by Karen Ranney
She looked up at the ceiling, but there was no answer there, and the gesture didn’t give her any more time.
He approached her, his footsteps muted on the soft carpet. With one hand, he reached out and closed the window. The curtains immediately stilled.
“To a ghost,” she said and glanced at him. “Do you not think Glengarrow is haunted sometimes?”
“If it is, there are a variety of ghosts present. The house is three hundred years old. A great many people have lived here over those three centuries. If a building carries the memories of the life experiences of those who lived within its walls, Glengarrow would have many ghosts indeed.”
He knew quite well she’d been addressing Amelia, but his wife’s name was not mentioned. She shrugged and returned to stand behind the canvas.
“I didn’t expect you to be here,” he said in answer.
“I have a portrait to finish.”
He nodded as if he expected her answer.
“Had you no one to speak for you?”
She knew, immediately, to what he referred. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said. “I suspect one of them was a royal prince. That meant all of them would be protected.”
He hesitated for a moment, and she could almost predict his thoughts.
She took a step forward and held up her free hand. “You did not overpower me, except with sensation, Your Lordship. You did not hurt me, and it was not rape.”
“Are you certain?”
Her laughter burst free, and she almost kissed him for the joy she felt at the moment.
“Were you not there?”
“Margaret.” Once again, that was all he said, as if her name were either a chastisement or a sound of exasperation.
He stepped to the side so he could see her. “What do I say to you? Do I thank you?” he asked. “Do I assure you it will never happen again?”
She gestured toward the chair beside the window.
After a brief hesitation, he walked toward it. Once seated, he glanced toward the corner.
“Are you certain apologies are not in order?” he asked.
How very careful he was in his tone.
“Must we discuss it?” she asked.
“I think we must.”
She stepped out from behind the canvas again, one hand still resting on the easel.
“We were hungry for each other, Your Lordship. Nothing more and nothing less. We had a hunger, and it has been appeased.”
“Appetite, Miss Dalrousie?”
“Either that, or loneliness, Your Lordship. I would prefer to call it appetite.”
“Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head. “You did not.”
“Tell me about that night.”
She stared at him incredulously.
“Why?”
He didn’t answer, only focused his attention on the view outside the window.
“Please,” he said, and she neither understood the request nor his politeness.
“Why do want to know?”
He focused his attention on her once more, and she felt pinned by his gaze. “If it disturbs you, of course we don’t have to discuss it.”
“I didn’t say it disturbed me,” she said, but it did. She hated remembering that time, and she’d never discussed it with anyone, not even the physician who’d treated her.
“Is that why you practice your shooting every day? You’re planning on retribution?”
She really didn’t want to have this conversation, but McDermott had a stubborn look on his face, one that promised he would not give up the subject.
“Tell me about that night,” he said again, and his tone wasn’t gentle or encouraging. Nor was it filled with anything remotely resembling pity. If it had been, she wouldn’t have spoken.
But because he sounded interested, curious in the way two people often want to breach gaps between them, she answered.
“What do you want to know?”
“All of it.”
She moved to sit at the end of the chaise facing him.
“I was quite the darling of the Russian court,” she said. “I would have been busy from dawn until dusk for months and years if I’d allowed it. But I had my pick of commissions. Emperor Nicholas I and the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna recommended me to the court. Anyone who wished to be considered part of society commissioned Margaret Dalrousie for his portrait.”
His smile was barely there, but it was a sign of amusement nonetheless.
“It isn’t immodest to state the truth, McDermott. I was not only famous, but I was well on my way to becoming quite wealthy. Perhaps that’s what made me think I was invincible, and inviolate. The world was what I wanted it to be, not as it was. I hope I never forget the lesson I learned, because to be that foolish again puts me at my peril.”
He didn’t respond, and after a moment, she continued, “I was used to taking my own troika from my studio to the night’s entertainment. Depending on the rank of my subjects, I often made special arrangements for them. As long as the place was airy enough and had enough light, I had no objections to setting my easel in the rooms of their choosing. I’ve found that people were more natural in their own homes.” She glanced at him. “But I’m digressing, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” he said, and the word sounded absurdly gentle.
“I’d been attending a ball in honor of the Grand Duchess’s birthday. It was late, and the night was beautiful, cold but with a hint of spring. Spring comes so quickly in Russia. One moment you’re certain the winter will never end, and the next it’s upon you. The snow melts and the grass shoots up and the flowers come. It’s like a great surprise God has provided as a reward for surviving the winter.”
How very odd that suddenly she felt afraid. Not of him, but of the memories cascading into her mind, one after the other, recollections that she’d not had before. As if they were waiting for permission to surface, and now they were nearly drowning her with sensations.
“Are you all right?”
She could barely breathe, and panic squeezed her chest like a tight band. After a moment, she nodded.
“They’d all been drinking. I knew that almost immediately. But it was hard to find any young noble in Russia who hadn’t been drinking.”
“You knew them?”
“I’m sure I knew them,” she said softly. “I never saw them, but their voices were familiar.”
Thankfully, he didn’t want to know exactly what happened, because she had no intention of telling him. Instead, he asked her a question she didn’t expect.
“Is that why you left Russia?”
“In a way,” she answered. “I made a mistake, the very worst kind of mistake,” she said.
He didn’t comment. Nor did he ask, simply waited, silent in that inexorable way of his.
“I was certain I recognized the voice of one of the young men. I knew he was the grandson of the Grand Duchess. I went to her and told her what happened. Two errors on my part, actually. One, to admit such an attack actually occurred, and I was the victim of it. Two, to accuse her grandson. I was twice condemned.”
She looked down at her clenched hands, released them, and placed them flat on her skirt. “I was an artist, a woman viewed with some suspicion despite my popularity. I was forgiven my talent because of it. Because the royal family had approved of me. But I was a woman of loose morals now, someone who’d lured these young men to unspeakable acts. Even if such a horrible thing had occurred, I was to blame. In addition I had darkened the name of her grandson.”
“I have some knowledge of Russian society, they’re very close-knit. If one hates, the others do as well.”
She smiled at him. “That’s exactly what happened. Those who owed me money simply took advantage of the situation and stopped paying me. My work was no longer sought after, and consequently within a matter of months, I was in dire financial straits. The very people who’d summoned me to Russia turned their backs on me.”
She took a deep breat
h. “I didn’t know who they were, but I suspected I had met one or two of my attackers in society.”
“What can I do?” he asked.
“Do?” She stood and moved to stand behind the easel, then took pity on him, returning to his question. “There is nothing you can do. Why is it men always want to solve a problem, even when a problem cannot be solved?”
“Because it gives us the illusion we’re in control,” he said without hesitation.
“Even if you fail in your quest?” She peered at him.
He smiled, one of the few times she’d seen him smile. “It doesn’t matter if you fail,” he said. “It only matters if you don’t try.”
“So if there was something you could do about the situation I found myself in, what would it be?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“Justice, certainly. Although I’m not certain how that could be accomplished. The relationship between Russia and the Empire is deteriorating every day. At least you are well away. Can you not put it behind you?”
“One of them was English.”
He didn’t move his gaze from her face.
“What is his name?”
“Do you think to find me justice, McDermott? Is that why you want to know?”
He didn’t answer, remaining implacably silent.
She turned to look out the window. “I don’t know who he was. I always hoped that circumstances would change, and I’d no longer need the charity of others.”
“What circumstances?”
She sighed. Had he always been so tenacious? One did not tell a new subject she’d been unable to paint until this very commission. For all their previous intimacy, McDermott was still her employer, at least for the time it took to complete Amelia’s portrait.
“I left Russia with a great many people owing me money, McDermott,” she said, stepping back behind the easel again.
“Why do I think those aren’t the circumstances you mean?” he said.
Was he still staring in her direction? She didn’t look.
“I suspect the circumstances you’re talking about have a great deal to do with practicing your pistol.”
She didn’t answer him. What could she have said, after all?
Chapter 22
Long moments stretched between them. Neither spoke, and yet it was a comfortable silence, a companionable time. Finally, she peered out from behind the canvas to find him looking not at the view, or surveying the tips of his boots, but directly at her.
Startled, she smiled at him, and amazingly, he smiled back.
“How did a poor girl from Fife become an artist?”
“How?” she asked. It was his fault if she sounded idiotic at the moment. He really shouldn’t smile—it rendered him even more handsome.
He nodded. “I suspect a man was at the heart of it.”
“What makes you think it was a man who guided me?”
“It wasn’t?” He sat back, his smile still in evidence.
“It was the Duchess of Burford,” she said.
“Indeed.”
Should he look so very pleased? Jealousy wasn’t an emotion she’d ascribe to the Earl of Linnet, especially not in regard to her.
“And how did the Duchess of Burford recognize your talent?”
He leaned back against the chair, his hands resting on the arms, a very aristocratic pose. She was not intimidated by his fixed look. The Emperor of Russia had stared at her just so, and she had simply stared back.
How much did she want to tell him of her past? She’d already told him more than anyone else in her lifetime. What were more revelations after the tale of what had happened to her in Russia?
“As I told you, my family was desperately poor,” she said, careful not to allow any emotion into the words. She would not reveal any of the desperation of her childhood, of the very real fear there would never be enough to eat, that she would never be warm enough, that she’d never be able to sleep the night, six of them crowded into one bed.
“The Duchess of Burford did good works,” she said. “I was one of her charity cases, you might say. One day, she was distributing a basket of food to my family.”
The duchess had not exited her coach but had directed a footman to the door of their home, a squat, horrid, dark little hovel. Something captured her attention, and she’d first opened the window, then the carriage door, and finally emerged, an angel dressed in green silk and smelling of perfume.
“What are you doing, child?” she asked, coming up to Margaret squatting in the corner at the front of the house.
Margaret had ignored her, being intent, instead, on venting her rage on her oldest brother by rendering his image in the dust. He’d eaten her breakfast, and she was so hungry her stomach hadn’t ceased its grumbling for hours. The picture in the dirt was recognizable, and very malicious, and she’d be hit if anyone else in the family saw it.
“Child?” She looked up to find a woman staring down at her, then tilting her head to see the picture she’d drawn of her brother. When she would have reached out and smoothed the dirt, the woman stayed her hand.
“It was she who arranged for me to be given instruction,” she said now.
“At her home?”
Margaret smiled. “I don’t think the Duchess of Burford wanted me anywhere near her home. I didn’t see her again until three years later. No, she arranged for a retired teacher to instruct me. I went to his home three days a week.”
“And after that? Were you expected simply to return to your…” he paused, and she completed his question.
“Hovel? Squalid living conditions? Poverty? If I was content to do so, yes. The duchess never tried to sway me one way or another. She only offered possibilities.
“I was hungry, then. Not just for food, but for knowledge. I wanted to know what the world was like, and the duchess did that for me. She opened an entire universe in her way. My instructor was a good man, patient and knowledgeable. The day he announced he could no longer teach me, I was devastated. I sent word to her, begging her to change his mind.”
“And she did, of course.”
Margaret smiled. “No, she didn’t. She sent a carriage for me and received me in her sitting room.” She glanced at him. “Have you gone anywhere and known, immediately, you didn’t belong?”
“Yes,” he answered, surprising her. “The Imperial Court of Russia.”
She tucked that information away to think about later.
“I was too dirty for the sitting room,” she said. “I didn’t know where to sit, what to do. When the duchess entered, she told me to sit down on the davenport, never to appear uneasy regardless of the circumstances. She also told me she was going to send me to Italy, that my instructor had said I’d learned everything he had to teach, that I needed to study with someone more skilled.”
“And so you went. What did your parents have to say?”
She smiled. “I’d actually earned some money by that time. I’d painted the portrait of a rich man’s child, and he paid me something for it. I think the prospect of my being able to earn money was more valuable than my presence. Getting rid of one more mouth to feed must have been a relief.”
“How many years did you send money to them?”
She glanced at him, surprised. “How did you know?”
He shrugged. “A guess. The same way I’m guessing you’ve never been back since.”
She nodded. “I’ve not spoken to them since the day I left for Italy,” she admitted.
Her mother was a lass with a winsome way, her father had always said, telling the story of their courtship with a grin and a gulp from the tankard of ale never far from his hand. The fact the lass had a fiery disposition to match her lovely sunset-colored hair was something never mentioned in the fairy tale her father spun. Nor did he ever comment on the fact that husband and wife rarely talked, and only then through their children.
Margaret had walked away from the tiny cottage and the sight of her mother’s face pinched with age and bittern
ess, slitting her eyes at her as if gauging the weaknesses of a particularly loathsome enemy.
Punishment by silence was her mother’s way. They had clashed from the moment Margaret could speak. The biggest rift, however, was one words would not make right between them: Margaret’s strangeness. Margaret had wanted more than her mother had, more than she’d settled for, more, perhaps, than her mother thought she deserved, and for that, her mother would never forgive her.
Above all, she’d dared to aim too high above herself.
“What about the Duchess of Burford? No doubt she’s proud of her protégé.”
“I hope that’s true,” she said. “I went to her house in Edinburgh only to discover that she’d died when I was in Russia. I’ve always regretted that I didn’t correspond more often with her.”
“Have you never gotten your fill of the nobility, then?”
“More than once,” she said. “But they’re the only ones who can pay to have their portraits painted. Who want to immortalize themselves. The poor simply want to endure their lives. They don’t give very much thought to posterity. Perhaps that’s the biggest difference between them, the freedom to think about the future.”
She moved behind the easel again, finding the shelter of it reassuring and protective.
“But that is enough about me,” she said.
“Was I truly your first lover?”
She stared at the canvas, unseeing.
Her body heated as she contemplated not answering the question. But McDermott would not cease until he’d obtained an answer—she knew that much about him. He was persistent and dogmatic, Scottish-stubborn.
“Are you going to answer the question?”
“I am intent on my work, McDermott. I normally do not let anyone speak while I’m painting.”
“Surely you do not object to a simple answer.”
“Yes, you were my first lover.” She waited for him to accuse her of lying, of questioning why she’d made up stories, but he surprised her with another question on another topic.
“What would you do to help our starving countrymen?”
She peered from behind the canvas. At the rate they were going, she wouldn’t finish anything today. “Why are you asking me?”
