Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction

by Jennifer Ashley

  Mr. Finn looked up at her, the flash of bleakness in his eyes like an icy wind on a Highland moor. “Aye, I imagine he’s very busy. He’s a duke.”

  “Well, yes. He’s on all sorts of committees with ministries and things, when he’s not hosting gatherings to support the MPs he champions. He’s leader of the party, you know.” The last words were spoken with a downturn of voice, Celia finding the situation wearying rather than exciting.

  Wearying in the extreme. In her family, every waking moment, every activity, every word uttered, every deed done, had to be for the benefit of the Whigs and the glory of the dukes of Crenshaw. Any indiscretion from Celia, her brother, or her father, any flaw, any wrong turn would discredit the entire edifice.

  Hence, Celia’s current disgrace. She was a bit amazed they hadn’t simply locked her in the cellar and had done.

  She felt Mr. Finn’s eyes on her. Celia made herself meet his gaze, startled at the deep anger in it. A rage so bitter it made her flinch blazed out, and behind that was fear—stark, cold, bone-shaking fear.

  Celia frowned, and in an instant, the look was gone. Mr. Finn’s eyes warmed again and he turned to the drawings.

  “These are finely done, lass. You have a gift.”

  Celia shook her head. “You are kind, but …”

  “No, you show talent.” Mr. Finn touched the drawings of the cat, each one different. Celia had captured the black and white creature curled up with her tail over her nose, in others stretching, or batting at a fly, or sitting bolt upright like a statue, and finally contorted as she gracefully stretched out a back leg to lick her spread toes.

  “Your lines are good,” Mr. Finn said. “You can depict an action without overdoing it. Your landscapes show promise—you’ve got the depth right. This one is particularly good.” He tapped the drawing of London rooftops, which her mother said was ridiculous. Who wanted to look at a picture of a city? Especially one seen from a servants’ chamber?

  “Your portraits, now.” Mr. Finn pulled out the pictures of her father and mother and laid them side by side. “You have the outlines of the faces right—you can draw a nose, I will give you that. But I think this is where you can use instruction. How to capture a look, an emotion. I am noticing you have nothing of people save these two faces. No bodies.”

  “Full length figures are difficult,” Celia said in defense. “Especially when no one will sit still long enough for me to draw them.” She heard her frustration. Edward, who was a well-muscled specimen, would never give her five minutes for a sketch.

  “’Tis why artists hire models,” Mr. Finn said. “We pay them to sit still. Mind you, they don’t always.”

  “Do you have trouble with your models, Mr. Finn?” Celia asked in curiosity. “I hear they are ladies of great scandal.”

  She couldn’t keep the wistfulness from her voice. Artists’ models led shocking lives, but she admired their ability to do precisely as they pleased. Some of them went on to marry the artists and be celebrated, like Rubens’s very young second wife. Those ladies had never worried about their duchess mothers declaring they were no longer of any use to them, or the approbation of society that the Duchess of Crenshaw had such an ungrateful and disobedient daughter.

  “No trouble with the lady models,” Mr. Finn said without hesitation. “They stay motionless, because the sooner I finish, the sooner they can be paid. I was thinking of my younger brother, who wouldn’t stand still if you nailed his foot to the floor. Always moving, is he, even now that he’s grown up—” He broke off, bleakness flashing again in his eyes.

  Celia wondered what had happened to Mr. Finn to bring him such sadness. Had this younger brother died? Poor man.

  To have to scratch a living teaching while mourning his brother and raising a daughter on his own must be very difficult. Mr. Finn had made no mention of a wife—which might mean nothing; some gentlemen never talked about their wives—but a baby would be in the mother’s care if the mother were alive, not the father’s. Likely he was a widower. Celia’s pity escalated.

  Mr. Finn clapped his hands together, the sound large, and Celia jumped. “I know where ye need to start, lass. Sit there.”

  He waved her to a stool before the easel that had been turned to catch the light from the window.

  Mr. Finn took up a sheet of thick paper from the bundle on the table and attached it to the easel with swift, sure movements. A large box of drawing pencils, the expensive kind of true English graphite, came out of a drawer in a tall bureau. Mr. Finn extracted two pencils and whittled down the points with the knife for that purpose, lifting the pencils before his golden eyes to study their sharpness.

  He handed Celia one pencil and set the other on a table, waiting for her to sit. Celia slid onto the stool uncertainly, jamming her feet on the bottom rung.

  “What am I drawing?” she asked.

  Mr. Finn slid his coat from his shoulders and dropped himself down on a chair, the gilded thing sliding backward a few inches. His coat landed on the carpet.

  “Me.”

  Celia blinked at him. “To see what I make of your nose?”

  Another rumble of laughter. “No, lass. I’m thinking you need a few lessons in anatomy.”

  He untied his shirt and pulled it off over his head, dropping the shirt on top of his coat, a puddle of pale cloth on black wool.

  Chapter 3

  Celia’s mouth went dry as a linen bag.

  He sat not five feet from her, a large man with nothing covering his sunbaked torso. He lounged back in the chair, but he was straight and strong, unashamed, elbows on the chair’s delicate arms.

  The collarbone she’d glimpsed when she’d found him in his nightshirt stretched to his shoulders, one of which bore a small triangular gouge. Red hair curled down his chest to a firm belly, both chest and stomach crossed with scars. The arms that had cradled his daughter held sinewy strength and were brushed with more scars.

  He rested his right hand on the chair’s arm, palm down, fingers slightly curled. The hand alone was formidable, never mind the rest of him. The wiry hair on his arm was golden red, the hand, at rest, filled with potential power.

  His fingertips were blunt, fingers broad. The man claimed to be an artist, but Celia could easily picture this hand around the hilt of a claymore or holding a musket, muscles working as he fought British soldiers to the death.

  “Go on then,” he said in his rumbling voice. “We’ve started late, and I have other lessons today.”

  Celia jumped, realizing her mouth had opened again. She snapped it closed and jerked her gaze from his chest to find him watching her, unsmiling, his golden eyes filled with something she couldn’t decipher.

  She lifted her pencil and touched it to the paper, but she had no idea how to begin. Drawing had always come easily to her, but at this moment, her fingers would not move.

  Perhaps the fact that she was sitting alone in a room with a man who was half naked kept her fingers stiff. The last time Celia had been found in a compromising situation, her mother had tried to force her to marry the gentleman in question. If her mother came upon Celia with this man, however, she’d do everything in her power to make certain no one ever knew. Scandal was only acceptable when it was useful.

  At this moment, her duchess mother was comfortably far away on the other side of Grosvenor Square, Lady Flora was downstairs, and Celia and the drawing master were quite alone.

  She took a deep breath, willed her hand to work, and brushed a dark line across the page.

  Her brother’s drawing master had taught her to ignore what a thing was and to simply draw the form of it. He’d told her to block each part of the object with rough lines before going over them to clarify.

  Celia studied Mr. Finn’s bare arm, willing herself to see it as a series of shapes instead of the arm she’d imagined pulling her close. The top of his wrist was almost a rectangle and arcs ran from that along his forearm. Muscles curved in long half circles from the underside to gather in a hollow on th
e inside of his elbow.

  Celia slowly sketched the squares and ellipses to represent the hand, arm, and shoulder, but her pencil wobbled and the lines looked wrong. She could not pretend Ansel Finn was so many boxes and circles. She was aware of the blood that flowed under his skin, the heat of him coming to her across the small space, the aliveness of him. There was a great difference between drawing this man and sketching a vase of flowers.

  “Don’t think about it too hard, lass.” His silken voice slid into her uncertainty. “Let your mind see, and draw what it tells you.”

  Celia closed her eyes briefly, then fixed her gaze on his hand again. It lay quietly, the latent strength in his fingers reminding her of the whole man—a lion waiting for his prey.

  Her pencil skimmed smoothly across the page, a gray-black line flowing from its point. She formed the curve of his finger, the crease at its middle knuckle, the blunt fingertip.

  Celia drew a sharp breath as she looked at what she’d done. Not even a complete finger, but it already held more life than anything she’d drawn before.

  She looked up, pleased, and found his gaze firmly on her.

  Mr. Finn was sitting completely still, his amusement gone. His eyes were hard, flat, almost angry, and at the same time, full of fire. The fire was banked for now, but what must it be when it blazed?

  Celia saw a man holding himself back, hiding himself behind bluster and sudden smiles, neither the bluster nor the smiles the real person. Ansel Finn was not his name. The words were too tame to contain this man.

  Not a man. A warrior.

  Mr. Finn was no more a poor Irish artist struggling to make a living than Celia was. He’d seen war and death; his eyes had looked upon tragedy.

  His bearing, looks, height—all told her he was Scottish, one of the mad Highlanders. The fact that he pretended to be a harmless artist, using a false name and nationality, suggested that he must be one who’d followed Prince Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender, in his march against England.

  A traitor to the crown, a crazed fighter—Celia’s brother, Edward, had told her about the terrifying Highland soldiers screaming like banshees as they charged the British lines. Their wild cries and fearless attacks had broken the spirits of even the most courageous of Englishmen.

  This man had fought and killed, then watched his fellows die and die in the aftermath of Culloden Field. She’d heard all about Culloden from Edward, who’d witnessed the mass slaughter. No quarter given. That had been their orders. No matter that the men surrendered, no matter how much they begged for their lives, the evil Highlanders were cut down even as they raised their hands and pleaded for mercy. The field had been stained red with their blood.

  Edward had declared it a great victory. Celia’d had nightmares about it.

  She should be frightened to be in the room with a deadly Highlander, and furious with Lady Flora for allowing him near her. There was no doubt that Lady Flora knew exactly who this man was—she was the sort who would find out everything about him.

  But then, he must be harmless, because Lady Flora would never, ever give comfort to an enemy. She was working hand in glove with Celia’s father to make Britain the most powerful empire in the world. She’d been furious about the Jacobite Uprising, happy that the Duke of Cumberland had rushed to Scotland to beat them down.

  Ergo, Mr. Finn must not be dangerous.

  But the man who looked at her with intense amber eyes, was obviously quite dangerous. It was most puzzling.

  Celia cleared her throat. “Shall I continue?”

  Mr. Finn lifted his red-gold brows. “Ye came for a drawing lesson, didn’t ye? So we go until it’s done. Let me see where you are.”

  He slid his chair around so that he was next to her. Mr. Finn didn’t touch her, but the heat of his skin warmed her through the many layers of her robe à la Française. Celia glanced sideways at the well-muscled shoulder near hers, hard under satin skin. A bead of perspiration gathered at the back of her neck and trickled under her bodice.

  Mr. Finn leaned forward to study her drawing, putting his clean-smelling hair in its neat queue nearly under her chin. His hair was dark, but it wasn’t brown or black—a definite red hue ran through it like rich mahogany.

  “This is well done.” He tapped the line she’d made of his finger, which exactly matched the finger that touched it. Then he brushed at the squares and oblongs as though he wanted to erase them, and his fingertips came away black. “These are for students who’ve never drawn before. So that drawing masters can pretend to teach them something. You already know much.”

  He turned his head to look at her as he spoke, casually, as though sitting next to her half unclothed was nothing unusual. He had no embarrassment about his bare flesh, as if he didn’t even notice it.

  Celia couldn’t cease noticing. The length of his leg rested against her striped skirt, the pressure of it making her heart pound. He was so close she felt his breath on her neck.

  She flicked her gaze to his eyes, inches from hers, his stillness returning. The man changed from movement to quietude so fast it was unnerving. Perhaps that unpredictability was what had made the Highlanders so frightening to her brother and his soldiers.

  “Edward had a good teacher,” she said with difficulty.

  Mr. Finn returned to her drawing. The drop in temperature when he no longer focused on her was palpable.

  “You’ve learned much on your own, then,” he said. “With more practice, and a better teacher, your talent will shine forth.”

  “My brother’s drawing master was a famous painter,” Celia said, suppressing her sudden pleasure at the word talent. He must be flattering her so her mother would continue to pay him, but it was nice to hear anyway. “He’s done portraits of the king.”

  “A famous painter doesn’t equal a good teacher. They are full of their own genius and have no idea how to convey to others the basics of art. I have no genius, and so I instruct.”

  Good humor flashed in his eyes, wicked and self-effacing, like a schoolboy who’d made a joke. He’d become warm and friendly again, his distance evaporating. The Highland warrior was gone; the father who soothed his daughter with song had returned.

  “What have you painted?” Celia asked. “Anything I would have seen?”

  Mr. Finn shrugged, muscles moving beneath his shoulders. “Most of my better paintings are in France. But …”

  He snatched the pencil out of her hand before she could squeak in protest. Mr. Finn slid Celia and her chair away from the easel with alarming strength, turned the easel to him, and started scribbling on the drawing paper. He peered at her around it, his arm moving swiftly.

  After a few minutes, Mr. Finn clapped the pencil to the table and turned the easel so she could see what he’d done. “Not elegant, but it’s the sort of picture I do.”

  Celia looked into her own face. Not posed and regal, as in the portraits she’d sat for in her father’s house, but as she looked at this exact moment. Her lips were parted, her eyes focused, her brows drawn. One curl of her dark hair had escaped the careful knot at the back of her neck and trickled down her shoulder, and the lace cap on top of her head was slightly askew. Celia put a hand to it, and found it out of place in truth.

  “That is remarkable,” she said in breathless pleasure.

  “It’s a trick, but one that makes me a living. Now then—you’re having the lesson, my lady, not I.”

  He clipped a new sheet to the easel then picked up the pencil and thrust it back at her. “More than one finger, lass. I want an entire hand.”

  A grin spread across his face as he spoke, as though he’d said something naughty. Celia’s blood warmed, even though she had no idea what other meaning the words could have.

  She took the pencil, her suddenly tight stays constricting her breath. Mr. Finn shoved his chair back with strong feet, sliding into the table and slapping his hand to it. Whatever bond held his hair broke, sending a thick red-brown wave to his shoulders.

  Celi
a drew it, then the curve of his jaw, the square of his chin, his eyes full of fire. She was supposed to be sketching his hand, but an abrupt fever streamed through her, moving the pencil before she could stop it.

  His face took shape under her fingers, a Scottish soldier, hard and fearsome, yet full of intensity and warmth. The protective look he’d given the child in his arms came through, as well as the teasing gleam he’d reserved for Celia.

  Celia’s arm ached, her throat was dry, her eyes burning. But she couldn’t stop, not until—

  “Celia, you are lingering,” came a brisk voice. “Your next student has arrived, Mr. Finn.”

  Celia jerked and dropped the pencil, gasping as her breath poured back into her. The mists cleared to show her Lady Flora poised in the doorway, her wide skirts touching its frame, her eagle gaze fixed on Celia. Every entrance Lady Flora made was a portrait, a beautiful woman pausing in grace before she glided into a room.

  Why the devil she’d come to announce Mr. Finn’s next appointment herself instead of sending a footman, Celia had no idea. But she was there now, gazing in narrow-eyed disapproval at Celia hunched before the easel and Mr. Finn lolling on her gilded furniture from Paris.

  Mr. Finn calmly leaned down and picked up his shirt, bunching it up to pull over his head and settle on his shoulders. Lady Flora watched him then took in Celia’s hot face with keen, knowing eyes. She marched over to the easel as Celia slid off the stool, and frowned at what Celia had drawn.

  “A good likeness,” she pronounced. Her tone betrayed her doubt that Celia could have rendered such a thing. “A very good likeness.” She glared at Mr. Finn as though annoyed with him.

  Mr. Finn returned the look blandly. “Lady Celia has skill.”

  Celia knew her drawing had caught Mr. Finn well. She’d captured the good humor in his face, his unruly hair, his eyes holding a wicked light as well as an emptiness, as though he had a gap in his soul. Celia had sketched in a quick shadow behind his head to give the picture depth, and now she fancied she saw another in that shadow, a second man as strong as he was, but this one as insubstantial as smoke.