Portrait of a Love (3 page)

“I’m not letting you near Susan,” his brother retorted. He bent over to kiss his mother and smiled at Isabel as he left the room.

“He sounds serious,” Leo commented to his mother after Ben was safely down the stairs.

“I think he is. Susan is a lovely girl, and she’s good for Ben.”

Leo nodded absently and his eyes focused on Isabel, who was sitting next to the chimneypiece. She was wearing a soft wool dress of pale gold, and his eyes lingered for a minute on her long, elegant legs before moving thoughtfully to her face. Isabel saw the look and, to her own surprise and discomfort, felt blood come into her cheeks. Annoyed at herself, she sat up straighter in her chair. Good God, she thought, you’d think a man had never looked at my legs before. It was a moment before she realized he was smiling at her.

“I’m so much older than my brother and sister that sometimes I get fits of paternal instinct,” he said.

“There must be ten years between you and Ben,” she managed to say.

“Yes. And sixteen years between me and Paige.”

“I had quite given up on having another child when Ben came along,” Mrs. Sinclair said. “And Paige was a complete surprise.”

Leo put down his coffee cup and leaned back on the sofa, stretching the muscles in his back. His darkly clad shoulders looked enormous against the paler upholstery of the sofa. “What about you, Miss MacCarthy? Do you have brothers and sisters?”

Isabel had never realized how charming a Southern accent could sound. “No,” she answered simply, though her own voice sounded unpleasantly nasal and clipped in contrast to his. “I was an only child.” The blue eyes were steady on her face and she found herself continuing, “My mother died when I was thirteen.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs. Sinclair in quick sympathy.

“And your father?” asked Leo.

Unknown to her, Isabel’s face took on the bleak look it always wore when the subject of her father arose. “My father died three years ago,” she said, and looked at her hands.

“That’s when my father died,” Leo said quietly.

Isabel took a deep, steadying breath. “It was not a good year,” she said, and looked up from her lap and met his eyes. They were the most absolutely blue eyes she had ever seen. It was not until Mrs. Sinclair spoke that she was able to look away from him.

“Do you want to start painting tomorrow, Isabel?” the senator’s mother asked.

“How can I?” Isabel asked in genuine bewilderment.

“Can’t you start the portrait here?”

“Oh, I see what you’re thinking.” She shook her head. “The light would be different.”

“Then you’ll have to wait until you get to Washington.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Isabel a little apologetically.

“Good,” said Leo Sinclair unexpectedly. “That will give me a few days to show you around the area.”

Isabel tried to speak coolly. “You needn’t worry about entertaining me, Senator.”

His smile was warm and his slow voice held a hint of amusement. “It’s not a worry,” he said easily. “It will be a pleasure.”

“What Mass do you want to go to tomorrow, Leo?” asked Mrs. Sinclair.

“The ten-thirty, I reckon.”

Mrs. Sinclair nodded and looked at Isabel. “Would you like to come with us, Isabel?”

Isabel hadn’t been to Mass in years and she looked in surprise at the two Southern aristocrats in front of her. “I thought Sinclair was a Scottish name,” she said, following her own line of thought.

“It was originally Saint Claire—French,” Leo replied. The lamp on the table next to him had been lighted and a soft glow fell upon the smooth golden wing of his hair. “My ancestors were Huguenots fleeing from religious persecution, and for centuries the Sinclairs were staunch Protestants. Until Mama came along and subverted the whole lot of us.” He turned to smile at his mother, and his hair shimmered in the light. “Lady Marchmain,” he said to Mrs. Sinclair in a gentle, teasing voice.

“Don’t link me with that horrible woman.” Mrs. Sinclair shuddered. “Did you see
Brideshead Revisited
on television, Isabel?”

Isabel shook her head, and her own black hair shimmered against the pale gold of her dress. “No. But I read the book.”

“Amazing,” Leo said. “She read the book. No one reads the book anymore, Miss MacCarthy. They watch the movie or the TV show.”

“I’d rather read the book,” Isabel said.

“Why?”

Isabel looked at him thoughtfully. “A movie can only show you characterization through action— what a person says and does. A book can open up the whole interior life of a character to you. It’s a question of depth.”

“I see. And is that what you try to capture in a portrait, something of the interior life of your subject?”

Isabel was startled. “Why, yes.”

“I shall have to watch out, then, or you will discover all my deep dark secrets.”

“Do you have deep dark secrets, Senator?”

He smiled at her faintly. “Ah,” he said, drawling a little more than usual, “now that is something you will just have to find out.”

Isabel excused herself from Mass the following morning but the entire Sinclair family got into Ben’s car at ten-fifteen and left for church. They did not return home until almost twelve-thirty,

“Leo was holding court,” Paige told Isabel with a laugh.

“More people wanted to know my thoughts about the trade Dallas just made than wanted to consult me on senatorial matters,” Leo said good-naturedly as he held the door for his mother.

“My, but it’s warm,” Mrs. Sinclair commented as she entered the drawing room, where Isabel was sitting comfortably with a book.

“I know.” Isabel put her book down. “And it was so cold and damp when I left New York that I didn’t think to bring any warm-weather clothes with me.” She was wearing her tan corduroy pants with a pin-striped man-tailored shirt. “A heat wave must have rolled in overnight.”

“It feels marvelous to me,” Paige said.

“After lunch,” Leo told Isabel, “I’ll take you out to Island Views, if you like. The beach there is lovely.” He was wearing a lightweight gray suit and he looked healthy and distinguished, masculine and elegant, all at once.

“It’s super,” Paige said enthusiastically. “May I come too, Leo?”

Her brother looked at her. “Did I ask to come along with you last night?”

Paige looked nonplussed and Isabel felt the color sting her cheeks. “I told you not to worry about entertaining me, Senator,” she said quickly.

“And I told you I never worry,” Leo replied serenely.

Mrs. Sinclair chuckled. “Do go with him, Isabel. If
you’re going to paint his portrait, you’re going to have to get to know each other.”

This was indisputably true, and after a minute Isabel nodded. But when Paige said wickedly, “Look out, Miss MacCarthy, he’s broken half the female hearts in America,” Isabel thought to herself, Not this heart he won’t. Her heart had been given away long ago—to a stretched canvas and a palette of oil paints. So she merely smiled slightly at Paige and accepted Mrs. Sinclair’s offer of another cup of coffee.

* * * *

An hour and a half later they were driving down the coast in Mrs. Sinclair’s Buick. “It’s about an hour’s drive to the beach,” Leo told her comfortably.

Isabel turned her head to look at him. He had changed out of his suit into a navy Izod shirt, khaki pants, and sneakers. The short-sleeved shirt made him look very strong. Isabel stared for a moment at his bare arm and then focused on his profile.

“Are you active in the development office as well, Senator?”

“Please call me Leo.” He gave her a quick, sideways glance. There was a look of humor about his mouth. It was a wonderful mouth, thought Isabel. She would have to try to catch that feeling of humor. “After all,” he continued, “we’re going to be living together for several weeks.”

Ah, thought Isabel, I’d better get this clear straight off. “In one sense only,” she replied calmly but firmly.

There was a brief silence. Then, “Of course,” he said, his voice slower and softer than usual. “I’m sorry if you thought I meant to imply something more.”

All of a sudden Isabel felt very silly. “Sorry if I seemed to overreact,” she said a little gruffly. He smiled but made no reply. “And please,” she went on carefully, “won’t you call me Isabel.”

“Isabel.” He drawled it out in his gentle way, and for the first time in her life Isabel found herself liking the sound of her name.

“Well, to answer your question,” he began, “no, I’m not active in the family business. Ben is the one who inherited my father’s talent in that area.” He shook his head a little in admiration. “He’s quite something, you know. Has a mind like a razor.”

“You can’t be any slouch yourself,” Isabel said with raised brows. “Rhodes scholarships aren’t handed out to the average student.”

“I was lucky,” he said amiably.

There was a pause and then Isabel changed the subject. “Your mother has her heart set on this portrait,” she said.

“I know. She’s pestered me about it ever since I got elected.” A small smile creased the corner of his mouth. “Ever since she married my father, she’s become more Sinclair than the Sinclairs.”

“She certainly is proud of the family.”

“She certainly is.” The note of amused affection was clear in his voice.

“She’s a lovely person,” Isabel heard herself saying.

“They broke the mold the day they made my mother,” Leo Sinclair said simply, and Isabel turned to stare at him again. It sounded so odd, so old-fashioned to hear a man saying such a thing of his mother. I suppose, Isabel thought with a flash of insight, it’s only men like Leo Sinclair who can afford to say things like that. No one in his right mind would ever accuse the senator of being a mama’s boy.

An arched bridge crossed the water to Island Views, the famous Sinclair-built modern resort and retirement community. Isabel was wide-eyed at the sight of the beautiful homes, the yachts, the four golf courses and seventy tennis courts.

“It’s fabulous,” she said as they walked along a quiet stretch of beach that faced the house the Sinclairs had retained for their own use. She laughed. “I suppose this is what life in the Sunbelt is all about.”

“It is for a lot of people,” he replied. “Do you play golf, Isabel? Or tennis?”

“No.” A lovely breeze blew off the water and stirred the hair at her temples. She had
plaited the length of it into a long thick braid that fell down her back almost to her waist. She looked out at the blue water and smiled a little ruefully. “I grew up in New York City—and
not
on the fashionable East Side. Our big sports were stoop ball and basketball in the schoolyard.”

“Stoop ball?” he said in bewilderment.

Isabel looked at him and suddenly smiled, not her usual, social smile, but a real one, rarely seen and radiantly beautiful. “You have to be from New York,” she said.

He was watching her face. “I have found,” he said, “that New Yorkers are absolutely the most insular people in the entire world.”

Isabel laughed. “You’re probably right.”

“Do you mind sitting on the sand?” he asked.

“Of course not.” Isabel dropped to the white sand and clasped her arms around her knees. Leo stretched out beside her, his arms behind his head, his eyes narrowed against the sun.

“How did you get into art?” he asked half-sleepily.

“My high-school art teacher encouraged me, mostly. She was super. If it weren’t for her, I would never have gone on to art school.”

“Why not?”

Leo’s soft, sleepy sounding voice disarmed Isabel. If she had thought he was conducting an inquisition, she would have frozen up, but she answered easily and truthfully, “We couldn’t afford it. Money was always tight in my house.”

“But you did go to art school.”

“Yes. I got into Cooper Union.” She rested her cheek on her updrawn knees. “It’s a terrific school in New York City that gives degrees in architecture, engineering, and fine arts. And the tuition is free.”

“Free tuition. You can’t beat that.”

She laughed. “No. And if it weren’t for Mrs. Simpson, I would never have known about it. As it was, I got four years of first-class training.”

“And now you are on the road to success.”

She sighed. “I hope so.”

A comfortable silence descended between the two of them. Isabel thought Leo had fallen asleep. The sun was warm and she opened another button on her shirt. She had rolled up her sleeves before they left Charleston. She gazed out over the water and felt the warmth sinking into her. It was very peaceful. After a few minutes she turned to look at the man sleeping at her side. He was so beautifully blond, she thought. His lids opened, and eyes blue as the cobalt sky above looked into hers. Isabel felt her heartbeat accelerate.

“I was falling asleep,” he said.

“Don’t mind me.”

He smiled and sat up effortlessly. He was very close to her, a fact that did nothing to slow the wild tapping of her heart.

“Washington is so hectic that I really appreciate a chance to just relax.”

“I know what you mean.” Isabel hoped her voice sounded normal. “New York is like that, too.”

He was looking at her slender brown arm revealed by the rolled-up sleeve of her shirt. He reached out with gentle fingers and touched her forearm.

“How did you get that?”

He ran his finger along a thin, whitish scar that looked as if it had been there for many years. Isabel cleared her throat. “I fell when I was a child. On glass.” She turned her eyes away from him, fearing the sensations his touch awakened in her.

He looked for a minute in silence at her averted head, so beautifully and proudly set on her long neck.

“Look,” he said suddenly. “Over yonder.”

Isabel followed his pointing finger to a sea bird in full flight carrying a fish in its long orange beak. “It’s a royal tern,” Leo said. “Their nesting grounds are all over the Sea Islands.”

“It’s lovely,” said Isabel. He stood up and she followed his lead gratefully. It made her uncomfortable to be so close to him. “Do you play golf and tennis?” she asked as they resumed their interrupted walk.

“I golf some,” he replied. An indefinable change of expression crossed his mouth. Isabel suddenly remembered why he had left football. He had had several operations on his knees, or so she had read in a sports magazine.