Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage (19 page)

A touch more cadmium yellow and it would be perfect. “Mmm hmm.”

“Hart rode with me. We had a long conversation. He asked me if I thought it a good idea if he married again.”

Mac’s muscles worked as he kneaded the large glob of paint to just the right consistency. Anyone who claimed painting wasn’t hard work was a bloody fool.

Isabella went on. “We also saw a few pigs flying. Which likely explains what I’m doing up here with you in nothing but a dressing gown.”

Mac finally turned.

Isabella was sitting on the edge of the chaise like a debutante at her first tea party. She had her feet primly on the floor, her hands in her lap. Her red hair was pulled into a simple knot, a few tendrils escaping it. The dressing gown was voluminous, but the silk clung to her bare body, and a curve of breast peeked coyly from the opening.

Mac had set the backless chaise in front of a crimson brocade curtain. One end of the chaise was raised so a lady could recline, half-sitting, half-lying. Mac had piled it with white silk draperies and cushions of brilliant gold. A bowl of bright yellow roses stood on the table next to it. Some of the rose petals had already drooped and fallen.

He drew a sharp breath and made himself turn away. “Lie down and pull the white cloths over your middle. I’ll begin in a minute.”

He’d barked similar instructions at many a model, feeling nothing as they slid out of their garments and draped themselves over whatever piece of furniture he’d provided. To Mac models were things of light and shadow, lines and colors. The best ones could breathe life into those lines and colors—without talking, wriggling, whining, or trying to flirt with him.

He moved to his easel with his charcoal pencil, keeping his gaze on the canvas. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Isabella calmly undo the fastenings that held her gown closed. His heartbeat rocketed.

“Like this?”

He had to look—how was he supposed to paint her without looking at her?

Mac looked. And stifled a groan.

Isabella lay propped on one elbow, her body half-turned toward him, the white sheet trickling across her abdomen. Her creamy breasts were tipped with dusky red, and coppery orange prickled from between her thighs. When they’d first married, Isabella had been eighteen, and her breasts had been high and round, firm little peaches. Six and a half years later, her breasts hung a little lower and her hips were rounder—womanly curves replacing the straight lines of the girl. She was so beautiful he wanted to weep.

“Mac?” Isabella lifted her hand and snapped her fingers. “Are you still here, Mac?”

“Mesmerized.” Mac made himself give her a clinical glance, as though she were a bowl of fruit he’d set up to paint.
Fruit. Lord help me.
“This is an erotic picture. Your pose is too tame.”

“Well, I don’t know much about erotic pictures, do I?”

Mac steadied his voice with effort. “Pretend you’ve been ravished repeatedly by your lover and then left on your own.”

“Ah.” Isabella sat up, tucked her feet under her, and mimed writing something on her lap.

Mac stared. “What the devil are you doing?”

“Writing a letter to my solicitor, naming my ravisher in a suit, and outlining the amount I expect to receive in damages.”

His heart started thumping again. “Amusing, love. Now lie back down. And sprawl.”

Her brows arched. “
Sprawl?
How does one
sprawl
?”

“Do you mean to tell me that the art of sprawling was never taught at Miss Pringle’s Select Academy?”

“Neither was taking off one’s clothes to be painted,” Isabella said. “Nor how one looks after one is ravished. Perhaps I should speak to Miss Pringle about amending the curriculum.”

Mac laughed. “I dare you. And please let me be there when you do.”

“I imagine that by
ravished
, you mean disheveled.” Isabella rubbed her hand through her hair. More tendrils fell from the bun and straggled across her cheek.

She was going to kill him. They were speaking rapidly and lightly, as though none of this truly mattered, but both of them were nervous. Or at least Mac was. Isabella, as always, looked cool and composed.

“More than disheveled,” he said. “You have been thoroughly spent by a night of grand passion.”

“I will have to use my imagination then. I’m not sure what that is like.”

Her sly smile and the sparkle in her eyes snapped Mac’s control. He tossed down his pencil and came around the easel to stand over her. “Little devil.”

“I said it in jest, Mac. I suppose I’ve had
one or two
nights of grand passion.”

“You, my dear, are coming dangerously near to . . .” He stopped, unable to complete the sentence.

Isabella’s lips curved. “Dangerously near to what, my lord?”

A
morning
of grand passion? She was his wife, his other self, and they’d thrown off their clothes and their restraints. Why should he stop himself?

“A tickling,” he finished. “You should be tickled until you can no longer make fun of your doddering old husband.”

Her glance moved down his body like a lick of flame. “I would never apply the adjectives
doddering
or
old
to you.”

Mac found it difficult to breathe. Or talk, or think. He seated himself on the edge of the chaise and yanked the crumpled sheet across her stomach. “I did promise to have these pictures done before Michaelmas. Now,
sprawl
, my dear. Arm overhead like that, leg hanging like this, sheet tangled and pushed aside.”

Isabella let him move her arm and leg without a murmur. Mac’s hands shook as though he were palsied.

“If a lady were truly sleeping after a grand passion,” Isabella said, “she’d bundle up in the sheet so as not to catch her death of cold. After warming herself with a nice cup of tea.”

“You are far too exhausted for that. Barely awake at all.” Mac patted her hip. “Move that a little off the edge.”

“That?
Are you implying that I am stout, Mac Mackenzie?”

“The word never left my lips, my petite angel.”

“Humph. Plump, perhaps? Portly, even?”

He wanted to tell her how much he adored her voluptuousness, her body that had grown even more beautiful since he’d seen it last. She’d actually become a little thinner since her departure, and he’d noticed that her appetite had lessened a bit, which worried him.

But Mac had been painting women since age fifteen, and he knew how sensitive they could be to any even imagined change to their waistline. A wise artist never mentioned it unless he wanted to lose a day’s work. He’d always been thankful that Isabella was much more sensible about her body, but even joking as she was, he knew better than to tell her he preferred her curves to the bodies of women who slimmed themselves into sticks.

“My love,” Mac said, “you have the finest, as the French say—derriere
—
imaginable.”

“Liar.” Isabella hooked her finger on the waistband of his kilt. “Take this off.”

Mac froze. “What? Why?”

“You have seen what I have become. Perhaps I would like to see whether your derriere has grown broader with time.”

What she would see was a cock that had elongated into a rigid pole. She could hang her St. Leger Ladies’ Day hat on it . . . and oh, Lord, why did he just think of that?

“You saw me in the bath, at your house in London,” he said. “And I lifted my kilt for you in your drawing room.”

“A brief glimpse, both times.” Isabella tugged harder on the waistband. “Come now, Mac. Turnabout is fair play.”

Mac decided he’d strangle whoever had invented that saying. He drew a deep breath, unpinned and unfastened the kilt, and let the woolen folds drop to the floor.

Isabella’s eyes grew round. “Oh. My.”

Mac put his knee on the chaise, swung himself on top of her, and lowered his face to hers. “Did you think you could lie here like this without me responding? I’ve been hard for you, my dear, since you barged into my house and actually spoke to me after three and a half years of silence.”

“That was a few weeks ago. You must have found it a bit inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient? It’s been absolute hell.”

Her eyes flickered. “You’ve borne up well.”

“I’m dying for you. I’ve managed to keep myself from you for all these years. Because
you
wished it. Well, I can’t do it any longer.”

Isabella’s slender throat moved in a swallow. Mac expected her to make another joke, to push him away, to mock him.

She touched his face. “You are with me now,” she whispered. “And the door is locked.”

Mac growled. “Hell, I wish I were a saint. I’d be able to leave the room if I were a saint.”

“If you were a saint, you’d never have married me in the first place.” Isabella’s voice went soft. “And that would have never done.”

“Why not? I made you miserable.”

She stroked his skin, her touch feather light. “You saved me from ordinary marriage to an ordinary man who spent his days at his club and his nights with his mistress. I’d have nothing to do but buy new dresses, have teas, and hostess fetes.”

“You do buy new dresses, have teas, and hostess fetes.”

She shook her head. “I bought gowns I thought you’d like to see me in. I gave tea parties for your friends, so they would be my friends too. I ran fetes to help people who needed help, because I wanted to emulate the way you helped poor artists.”

“I left you alone aplenty. Just like an ordinary husband.”

“Not to your club or to a mistress, which would have been intolerable.”

Her look was tender, her eyes so green. Mac brushed a kiss over her lashes, feeling them lush and full against his lips. “Clubs are rotten places. Gaming hells and cabarets are so much more entertaining. And I mean I’d leave you for weeks at a time. To run off to Paris or Rome or Venice—whatever took my fancy.”

“Because you thought I needed to be alone,” Isabella said. “Away from you.”

Mac swallowed. “Yes.”

Marriage to him had been hard on Isabella; Mac had seen that. After a month or so in his constant company, her eyes would grow strained and her face lined with exhaustion. Their tempers would fray, and they’d quarrel about the most inane and trivial things. Mac had realized early on that the best gift he could give Isabella was peace and quiet. He’d pack a few things and disappear. He’d write to her from wherever he ended up—Paris or Rome or Zurich, telling her gossip about friends and sending her picture postcards. Isabella would never write back, but then, Mac lived a gypsy-like existence, so there wouldn’t have been much point. A letter likely wouldn’t have reached him.

He’d return after several weeks to her welcoming smile, and all would be honeymoon-like again. Until the next time.

Mac saw in her eyes that Isabella didn’t believe that this time would be different. If he were a wise and practical man, he’d leave this room now, indicate that he was ready to take things slowly, to give her a calm, steady, sensible marriage, not one rife with ups and downs.

But he wasn’t wise, or practical, and definitely not sensible.

He kissed her.

His entire body came alive. He was aware of his blood boiling through his veins, his muscles tightening, Isabella’s mouth softening under his.

“God, you’re sweet.” Mac licked across her lips, tasting her morning tea laced with sugar. “Sweet little debutante I stole from under Papa’s nose.”

His sweet little debutante twined her arms around his neck and pulled him down to the chaise, on top of her naked, delectable body.

The feel of her husband on her made Isabella swallow a groan. He smelled of sweat and paint, and his mouth aroused her, promised, taunted. It had been too long, too long.

He pulled back, his eyes dark. “Isabella.”

This was different from Mac teasing her in the tub in Doncaster. Then he’d been fully clothed, playing with her, the master of the situation. Now he kissed her, equally naked, their bodies pressed together except where the bunched sheet separated them. Right now, they were man and wife.

“Just kiss me, Mac,” she whispered.

“This is not what I want.”

Isabella widened her eyes, trying to keep her voice light. “Goodness, you truly
have
embraced abstinence.”

His smile could have melted the hardiest ice floe. “Oh, no, my dear, I want you. I want to couple with you for hours on end. Days. Weeks. But I don’t want this and nothing more.”

Isabella touched his sandpaper whiskers on his chin. He hadn’t shaved this morning. “You said that before. But you want everything, all at once. Can we not simply take things as they come?”

“I’m very close to coming at this point.”

She laughed, and his brows drew together.