marquess, whoever he was. Though Alec would not drop the matter. He’d settle it in his own way.

  “Now then, young lass, get to drawing,” he said briskly. “If we’re to make a portrait artist out of ye, it’s time to learn.” He gestured at the page. “You’ve caught your likeness well, but there’s not enough of you in there.”

  Celia gazed at the paper in perplexity. “What on earth do you mean? I am right there.” She tapped the paper with the end of the pencil.

  The drawing was good—a young lady frowned in rapt concentration, one curl dangling from under her cap, her lips slightly parted. But whereas yesterday Celia had caught the fire hiding inside Alec Mackenzie, this sketch showed him a woman who could be anyone. The spark that made her Celia Fotheringhay was missing.

  “Let me,” Alec said.

  Before Celia could protest, he dragged her aside, stool and all, scraped another stool to the easel to plant his arse on, and began to add lines to her drawing.

  Alec drew in the way light caught on the wayward curl, the slight flush of her cheeks that reddened under his scrutiny, the faint shine of her kissable lips.

  The ornate clock on the mantelpiece ticked through moments of silence, the scratch of the pencil the only other sound.

  The artistic fire took Alec unawares. He felt it flash through his fingers, pulling the spirit of Celia into them and then out to the paper.

  He’d heard that people in some Oriental countries didn’t like having their portraits done, fearing the picture would capture and imprison their souls. Alec had thought such a thing interesting but ridiculous at the time, but in this moment, he understood.

  He was capturing Celia, as she’d captured him yesterday. She came alive under his pencil strokes—the curve of her neck, the way one corner of her mouth was upturned, giving her an impish look. The shape of her eyes, which weren’t identical, the glow in them like a flame shuttered. She had fires inside, one a man might find when he loosened her fichu, eased open the lac
ings of her stomacher, slid his hand beneath her chemise to seek the heat of bare woman inside.

  If seduction were necessary to sway Celia, to be his conduit into her father’s mind, Alec wouldn’t find it a drudgery. He imagined her in his bed, her body welcoming him, the heat of her lips beneath his, and then the anguished look in her eyes when she realized his duplicity.

  Alec made his hand cease moving. She’d already been ruined by one man—could he let it be two?

  When he disappeared from her life after that, Celia would go on as she was meant to, painting portraits of her father’s dull cronies, withering away in the glittering world of London society. She’d hate the name Alec Mackenzie—or at least Ansel Finn—but Will would be alive and well. Alec could return with Jenny to France and his family.

  Celia leaned forward, eager to see what he’d done. Alec studied the drawing with her, watched her reach to touch a line, turn to ask him a question.

  Alec didn’t want to hurt her. He wanted to befriend Celia, become acquainted with her in all ways, discover what would happen between them.

  But she was a duke’s daughter, an innocent, and he was a fugitive. That was life as a Scotsman in King Geordie’s world. Alec was not welcome in that world, and the sooner he left it, the better.

  “Tell me what happened to her,” Alec demanded of Lady Flora.

  He’d accepted his hostess’ invitation to take port while she attended to her toilette later that afternoon. Alec lounged in a silk brocade chair and tried to find comfort against its rigid back.

  Lady Flora’s dressing chamber was usually filled with friends or the young men she strung on as hopeful lovers—which always came to nothing, to their disappointment. Her toilettes and salons were famous for discussions of everything from the latest tax on corn to the abolishment of the slave trade to what Chinese ladies wore at their lavish court. Add to this poets, musicians, and artists, and Lady Flora had a mix of company that was shocking, forward thinking, gossip mongering, scandalous, and the envy of all other hostesses.

  Lady Flora had already been laced into her stays by her maid, and now she reposed in a robe—a simple name for a vibrant gold and green silk gown that closed in the front and whose voluminous skirts flowed over her legs. At the moment, she had the skirts rucked high as she tied a garter around her right stocking. Her slender leg was encased in light blue cotton, clocked with green embroidery.

  “To Celia?” Lady Flora asked as she finished with the garter and tossed her skirt over her legs again. “Why?”

  “Because I’d like to know.” Alec stretched out in the uncomfortable chair and took a sip of the very fine port, wishing it was Mackenzie malt instead. “Who is this marquess she doesn’t want to marry? Was she caught in bed with him? And why was she there, if she finds him odious? Did he rape her? If so, point me in his direction, and I’ll hunt up a sgian dubh and cut off his balls.”

  Lady Flora’s eyes widened, then she scowled. “Good Lord, you will do nothing of the sort. Celia wasn’t found anywhere near his bed. With his hands all over her, yes, but that was a contrivance of her mother’s.”

  Chapter 6

  Alec sat up straight while Lady Flora leaned forward to raise an earring to her earlobe.

  “Her own mother set the man on her?” Alec snarled.

  Fury gripped him so hard he didn’t realize he’d spoken the sentence in Erse, until Lady Flora’s cool words cut through his rage.

  “I have no idea what you are saying, Alec. And pray, remember that your language is outlawed here. It would hardly do for me to be arrested for harboring you.”

  “Bloody hell, woman,” Alec roared in English, coming to his feet. “How can ye sit and tell me something like that without turning a hair? Have ye ice in your veins?”

  Lady Flora’s look was hard. “I do not, as well you know. I suppose I have become so acquainted with the story it no longer shocks me as it should. Besides, I am not at all amazed Celia’s mother concocted the plot. The duchess is a reptile of the coldest nature.”

  Alec thought of the pencil drawings he’d seen in Celia’s portfolio. The unfinished one of her mother had shown a haughty woman, comfortable in her power, while the sketch of the duke made him look like a friendly country squire. Not at all what Alec had expected of either of them. It was no wonder Celia had chosen to draw so many pictures of her cat.

  “Tell me the tale,” Alec commanded. He made himself sit down again, and he drank deeply of the port.

  “It is brief and sordid.” Lady Flora leaned to the mirror to slip a second earring into her doubly pierced lobe. “The marquess is wealthy and powerful. A match with Celia would seal an alliance to make the Whigs even more unstoppable than they have become. Nothing in the world is more important to the duchess. Celia, not being a fool, refused to consider the marriage. I do not blame her—Archibald Mortenson, Marquess of Harrenton, has never been prepossessing. He was rather awful in his younger years, never mind now that he’s fifty.”

  “They tried to force the match?” Alec asked, hand tightening on his goblet.

  Lady Flora shook her head and slid two earrings, one a diamond stud, the second a dangle of gold, into her other ear. “In England, a young woman can no longer be married off against her will. She can be browbeaten into it, however, and if her parents threaten to toss her out of the house if she doesn’t obey, then the choice is a moot point. The duke and duchess presented this match to Celia as though giving her the earth on a platter. When Celia refused, the battle began. Celia can be incredibly stubborn, but so can her mother.”

  “What about the duke in all this?” Alec asked. “All for trundling his daughter up the aisle in a wheelbarrow if necessary?”

  Lady Flora arranged a white-blond lock to droop picturesquely down her neck. “Celia’s father, surprisingly, took her side. We can’t force the gel to act against her heart, were his words. But the duchess was livid. She threatened to lock Celia in her room for weeks, forbade her to go on outings, even with her mother at her side. In short, she tried to keep Celia prisoner until she obeyed. But Celia, in her quiet way, defied her.”

  She studied her reflection, not with vanity but critically, frowning as she rearranged the lock. “The duchess pretended to relent, but then she and Harrenton hatched a plan. One morning the duchess sent Celia in her dressing gown into a chamber on a pretense that the duchess needed something from within. Of course, the marquess was waiting inside. He seizes Celia and jerks her against him, starting to kiss her. At the appropriate moment, the duchess throws open the doors to let the guests she’d invited witness the tableaux. She’d chosen these guests carefully, from close friends to famous gossips to those known to be opposed to the duke’s politics—so she’d have a balance of witnesses. Of course, the duchess expected Celia to break down and beg for a quick wedding to save her reputation. But still Celia refused.”

  “Good for her,” Alec said, pleased he could speak calmly. Harrenton would pay for touching Celia—the man had sealed his own fate.

  Lady Flora plucked a hothouse rose, deep pink and overly large, from a vase on the dressing table. She broke the stem at the base of the blossom and pinned it to the top of her bodice.

  “The duchess was incandescent with rage. She did lock Celia into her bedroom, but their servants, while terrified of the duchess, dote on Celia. They brought her tidbits from the kitchen, kept her apprised of the goings-on in the house, and smuggled out letters for her. She wrote to an older gentleman, a clergyman friend of her father’s who’d been kind to her, told him the entire situation, and asked for advice.

  “The clergyman was appalled, visited the duke, and Celia was released. In disgrace, and she is ruined, but the duchess has at last let the marriage matter drop. Celia has a small bit of money her aunt left her, which I am certain bolstered her refusal. But Celia is now to stay indoors and learn to be useful, seeing no one but the immediate family or me. Hence my idea she should paint portraits of her father’s cronies, and …” She waved a langu
id hand at Alec.

  Alec’s fury burned in slow fire. “What did the duke say when his friend came calling to ask about the treatment of his daughter?”

  “Ah, I forgot the best bit.” Lady Flora smiled a cold smile. “The elderly clergyman is a staunch Tory. He and the duke became friends of a sort over their anti-slavery sentiments. In any case, the duke, who hadn’t realized the extent of his wife’s duplicity—or so he claims—said Celia fought her battle well, and that she’d have made a wily politician.”

  Alec took another deep draught of port. He thought of the brisk way Celia had said on her first day of lessons, Apparently, embarrassing my mother is the most grievous sin of all. She’d spoken quickly, her head up, but Alec had sensed the pain inside her, a humiliation he hadn’t understood.

  “I’m surprised they didn’t send her off to a nunnery,” Alec growled. “Pretend they never had a daughter.”

  Lady Flora’s brows rose. “Not the staunchly C of E Duchess of Crenshaw. Popery is a greater taint than debauchery, did you not know? Are you Catholic, Lord Alec?”

  Alec shook his head. “My grandfather was Calvinist to his bones. ’Tis why my father is so surly. The rest of us fell out of the habit of churching after our childhood. We attend chapel for Christmas and Easter, and even that is kept quiet. Wouldn’t want to catch us actually celebrating anything.”

  “Odd that you’re welcome in France, then. The Huguenots had to flee there not long ago, I believe.”

  “As I said, we’re not much for churching. And we’re only visiting.”

  That was what they told each other, the Mackenzies. That they were in France until outrage at the Uprising faded, until laws became slackly enforced and they could go home again. One day.

  “The duchess now prefers to keep Celia at home where she can ensure her good behavior,” Lady Flora continued. She slid a diamond bracelet onto her wrist and expertly closed the clasp one-handed. “So she says. Looking for a chance to use her again is most likely.”