by Karen Ranney
Still, his journey to France had only been planned to take a month, not the three years it had been. Plans, however, were sometimes changed because life got in the way.
Halfway to his office, he turned instead and walked toward the main staircase, then upward to the attic.
He should have brought his coat, but he had no intention of standing on the roof more than a moment. Long enough to see if Miss Dalrousie had returned home. Was she shooting again?
Robert circled the cistern and stood fighting the blustery wind with more willpower than warmth. After a moment of staring in the direction of the Blackthorne Cottage, he was rewarded not by the sight of her, crimson-caped, with a pistol in her hand, but by the sudden realization he was acting the fool. A gust of freezing wind called him back to himself and to the idiocy of his actions.
He descended the steps, a little confused as to his curiosity.
“She’s a mighty sight better at it now than she was at the beginning,” Tom had said when Robert had questioned the man the other day. “I can’t say she’s good yet, but she has the will to get better. I’ve never seen anyone like her, Your Lordship. Day after day, and it don’t matter none what the weather be like or whether it’s raining or snowing, but she’s out there shooting at that target as if she’s defending her virtue.”
“Why is she so intent on it?” Robert had asked, but Tom hadn’t an answer, only shook his head as if the vagaries of that particular woman were beyond him. Robert could only agree.
What was Margaret Dalrousie doing?
Chapter 10
Glengarrow had always seemed a friendly place, an enchanted spot in the Highlands, at the edge of ruggedness, tamed into civilization. Now, however, the sound of shots rang out again, not only disturbing his peace but changing the very environment around his home.
Even though the sound surrounded him, he knew where it was coming from—Blackthorne Cottage. Miss Dalrousie was shooting at her target.
Miss Dalrousie was being an irritant again.
In his professional life, he’d been tactful for the most part, restrained. He had watched his words and his actions with a view to the end results. He’d been eternally careful.
Yet God or Fate or simply timing had wielded a scythe through his life. Why the hell should he continue to be cautious?
He hadn’t been careful around Miss Dalrousie. She had an annoying ability to push him out of his politeness. He’d actually wanted to shout at her during more than one encounter. No, come to think of it, on every occasion. There wasn’t anything she did he found acceptable. She was neither pleasing to look at nor pleasant to talk with. She was like a burr beneath his saddle—a potential irritant, more than that if he didn’t remove it.
Glengarrow was his home, not hers, and she’d no right to disturb his tranquility.
Still, he was on the way to apologize, another irritant in his dealings with her. He was the one who’d been improvident, barbaric. He’d frightened her, and despite how annoying she might be, she’d not deserved his cruelty.
The sound of the shooting was even louder from here. He veered from the path and took the shortcut to the rear of Blackthorne Cottage. The weather was abysmal, sleet covering the path to the grass where she stood. Although it was two hours after dawn, the sky was as gray as gloaming. The sun was bashful at this time of year, but that, evidently, didn’t change Miss Dalrousie’s plans.
He saw her, took a deep breath, and strode forward, pulling his gloves over his wrists. He could feel his heart begin a staccato beat as if he braced himself for battle.
She stood, impervious to the sleet, her arm extended and her gaze fixed on the hay in front of her. He could only see her from a three-quarter view, but he imagined one eye was clenched shut as she narrowed her gaze down the site of the barrel. Whoever she saw in her mind’s eye was as good as dead. Not because her aim was any good but because she appeared deadly serious.
Anyone with such intensity would achieve his goal one way or another. He recognized the look—he’d had it himself. He, too, had felt the drive to achieve, the need to do so. He hadn’t wanted to prove anything to the world but only to himself.
“Who are you aiming at, Miss Dalrousie?”
She jerked, the pistol going off, the shot wide. She turned and glared at him.
“What are you doing here?”
She had the singular irritating habit of never addressing him properly. She never said Your Lordship; she never even said sir. She talked to him as if he were a servant, one she employed. Was it all those years of living in Russia? Did she see people as serfs?
“I can only hope whoever you’re aiming at deserves his punishment,” he said, instead of answering her.
“I am not trespassing. You are.”
Her directness was another irritant. She always cut right through his efforts at diplomacy.
“You can follow the path back to Glengarrow,” she said, pointing with her right hand, the one still holding the gun.
He cautiously stepped back, his gaze fixed on the weapon.
“I am here for two reasons, Miss Dalrousie,” he said, determined not to be sent packing by the woman. Determined, also, not to allow her to irritate him. She had the ability to stir him from his appointed task, and he would not be dissuaded.
“The first is to apologize. I did not act correctly.”
She turned and faced him fully, the weapon down at her side. She didn’t look away, her gaze direct.
“What I did was wrong,” she said. “I freely admit it. I had no business being curious about your wife. Nor about you, if the truth be told.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he chose to remain silent.
“It is my behavior that should generate an apology, not yours. You acted as any person, any grieving person, might.”
“I didn’t mean to frighten you, Miss Dalrousie,” he said, unable to forget the stricken look on her face or the fact she’d trembled in fear.
She shook her head as if to negate his memory. “If I was frightened, that is my fault. Not yours. If I allowed myself to become frightened, then that is a flaw in my character.”
He stared at her incredulously. “Are you saying you don’t allow yourself to be afraid? What about the other emotions? Do you forbid them for yourself as well? Irritation? Anger? Hopelessness? Sadness? Love?”
“How very odd you would place love at the very end of that litany of emotions. How very odd it’s adjacent to sadness. I would have thought your memories gave love a little more luster than that.”
“I said there were two things I wish to talk to you about,” he said, not allowing himself to respond to her words. There was no reason to become angry at her. She was simply who she was, a rather strange artist.
“I would like to commission you to paint a portrait.”
She turned and stared at the target, raised her right arm, and squinted down the barrel. “No.”
“Don’t you wish to know any more about the proposition?”
“No.”
“I want you to paint my wife. Amelia.”
She turned her head and regarded him, much in the same way she’d faced the target. “My subjects are alive. I paint life. Although, I do admit there was one occasion when I did a drawing of an older gentleman in his coffin, so the Grand Duchess’s family in Germany could have a rendition. Most of the time, however, my subjects have been alive.”
“Nevertheless, I would pay you handsomely to execute a portrait of my wife.”
“No.”
She turned back to the target.
He should leave this moment, before he grew any angrier.
“Is this your way of apologizing? How did you even know I was an artist?”
She didn’t look at him when addressing him, her attention back on the target and not his face. He preferred it that way.
The Dalrousie woman had a rather striking face, and intense green eyes. Her mouth was too large, and her chin too sharp, and her nose was rather a
ristocratic. That striking black hair of hers would no doubt fade with age.
How old was she? His age? He’d never before wondered at a woman’s age. Why was he so damnably curious about her?
“No, I believe I’ve already apologized.”
“And what likeness would I use? Someone else’s work? No.”
“I can tell you anything you wish to know about Amelia,” he said.
“No.”
Today she was dressed in her ubiquitous red-wool cape, sturdy boots, and a dark blue dress, the details of which were hidden by the cape. The silly white hat covered most of her black hair, but she’d allowed the braid of it to come loose and coil over her shoulder.
“I visited Russia once,” he said.
His comments elicited a nod. That was all, no more interest than that.
Irritated, he folded his arms in front of him and regarded her with some disfavor.
She began to reload the pistol as if he weren’t standing there attempting to converse with her.
Could she not hold a conversation like a normal person? Of course she couldn’t. Nothing she’d done since the moment he’d encountered her had been usual or normal. He shouldn’t be annoyed by that fact; he should simply accept the fact Miss Dalrousie was her own person.
“Yes, I know,” she said.
“How was that?”
At her look of mild inquiry, he forced himself to smile. “How do you know I was in Russia?”
“I saw you.”
The reloading done, she began to study him again.
He rocked back on his heels, looked away, then looked back at her. She hadn’t ceased in her examination of him, her look studious and intent. He wanted to ask what she found so fascinating about his face, about his person, but that would be to admit it bothered him. In actuality, he’d never been subjected to such intense scrutiny from anyone. Even the prime minister stared off into the distance from time to time when addressing him.
“You saw me?”
Was all of their conversation to be like this? She was evidently not interested in talking with him as much as examining him as if he were something scientific and interesting.
He had never sat for a portrait, even though he and Amelia had planned to do so more than once. He doubted if the experience would have been a pleasant one if it was anything like the scrutiny Miss Dalrousie was giving him at this moment.
His appearance was not something over which he had any control. He simply was who he was, what he was: Robert McDermott, Earl of Linnet.
“I bid you good day, Miss Dalrousie,” he said, turning on his heel, as irritated with her as he’d ever been with anyone in his entire life. He was not a man given to overt demonstrations of anger, but he wanted to shake her. Anything to shatter that mildly interested mask she wore. But that would negate one of his reasons for being here in the first place, to apologize for his anger.
What was there about this woman that irritated him so much?
“St. Petersburg,” she said.
He stopped, but he didn’t turn.
“You were attending a ball for the British Ambassador. A glittering affair given by Princess Naporav,” she said. “Even though you seemed amused, it was not difficult to determine that you very much wanted to be somewhere else.”
“I was wanting to be home,” he said. “We’d planned to travel to France as soon as I returned.”
He glanced at her as she faced the target once again. Darkness was almost upon them. Did she even practice at night?
“That’s where it was,” he said, turning. “You were there, on the balcony, watching everyone. I wondered why you didn’t join in the merriment.”
“I wanted to be painting,” she said.
He took a deep breath and relaxed his clenched hands. How long could she stand out here in the cold?
“Is your refusal to paint Amelia’s portrait your way of reciprocating for my poor behavior?”
She shook her head. “I no longer paint,” she said.
“According to what my mother says, you’re very talented.”
“Is that who told you about me?”
He nodded.
“Were you a good politician?”
“Why do you ask?”
She smiled slightly. “You’ve lost the ability to placate,” she said. “If you ever had it. You don’t use sophistry. You’ve become too blunt for a politician. If you truly wished for me to paint your wife’s portrait, you would have said something like: ‘What a pity, Miss Dalrousie, that an artist of your supreme talent no longer paints.’ As it was, you said nothing about my work.”
“I haven’t seen any of your work, Miss Dalrousie. I don’t know if that’s being a politician as much as it is an honest man. I would like to think I could be both.”
“Perhaps you could,” she said. “But that does not negate the fact I do not paint any longer.”
“Is it too blunt to ask why?”
She turned again and before he could prepare himself, shot at the target again. This time she actually hit it, not in the middle but somewhere near the edge, enough that a puff of hay was dislodged from the overall structure.
“You may ask, but I have no intention of answering you.”
She turned and smiled at him again, slipping the pistol in a pocket in her skirt, then turning and walking away, leaving him standing there in the sleet staring after her.
Chapter 11
Margaret awoke in the middle of the night, suddenly alert. She lay flat on her back, arms out at her sides, wondering what had roused her. Normally, she didn’t wake easily, as if she preferred her dreamlike state to one of being awake.
She lay silent, listening for any noise, any sound. But there was nothing other than the wind whistling around the corners of the house. Blackthorne Cottage was a snug place to spend the winter. Other than a few places near the window or beneath the door, there were no drafts. She couldn’t say the same for the palaces of Russia. Their enormous ceilings and huge expanses of open space meant she could never truly get warm. Even though many of the fireplaces could have held a dozen men standing upright, they didn’t give off much heat.
When she worked, she couldn’t be that close to the fire, both because the heat might damage her paintings and because her pigments were mixed with ingredients that could easily catch fire. Consequently, she always had to be in the coldest part of the room.
She was fortunate she’d not contracted pneumonia while in Russia.
Perhaps that’s why she’d awakened. The night had grown colder, and even beneath her two blankets, she could feel the chill.
She slid her foot out first, the air touching the tips of her toes. She drew her foot back and contemplated simply turning over and trying to go back to sleep. But if she were cold, she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again.
Where were the blankets?
A more decadent part of her wished she could simply reach for the bellpull and summon the maid. “Chocolate,” she’d order, muffled beneath the sheets and comforter. The poor maid would have to do her bidding, bringing her blankets and chocolate within a matter of moments.
The eternal slavish obedience of the servants was not the only thing about Russia that had taken her some time to accept. But she had, to her discredit, begun ignoring the servants with the alacrity of the noble class. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember the name of the girl she’d hired as her personal maid. Nor was her face anywhere in Margaret’s memory.
Decadence, however, was a two-edged sword. If one became accustomed to it, one also paid the price. The price for the Russians was to ignore the poverty beneath their feet, such deplorable living conditions that Margaret had been shocked every time she ventured beyond St. Petersburg.
She fussed about the cold now, but compared to the peasants of Russia, she was living a prosperous life in Blackthorne Cottage.
Life was a series of gradients. She was, perhaps, unfortunate in that she had passed from the lowest echelon to the highest and
been bounced back somewhere around the middle. She’d experienced life filled with wishes for betterment, and experienced it bored and filled with ennui. Of the two, she would rather have the life filled with purpose, with a goal in mind.
Even now, relegated to the Scottish Highlands, she had a purpose, a goal. The world would not think it an admirable goal, but did it matter what the world thought? According to public thought, beliefs, mores, and rules created primarily by men, she was a fallen woman. A woman who should be shunned, avoided at all costs. Not because of anything she had done but simply because she’d been a victim.
And yet, when the victim ceased to be a victim anymore, and sought justice, the world would probably not gauge her with any more sympathy. Therefore, it was up to her to decide who she was and what she was, not the world and not a society governed by men.
Once again, she slid her foot from beneath the covers, then, resolutely, sat up, pushing the blankets away. Sliding on her slippers, she grabbed her wrapper at the end of the bed, donned it, and lit the small candle on the bedside table. The flame flickered, as if it, too, reluctantly faced the chill.
She left her bedroom, intent on the trunk room. Once there, she placed the candle on one of the shelves and turned to face the room.
Most of her belongings had been sold in Russia in order to finance the trip back to Scotland. Only one of her Russian gowns remained, a pale blue bejeweled masterpiece she couldn’t bear to sell. She’d only worn it once, for an audience with the Emperor, and it was the most magnificent gown she’d ever worn in her life. Now it occupied a trunk all on its own, packed with layers of linen so as not to crush the delicate embroidery and silk.
