by Virna DePaul
She sighed, knowing she sounded petulant. “It’s at a big corporation. I’m helping their advertising department creating whatever art they tell me to. It’s soulless and heartless and I’m dreading it. I have to leave.”
He smiled and pulled her into a tighter hug. “Then why are you taking the job, lass? Why not stay here with me?”
“Because I need money,” she grumbled into his chest.
His smell was already making Wednesday’s cold reality fade away again. She pushed back from him to clear her head.
“I was selling my own paintings on the subway or whatever art gallery would display them. I’d just charge whatever someone could pay, no matter how long I’d worked on the piece or whether I was breaking even. I just wanted people to see my art and enjoy it. That’s all.” She sighed and looked down at the ground, shrugging offhandedly. “But my father isn’t working and rent is due. The small amount of money I inherited from my mother? I used it to fund my trip to see the European art masters. It was a dream we both shared. A dream she’ll never get to fulfill. And I bought the tickets before my father lost his job.”
Callum listened to her patiently, though she could tell he wanted to say something.
“The storage facility where I’m keeping all of my mother’s art and my father’s instruments didn't get my check for the last two months.” Her heart clenched at the thought of it. “If I don’t get them the money on Wednesday, I’ll lose the unit. They’ll put it up for auction. My most important things will be gone. Just…gone.”
Her voice echoed around the empty lookout. Callum looked at her compassionately, which made her voice soften when she spoke again.
“I can’t lose those things from my parents. My father needs his instruments. He doesn’t know it yet, but I do. He needs my mother’s memory, the memory of her love. And if it’s gone…well, I just…I don’t…So, you see?” she finally said. “I have to leave.”
“No.”
Molly frowned in surprise. “What?”
He gripped her shoulders. His handsome face had a set, firm expression, his eyes dark green in the moonlight.
“I don’t see it at all. If that is what there is to see, then I’m blind.”
“But Callum—”
“Molly,” he suddenly interrupted. “I want you to stay.”
Chapter Eighteen
Callum
They weren’t words he’d planned on saying. He hadn’t thought of them or considered them beforehand. Not like drafting an important speech or creating those notecards for the school presentation.
Yet right then, those words felt like the most important words he’d ever spoken. It wasn’t poetry or anything remotely artistic, but they were the only words he had, and they were written on his soul. Those five words and nothing else.
He looked down at Molly right after he’d said them. He expected her to fall into his arms whispering yes, oh yes Callum again and again. He expected her eyes to brim with tears from him opening his soul and revealing all to her. He even half thought she might thank him or do something a little naughty to express her gratitude.
What he did not expect her to do was laugh.
“Did you just laugh?”
She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. “Did you just tell me you wanted me to stay?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “Then yes, I just laughed.”
“I mean it,” he insisted, not understanding why she didn’t believe him.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.” She laughed again, pushing him away. “You’re just drunk.”
He pulled her back, tight and firm and close. “I’m dead sober, Molly. I know exactly what I’m saying.”
She shook her head. “You’re just wrapped up in the thrill of it all. We’ve had a lot of fun. We’ve fucked a lot. We’ve—”
“It’s not just about the sex,” he tried to say.
“No, but it is about the fantasy.” She dug the heels of her palm into her eyes and sighed. “You don’t mean what you said, Callum. You just don’t. You’re a duke. You’re the Duke, and you need to act a certain way, and the way you need to act does not include someone like me.”
“I’ve changed,” he said. “I’ve changed because of you.”
That got her to drop her hands and glance tentatively at him. She was clearly waiting for him to continue.
“Before you came here, I wasn’t myself. You saw that from the moment you came into the ballroom. You also clearly had no problem calling me out on it.”
She blushed sheepishly, making him grin.
“The guilt of the accident, the weight of my father’s death, the expectations of my mother, my family, my people—it all crushed me. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t, and it was eating me alive. I was lost. And then you came.”
She started to say what he knew she’d try to say. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. Really, it was all you.”
“No,” he said. “It was you. It was all you.”
She bit her lip, about to contradict him again.
“It was you, Molly,” he added, his voice just as commanding as the day he stopped her in the hallway.
With her silent, at least for the moment, he took a deep breath and went on. She had to hear this. She had to know.
“You’re talented and brave and honest and special. You are special.”
She didn’t disagree this time. She merely looked up at him with wide eyes that he could tell wanted to believe what he was saying. He, too, wanted her to believe. If there was any rock-solid truth that Callum Harding knew, it was this.
“You’re not meant for cages, Molly. You’re not meant for a cubicle or an office building or even the boundaries of New York City. No one should tell you what to paint or hell, even what to create. Your art isn’t meant for restrictions. You should paint wildly. You should live wildly. Because you’re wild.”
He wasn’t even sure what he was saying, but it all felt right. And he meant every single goddamn word.
“If you go back, Molly...if you take that job…you’ll be someone you’re not.”
If you leave me, you’ll be someone you’re not.
He’d also wanted to say that, but he held it back. Even though he believed it. Together, they inspired and challenged each other. They pushed each other, daring to be more and more themselves.
“Believe me, I know what it’s like to be someone you’re not. You saw what happened to me. You saw the duties, the bars like those of a jail. I never want to see those bars on you. It would destroy me.”
Her freckles seemed to twinkle like stars and her hair moved like ripples over the lake outside Floors Castle. Tracing her lips would be like tracing the gentle roll of the hills in the distance. She was so beautiful tonight. Everything about her, he realized, was like Kelso. If she left, he’d be cursed. He’d never stop seeing her everywhere.
“And so, Molly,” he said with a smile, “you just can’t leave.”
His smile was wide and open and warm. A smile encouraging her to believe him. To trust him. She was also starting to smile, but it was different. Her smile twitched at the corners and threatened to fall from a cloud of doubt and hesitation. Something was missing.
“I want to believe you,” she said, staring down at the gravel. “You have no idea how badly I want to believe you.”
He could sense what was coming next.
“Let’s just wait until tomorrow, all right?” She slipped her hand into his. “Sometimes we think we’ve changed and…it’s harder than we think.”
He pondered her cryptic words. She didn’t believe that he had changed, did she? Was she worried this was temporary? An act? Couldn’t she see he never wanted to go back to the way he was when she’d found him?
As he was thinking of how to prove this to her, she shivered.
“I’m a little cold.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and walked her back to the car. He handed her the dress and she slipped it back on,
ripped and muddied as it was. Then, as he was helping her into his jacket to keep her warm, he reassured her again.
“You’ll see.”
Molly glanced at him over her shoulders, and her eyes met his.
“One way or another,” he insisted. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Nineteen
Molly
“Did you make the necessary changes I requested, Miss Rose?”
Sweeping her paintbrush across the canvas, Molly just didn’t feel like looking up at Isla or answering her question.
Gray clouds and pattering rain against the stained glass windows drenched the ballroom in dim light. At least in his portrait, Callum was bathed in the warmth of a bright afternoon sun. She mixed red into the brown hues on her palette to paint his hair. She knew, just knew, that if she ever saw his hair on a truly sunny day, it’d catch red like embers. Thanks to Scotland’s gloomy summer weather, she hadn’t seen it yet. But she knew. She closed her eyes for a moment to make sure she’d gotten the color just right.
“Miss Rose,” Isla continued as if Molly was actually listening. “Per our discussion, have you muted the colors?”
Again, Molly paid her no heed from behind the canvas, but instead raised her eyes to Callum sitting across from her. His shoulder-length hair was gelled back as usual for these sittings or professional functions as the Duke of Roxburghe.
But as Molly’s paintbrush dipped and swayed across the canvas, she just didn’t have the will to paint him the way she saw. In a few days, she’d be sitting in an office and, just like Isla, a boss would be telling her exactly what colors to use and what subject to illustrate.
Today was Saturday. Wednesday was fast approaching.
And so, without any thought whatsoever for Isla’s requirements, Molly moved her brush in fluid, untidy strokes. She painted Callum’s hair the way she wanted to remember it—soft and slightly messy, falling in his face. She painted it the way it had looked when he leaned over her on his bed, or like that day at the Highland Games when his eyes found hers in the crowd.
“Miss Rose, are you even listening?” Isla said. “I demand the Duke’s portrait be painted according to custom. Do you hear?”
While painting Callum’s hair with those fluid swaths of red and brown, her thoughts drifted to last night. Molly, I want you to stay. That’s what he said. And she could even believe that in the moment, while wrapped up in the heat of a fantasy of an impossible life together, he meant it. But she had a much harder time believing he’d mean it in a week, let alone a year. Two years. Three. A lifetime.
She also wanted to believe he’d changed. That he no longer felt compelled to be the man he clearly wasn’t—his brother Jamie. But life had a way of tugging even those who meant well back to the mud, back to reality. His mother demanded he act a certain way. As Duke, he was under enormous pressure to live up to his father’s name. He had responsibilities and duties and none of that would change. She feared he didn’t know how difficult it was to truly be one’s self.
She knew all too well. She’d tried for years. Had sacrificed a lot, and then sacrificed even more. It involved ramen dinners and dodging calls from the electricity company and hour after hour in the subway getting enough crumpled bills to pay the storage facility. It was hard work and draining and she was giving up.
But before she left, she wanted to give Callum one last reminder of the real man she saw and would always see. So, after the final intricate details, she finished his portrait.
In the end, it really wasn’t a duke’s portrait. It was the portrait of the man she’d held and who’d held her. He was vulnerable and strong, kind and stubborn as hell, daring and reckless and dangerous. A man who’d opened his heart even when it had been painful and difficult to do so.
Isla marched right over to Molly, her heels echoing sharply on the ballroom floor.
“Miss Rose, are you quite deaf?”
With one last assessment of her art, Molly set down her paintbrush and stepped back. She was done. But the threatening storm had at last arrived, and there was no time to board up the windows. She was going to get swept away, and she accepted it.
“For ten minutes, I’ve been asking if you’ve made the appropriate chang—”
Horror spread across Isla’s face, and she put her hands up to her pale cheeks. The portrait was nothing like the stern and stiff ones in the hallway. If Isla hung Callum’s portrait next to those, it would stick out like a crimson cardinal in a green forest. But Molly knew that. That’s what she’d intended.
“Who is that?” Isla asked in a high-pitched voice.
Callum raised his eyes in concern and stood quickly to come right over to the easel, seemingly ready to put out a fire in case Isla had matches on her.
“Don’t you recognize him, ma’am?” Molly asked. She was in no mood for any of Isla’s shit. “Can you really not see your own son?”
Callum’s mother frowned so fiercely that she looked more terrifying than Molly expected, but Molly stood her ground even when Isla stepped closer and pointed her finger at her chest.
“You listen here, girl,” she hissed. “I don’t know why you did this, but you will amend this immediately. That is not the Duke of Roxburghe.”
“Mother, please.” Callum jumped in, hands raised to diffuse the escalating tension. “It’s just a different style.”
Molly turned to him. “No, it’s not,” she insisted. “It’s a different person.”
“Please don’t do this,” he whispered, eyes pleading. “It’s fine.”
Shaking her head and swatting his hand away as he tried to reach for her, Molly again faced his mother and squared her shoulders. “Your son is a wonderful man, ma’am, and I wish you could see that.”
Isla merely stared at her, too stunned to speak. Molly seized the silence and continued, summoning all the bravery she could.
“I wish you could see how he smiles when he talks about Kelso, about his people. Or how he laughs when he doesn’t think anyone is listening. I wish you could feel his pride when he competes in the games, and know the strain it causes him to act the way he thinks you want him to act because of what happened to Jamie.”
Isla’s eyes had remained frozen this whole time, but at the mention of her passed son, they immediately jumped to Callum.
“He’s not the Duke you expected,” Molly continued. “Maybe he’s not even the Duke you wanted. He can be reckless, acting from his heart when you want him to think with his head. But he’ll be a passionate, dedicated, hard-working duke. This man right here.”
Molly pointed to the portrait.
“But the man you want me to paint will be a shell of a man. He’ll dress like you want, act like you want, speak like you want. He’ll be the Duke you want. But he will not be your son.”
Daggers flew from Isla’s eyes, but Molly could tell she’d hit a nerve. Somewhere deep down. But she’d hit it.
Next to her, Callum groaned, covering his face and shaking his head, but Molly wouldn’t relent under Isla’s dark glare. Not even when footsteps approached from outside the ballroom and she heard Mack’s voice.
“Your Grace, I need to speak to you.”
“Not now, Mack,” Callum said wearily. “Mother, please—”
“Sir,” Mack interrupted. “I’m terribly sorry, but it really is quite urgent.”
“Really Mack, we’re in the middle of something. I’m sure it can wait.”
“It is very much an emergency, Your Grace.”
Isla rolled her eyes, turning to Mack as he fidgeted nervously in the doorway. “Well,” she said, “what is it then?”
“It’s something I must speak to the Duke about privately. Right now, please.”
Molly looked at Callum and his eyes met hers. Then he sighed and moved towards the door.
“Really Mack, I do hope this is important, because—”
A woman briskly brushed past Mack, who made a pretty good attempt at trying to stop her, and strode right into the ballroom. At f
irst glance, she looked startlingly like Molly. The commotion of her arrival forced Molly to step back, stumbling into the easel.
Arms crossed, Isla assessed the newcomer with suspicion. “Who in God’s name are you?” she demanded.
She should have asked Molly, who knew exactly who this woman was.
The woman straightened her sodden raincoat and lifted her chin. “Why, I’m Priscilla Rose, of course.”
Chapter Twenty
Callum
One look at the real Priscilla Rose and Callum knew she was everything he’d expected to see so many days ago. The real Miss Rose bore a passing resemblance to Molly, with creamy skin, a small frame, and blonde hair almost the exact same shade. Yet she wore a crisp white shirt and basic black slacks under her trench coat. Not a pink T-shirt or holes in the knees of her pants. No stickers on her simple black heels. A nice but plain leather purse hung from her shoulder. Not a backpack that had a sketchbook featuring drawings both wondrous and beautiful. Miss Rose’s hair was smoothed down, every strand locked in a tight ponytail at the base of her neck. Nothing like Molly’s soft blonde curls that swayed like the soft Scottish grasses.
Yes, it came as no surprise whatsoever when the woman answered his mother’s question and quite curtly revealed her identity.
Standing behind the newcomer, Mack mouthed sorry and tugged worriedly at his bristly red beard. Such a convenient time for Callum to remember Mack’s missed calls earlier that morning. He mentally kicked himself.
He’d known Molly’s true identity would come out sooner or later. He just hadn’t expected sooner to mean right that moment.
“You are Priscilla Rose?” Confused, Isla glanced back and forth between the real Miss Rose and the imposter, his Miss Lane. His mother was the only one in the room still trying to piece it together. Mack was probably figuring out how to keep his job after keeping such a secret from Callum’s mother. Molly was probably weighing the possibilities of arming herself or not with a paintbrush.
