by Karen Ranney
“Why does no one love you, Miss Dalrousie? Do they not find you feminine enough? You with your way of challenging the world, your ungainly stride, your coldness. Your hair is too black, and your mouth is too large. Your eyes are too colorful for your face. None of your features seem to go with the others. And I suspect you bind your breasts, because sometimes they appear large and at other times barely there. Is that why you’ve had no suitors?”
“I’ve had my share, McDermott. And lovers, if you must know.”
At another time, he would have been startled at her honesty, but now he was too intent on hurting her.
“Or is it your character, Miss Dalrousie, that sets you apart from other women? Is it the fact you see yourself as separate from the rest of society? You are not subject to rules and regulations that govern the behavior of others. You are Margaret Dalrousie, and the world must give you whatever you wish, including the right to say or do whatever you please.”
She gripped her left wrist with her right hand. Her smile seemed unnatural, but he’d not seen it often enough to know for certain.
“I can see this was a foolish idea of mine, Miss Dalrousie, I am humble enough to admit I make a mistake from time to time. Hiring you was evidently one of my greater mistakes in a very long time.”
“You cannot dismiss me,” she said, and her lifeless announcement irritated him still further.
“I can and I have,” he said. “Your services will no longer be needed.”
“The painting will go on,” she said. “Whether or not you give me permission to do so. I will paint what I want when I want, McDermott, and words will not stop me. Even yours.”
He wished, suddenly, he knew more about her, that he knew her weaknesses, her frailties. He would have used the knowledge as a weapon in the same manner she did. She wielded words like a sword and remained dispassionate when the victim began to bleed copiously.
Yet what she had said was not altogether wrong, which was probably why he was so angry. He didn’t like a stranger, especially Margaret Dalrousie, pointing out the error of his logic. But then, love wasn’t logical, was it?
Neither was grief.
He had dismissed her, yet she refused to be dismissed. He couldn’t banish her from Blackthorne Cottage, but he could refuse her admittance to Glengarrow. Yet, by her own admission, she’d continue to work on the portrait. Like it or not, he had set her into motion, and Miss Dalrousie’s irritating presence was the price he had to pay for Amelia’s portrait.
The scales would be balanced, then. Another instance of her logic proving correct.
He walked slowly back to the chair and sat, heavily.
“I do not like you very much, Miss Dalrousie. If you were on fire, I’m not entirely certain I would summon a bucket of sand to put you out.”
“Then I shall endeavor never to find myself in flames.”
Her expression wasn’t bland at all. He couldn’t define what he saw on her face, but it was emotion. Pleased, he sat back against the chair as she occupied herself in painting, feeling as if he had won this battle after all.
Why, then, was he so damnably irritated?
Chapter 16
Margaret returned to Glengarrow time and again, armed with tenacity and a sense of purpose. To paint again was a miracle. To be able to touch the brush to her canvas and feel a rush of joy so profound it seemed spiritual was worth any amount of difficulty McDermott gave her.
Some days, he would do nothing but stare off into space. Other days, he was cutting in his remarks. Either way, she simply ignored him.
A day passed in this manner, then a week. The room was a comfortable one, lit as it was by the winter sun. For hours, she could almost believe herself alone, becoming familiar with the sound of Glengarrow settling around her.
Janet saw to it that the room was aired every morning, and when Margaret arrived, she closed the window, went to her easel, and carefully removed the drape from the canvas.
The clean winter air banished the smell of linseed oil, leaving only the scent of the potpourri Janet left in a dish on the table beside the chair. Along with the dried flowers and patchouli, she could smell the faint ever-present scent of Amelia’s perfume, as if Janet used it to sweeten the mixture.
Before the earl arrived, Margaret would prepare herself for her task of the day. She approached a painting in a methodical manner, directing her talent rather than allowing it to run amok. She began on the periphery of a canvas, working toward a focal point. Often, a portrait’s background was complete before the subject had ever been started. Each day, she knew exactly what she would be painting, and she studied the canvas with an eye to the finished task.
When McDermott entered the room, she waited for him to settle into his chair before beginning, but after that moment, she ignored him other than to ask an occasional question about Amelia. What did she do with her hands when she spoke and when she sat in a chair? Did she have the habit of propping her chin with her hand? Or linking her fingers together? He always answered, but never continued the conversation.
Would that all her subjects were as silent.
After several hours, she came out from behind her easel, wiping her brush on the cloth soaked in linseed oil, a sign that she was finished for the day.
McDermott would stand, and without another word, simply leave the room.
Today, however, was different, and the hint of it came when McDermott began a conversation just as she was attempting the most intricate pattern of a Chinese vase.
“Do your other subjects object to hours of silence on end, Miss Dalrousie?” he asked.
She smiled at the canvas. Every person she’d ever painted had asked the same question. The only difference was the length of time it had taken to ask it.
“Yes,” she said. “If you want a Dalrousie portrait, there is a certain price to pay.”
“In addition to the outrageous sum you’re charging me?”
“You can always do as my patrons in Russia did, Your Lordship,” she said. “You can always refuse to pay me.”
“On what pretext?”
“None,” she said. “Simply because they deemed me unworthy of being paid, perhaps.”
She was distressingly close to revealing too much to him again.
“I’m a man of honor, Miss Dalrousie. I pay my debts.”
She could tell by his tone that she’d insulted him.
“Should I apologize to you again?” she asked.
“You should,” he said flatly. “And perhaps I should apologize to you for all the comments I made that were offensive. Or even worse, perhaps I should just issue a blanket apology to you now, Miss Dalrousie, for anything I may say in the future that may be less than kind.”
She put the brush down on the tray in front of the easel and carefully stepped to the side, regarding him with caution.
“What is it about us, the two of us, McDermott, that seems to rub the other raw?”
The question wasn’t a wise one to ask, but where had she been wise in regard to him?
He leaned back in the chair, his smile without a tint of mockery. She was more comfortable with the grieving noble, a man whose soul was so obviously battered and bruised. This man, with laughter in his eyes and his lips curved in a smile, was a stranger, and a too-charming one at that.
“I haven’t the slightest idea, Miss Dalrousie. It’s foolish, don’t you agree? We’re neighbors, however unwillingly we might wish it.”
Why on earth did that remark hurt when she’d been able to ignore his more cutting comments?
Annoyed, she returned to her canvas.
“I’ve actually laughed because of you, Miss Dalrousie,” he said a few minutes later. “For that, I thank you. For taking on this commission, which I know cannot be an easy one to execute, I also thank you. Do you think you can even achieve it?”
“I’m a woman of honor,” she said, tight-lipped. “I wouldn’t have agreed to do it had I not thought I could.”
She wished
the canvas was bigger. Right at the moment, it could easily have been the size of a room and yet not be large enough.
“Shall we talk of Janet and Tom? Or the weather?” he asked. “The weather is always an amenable topic.”
“I normally enforce silence on my subjects. If they push me on the matter, I will allow one visitor. Shall I call for one of the maids, Your Lordship?” she asked. “Or perhaps Tom?”
“Why not? We can discuss the stables, or the hunting around Glengarrow. I’m sure we could find more than one topic of conversation. Unlike the two of us. You are excessively uncommunicative about your past, Miss Dalrousie. And I find I don’t want to discuss mine.”
“I do not like poetry,” she contributed, in direct violation of her own rule not to converse while she was working. “Although I find that the majority of books in my possession at the moment are those of poetry. I haven’t the slightest idea why, and I cannot remember how some of them came to be in my library.”
“Perhaps they were gifts from admirers. Or from your many lovers.”
She sent him an exasperated look, but of course he couldn’t see it through the canvas.
“Feel free to borrow from Glengarrow’s library. There is a large section of novels you might find to your fancy.”
“Thank you.”
“I expected a retort from you, Miss Dalrousie. I expected you to say something like: do you think me only capable of reading novels, McDermott?”
He so adeptly mimicked the tone she might have used that she found herself smiling again.
“Instead, you only thank me, which leaves me feeling like a boor.”
She remained silent, her smile broadening.
“If you had no money, how did you purchase Blackthorne Cottage?” he asked abruptly.
“Is it any of your concern?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, surprising her. “Blackthorne Cottage used to belong to Glengarrow.”
“I didn’t purchase it,” she said. “It was a gift.”
“A gift?”
She moved from behind the easel. “I had a benefactor,” she said, “but I don’t know who it was.”
“How was this benefactor made known to you?”
“My solicitor came to me,” she said. “He wasn’t my solicitor at the time, of course. He agreed to work on other matters for me later. But Mr. Tapin said that the cottage had been given to me as a gift from someone who admired my art.”
“Tapin?”
“Augustus Tapin. His firm is quite well-known, I understand.”
“I know them well,” he said, sitting back in the chair. His smile was back, but the look in his eyes was coolly assessing. “Are you certain you have no idea of the identity of your benefactor?”
“Mr. Tapin was very reticent on the subject. He would not divulge the information.”
“How very fortuitous a gift,” he said.
“But you would prefer that I be anywhere but near Glengarrow.”
“Have I appeared that inhospitable, Miss Dalrousie?”
“You have,” she said, stepping back behind the easel once more.
“You were reared in Fife, you said.”
“Have you the gift of perfect recall, McDermott?”
“No, but I am capable of remembering facts that interest me.”
She didn’t answer him for a moment, curious if she interested him. That was not a question she’d ask.
“Yes,” she finally said, “I was born and raised in Fife. I come from a very poor family, McDermott. I had six brothers and four sisters. What else would you like to know?”
“I hear France in your voice sometimes. Sometimes a touch of an Italian accent.”
“I lived in Paris, and I speak French and Italian.”
“No Russian?”
“Yes, I speak Russian.”
“You’ve achieved a great deal, Miss Dalrousie. Evidently, some of your previous lovers were influential, if not moneyed men.”
“On the contrary,” she said calmly. “I’ve never depended on anyone else for either my livelihood or any achievements I’ve accomplished. What I’ve done, for good or ill, McDermott, has been on my own.”
“Ah, but there is your fallacious argument.” He clasped his hands together and leaned forward, staring at the carpet beneath his feet. “No one ever accomplishes anything without the assistance of someone else. Either accidentally, or deliberately. We are a society of human beings, Miss Dalrousie, and as such, we interact and depend on each other. You may think yourself independent and alone, but if you will stretch your mind back through the years, you’ll see your achievements were not solitary at all.”
“Spoken like a politician, McDermott, but not as a man who has ever had to fend for himself.”
He didn’t respond to that remark. Were they both attempting to be civil? How unlikely of both of them.
“How well do you know Paris?” he asked.
“I know Italy better,” she said. “I studied there for three years. My first lover was Italian. A count. Once we were intimate, I realized it was a mistake.”
“Why?”
“Because I had nothing more to learn from him. And I could only hurt him by that admission. It taught me a lesson. It is not a good idea to mix pleasure and work. So, from that point on, when I did take a lover, he was neither a subject nor a teacher, or anyone involved in my work.”
“Princes or dukes,” he guessed.
Her silence was assent enough.
“How many lovers have you had, Miss Dalrousie?”
Did he expect her to blush or stammer at the question.
“As many as you, McDermott.”
That comment evidently rendered him speechless, because he didn’t say anything for several long moments. When he did speak, however, she almost wished she hadn’t yielded to the temptation to needle him.
“Yet, for all your lovers, you’ve never known love.”
“Is it necessary for one to have the other? I’ve felt affection for the men I’ve invited to my bed, McDermott. I longed for them, I wanted them, and when it was over, it was time.”
“I know why you’ve never loved, Miss Dalrousie,” he said. “I don’t believe you’re capable of it. You’re cold and calculating, and about as warm as a Russian winter.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said.
She stepped out from behind the painting and regarded him.
“I’ve always tried to be honest with others. I’ve wanted a great deal in my life, but what I wanted wasn’t the same as what other women wanted. I wanted someone to be able to see a creation I did with my own hands.” She stretched out her hands palms up, as if she had never before seen them.
“A painting will not last forever, McDermott, but it will last for a significant number of years. Enough time that someone will stand in front of it and be in awe. He will wonder how an artist had the skill to capture a person so perfectly that a moment was preserved for dozens and dozens of years.”
She dropped her hands.
“That’s what I want. That’s what I’ve always wanted. I wanted that recognition more than I wanted love. But it was a trade, McDermott. I never fooled myself it would be anything else. I’ve never felt love, the anguish or the ecstasy of it. But if it’s anything like I feel when I’m painting, then it’s not something to be taken lightly or to be treated with disdain.”
“Why do you practice shooting every day?” he asked abruptly.
“To practice,” she said.
“Why?”
“To get better, of course. To be able to shoot a target. To at least shoot what I’m aiming for.”
“For what purpose? Are you going hunting, Miss Dalrousie? You don’t own enough land for game to be plentiful. And I take great umbrage to people hunting in my woods without permission.”
“Your rabbits and deer are safe from me, McDermott.”
“Then at whom are you aiming?”
“Perhaps a former lover,” she said smiling again. “Or a
subject who refused to pay me. Or one who refused to remain silent.”
He stood and began walking toward the door.
“I have not finished for the day,” she said.
“I have, Miss Dalrousie. It is one of my rules, one I’ve had to institute with only you. When I become sufficiently irritated, I leave the room.”
“Will you be here tomorrow?” she asked.
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Will my mood have mellowed by then? My irritation dissipated? I don’t know, Miss Dalrousie. In fact, I haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do in regards to you.”
Just what was that supposed to mean? Irritated, she stared after him.
Chapter 17
Margaret awoke, knowing she was screaming, either in her dream or in her mind. She sat up abruptly, clutching the pillow to her chest and rocked back and forth, a gesture not unlike that of a child. But had her mother ever comforted her? With so many children was there ever truly enough time to croon to the oddest child among her brood?
She lay back on the bed, curled into herself. One day, the nightmares had begun. One day, they would go away. All she had to do was endure them in the meantime.
The physician she’d seen in Edinburgh did not know the entire story. She didn’t think she could tell another soul about what had happened to her, not after the reception she’d received in Russia when she’d done that very thing. The physician had counseled she walk and spend some time in reflection. She’d almost felt amused at his prescription, but she followed it regardless.
Margaret stood and walked to the other side of the room, turning the key at the base of the gas lamp and increasing the flame. She never slept in the dark anymore. Darkness, the night itself, encouraged her nightmares. Why was it that horrible deeds were never done during the day? Why was it that night seemed a more propitious time for evil? When darkness shrouded the earth did it obscure goodness as well?
She donned her wrapper and debated going downstairs to make herself some tea. Tom and Janet slept on the third floor, so she wouldn’t have to worry about disturbing them. But she didn’t like walking through the cottage in the darkness.
