The Madness Of Lord Ian Mackenzie (5 page)

Mather looked away. “I shouldn’t like that to get about. The newspapers…”

“I understand, sir.” Fellows tapped his nose in imitation of Mather. “It will be between us.”

Mather nodded, his face still red. Fellows left the house in great spirits, then returned to Scotland Yard and requested leave.

After five long years, he at last saw a chink in the armor that was the Mackenzie family. He would put his finger in the chink and rip their armor to shreds.

“How very vexing.” Beth carried the newspaper to better light at the window, but the tiny print said the same thing.

“What is, ma’am?” Her newly hired companion, Katie Sullivan, a young Irish girl who’d grown up in Beth’s husband’s parish, looked up from sorting the gloves and ribbons Beth had bought from a Parisian boutique. Beth threw down the newspaper and lifted her satchel of art things. “Nothing important. Shall we go?” Katie fetched wraps and parasols, muttering darkly, “ Tis a long way up that hill to watch you stare at a blank piece of paper.”

“Perhaps today I will be inspired.”

Beth and Katie left the narrow house Beth had hired and climbed into the small buggy her French footman had run to fetch. She could have afforded a large carriage with a coachman to drive her, but Beth was frugal by habit. She saw no reason to keep an extravagant conveyance she didn’t need. Today she drove distractedly, her gloved hands fidgety, much to the horse’s and Katie’s annoyance. The newspaper she’d been reading was the
Telegraph
from London. She took several Paris newspapers as well, her father having taught her to speak and read French fluently, but she liked to keep up with what was going on at home. What vexed Beth today was a story about how lords Ian and Cameron Mackenzie had nearly come to blows in a restaurant, fighting about a woman. The woman in question was a famous soprano, the very one who’d enchanted Beth at Covent Garden the week before. Many people had witnessed the event and related it to the newspapers with glee.

Beth shook the reins impatiently, and the horse tossed his head. While Beth didn’t regret turning down Lord Ian’s proposal, it was a bit galling to find that he’d been quarreling with his brother over the heavy-bosomed soprano shortly after Beth had refused him. She’d have liked him to feel a
little
bit sorry.

She tried to forget the story and concentrated on maneuvering through the wide Parisian boulevards that became the jumbled streets of Montmartre. At the top of the hill she found a boy to watch the horse and buggy, and she trekked to the little green she liked, Katie grumbling behind her. Montmartre still had the feeling of a village, with narrow, crooked streets, window boxes bursting with summer flowers, and trees dotting slopes down to the city. It was a far cry from the wide avenues and huge public parks of Paris, which, Beth understood, was why artists and their models had flocked to Montmartre. That and the rents were cheap. Beth set up her easel in her usual place and sat down, pencil poised over a clean piece of paper. Katie plopped onto the bench next to her, listlessly watching the artists, would-be artists, and hangers-on who roamed the streets. This was the third day Beth had sat here studying the vista of Paris, the third day her paper had remained blank. She’d realized after her initial excitement of purchasing pencils, paper, and easel that she had no idea how to draw. Still, she’d come up the hill each afternoon and set out her things. If nothing else, she and Katie were getting plenty of exercise.

“Do you think she’s an artist’s model?” Katie asked. She jerked her chin at a lovely redhaired woman who strolled with several other ladies on the other side of the street. The woman wore a pale gown with a gossamer overskirt pulled back to reveal a beribboned underskirt. Her small hat was tastefully trimmed with flowers and lace and tipped provocatively over her eyes. Her parasol matched her dress, and she carried it at a becoming angle.

She had an air of allure about her that made heads turn when she passed. It wasn’t anything she did on purpose, Beth decided with a touch of envy. Everything about her enticed. She was simply a joy to look at.

“I couldn’t say,” Beth replied after an all-over surveillance.

“But she certainly is very pretty.”

“I wish I were beautiful enough to be a model.” Katie sighed. “Not that I would. Me dear old mother would whip the skin off me. Dreadful wicked ladies they must be, taking off their clothes to be painted.”

“Perhaps.” The woman disappeared around the corner with her cluster of friends, lost to sight.

“And what about
him?
He looks like an artist.”

Beth glanced to where Katie indicated, and froze. The man didn’t have an easel—he lounged on a bench with one foot on it and moodily watched a twitchy young man glob paint on a canvas. He was a big man, barely fitting on the delicate stone bench. He had dark hair touched with red, a square, hard face, and enticingly broad shoulders. Beth’s breath poured back into her lungs as she realized the man was not, in fact, Lord Ian Mackenzie. He looked very much like Ian, though, the same forbidding face, the same air of power, the same set of jaw. But this man’s hair shone redder in the sunlight, he having set his hat on the bench next to him.

He was definitely another Mackenzie. She’d read that Hart, the Duke of Kilmorgan, had traveled to Rome on some government business, she’d met Lord Cameron in London, so by process of elimination, this must be Lord Mac, the famous artist. As though he felt her scrutiny, Lord Mac turned his head and looked straight at her. Beth flushed and snapped her eyes back to her blank paper. Breathing hard, she put her pencil to the page and drew an awkward line. She let herself become absorbed in the line and the next one, until a shadow fell over her paper. “Not like that,” a deep voice rumbled.

Beth jumped and looked up past a watered silk waistcoat and a carelessly tied cravat to harsh eyes very much like Ian’s. The difference was that Mac’s gaze fully met hers instead of shifting away like an elusive sunbeam.

“You’re holding the pencil wrong.” Lord Mac put a large gloved hand over hers and turned her wrist upward.

“That feels awkward.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Mac sat himself down next to her, taking up every spare inch of the bench. “Let me show you.”

He guided her hand over the paper, shading the line she’d already drawn until it looked like a curve of the tree in front of her.

“Amazing,” she said. “I’ve never taken drawing lessons, you see.”

“Then what are you doing out here with an easel?”

“I thought I’d give it a try.”

Mac arched his brows, but he kept his hand on hers and helped her draw another line. He was flirting with her, she realized. She was alone with only a female companion, she’d been blatantly staring at him, and this was Paris. He must have thought she wanted a liaison. The last thing she needed was to be propositioned by yet another Mackenzie. Perhaps the newspapers would print reports of Ian and Mac fighting over
her.
But the hand cupping hers didn’t give her the same frisson of warmth that Ian’s had. She dreamed about Ian’s slow, sensual lips on hers every night, and then she’d jump awake, sweating and tangled in the sheets, her body aching. She glanced sideways at Mac. “I met your brother Lord Ian at Covent Garden last week.”

Mac’s gaze snapped to her. His eyes were not quite so golden as Ian’s, more coppercolored with flecks of brown. “You met Ian?”

“Yes, he did me a kindness. I met Lord Cameron as well, but only briefly.”

Mac’s eyes narrowed.
“Ian
did you a kindness?”

“He saved me from making a grave mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“Nothing I wish to discuss on top of Montmartre.”

“Why not? Who the devil are you?”

Katie leaned around from Beth’s other side. “Well, that’s a bloody cheek.”

“Hush, Katie. My name is Mrs. Ackerley.” Mac scowled. “I’ve never heard of you. How did you manage to scrape an acquaintance with my brother?” Katie glared at Mac with Irish frankness. “She’s a bloody heiress, that’s who she is. And a kind lady what doesn’t have to take rudeness from the likes of forward gentlemen in a French park.”

“Katie,” Beth admonished her quietly. “I beg your pardon, my lord.”

Mac’s sharp gaze flicked to Katie, then back to Beth. “Are you certain it was Ian?”

“He was introduced to me as Lord Ian Mackenzie,” Beth said. “I suppose he could have been an impostor in an excellent disguise, but that never occurred to me.” Mac didn’t look impressed with her humor. “He never would look directly at me.”

Mac released her hand, tension draining. “That was my brother.”

“Didn’t she just say so?” Katie demanded. Mac looked away, studying the passersby and the would be artists struggling to make sense of what they saw. When he switched his gaze back to Beth, she was startled to see moisture on his lashes.

“Put your terrier on a lead, Mrs. Ackerley. You say you don’t draw. Would you like me to give you lessons?”

“As a reward for my rudeness?”

“It would entertain me.”

She stared in surprise. “People demand your paintings left and right. Why would you give a novice like me drawing lessons?”

“For the novelty of it. Paris bores me.”

“I find it quite exciting. If it bores you, why are you here?”

Mac shrugged, the gesture so much like Ian’s. “When one is an artist, one comes to Paris.”

“One does, does one?”

A muscle moved in his jaw. “I find people of true talent here and try to give them a leg up.”

“I have no talent at all.”

“Even so.”

“It will also give you a chance to discover why Lord Ian would bother with someone like me,” she suggested. A smile spread over Mac’s face, one so dazzling Beth imagined most women who saw it fell at his feet. “Would I do such a thing, Mrs. Ackerley?”

“I do believe you would, my lord. Very well, then. I accept.” Mac stood up and retrieved his hat from where he’d set it on the ground. “Be here tomorrow at two o’clock, if it’s not raining.” He tipped the hat to Beth and made a slight bow. “Good day, Mrs. Ackerley. And terrier.” He placed the hat on his head and swung away, his coat moving with his stride. Every female head turned to watch him as he passed.

Katie fanned herself with Beth’s sketchbook. “He’s a good-looking man, no doubt. Even if he is rude.”

“I admit he is interesting,” Beth said.

Why the man wanted to find out all about her, she didn’t know, but she intended to use him to learn all about Lord Ian.

You are entirely too curious, Beth my girl,
Mrs. Barrington had said to her often. A very unattractive trait in a young lady. Beth agreed with her. She’d vowed to have nothing more to do with the Mackenzie family, and here she was accepting an appointment with Lord Mac in hopes of gaining more knowledge about his younger brother. She smiled to herself, knowing she looked forward to the next afternoon with too much interest. But when Beth turned up at Montmartre again on the morrow, the sun sailed brightly in the sky, the clocks struck two, and Lord Mac was nowhere to be seen.

“See what I mean?” Katie said after a quarter of an hour had gone by. “Rude.”

Beth fought down her disappointment. She wanted to wholeheartedly agree with Katie and say a few choice phrases she’d learned in the workhouse, but she restrained herself.

“We can hardly expect him to remember such a thing. Giving me lessons must be a trivial matter to him.” Katie snorted. “You’re a lady of consequence now. He has no call to treat us like this.”

Beth forced a laugh. “If Mrs. Barrington had left me only ten shillings, you wouldn’t consider me a lady of consequence.” Katie waved that aside. “Anyway, me father wasn’t as rude as this lordship, and he were
drunk
as a lord all the time.” Beth, familiar with drunken fathers, didn’t answer. As she gazed across the square again, she noticed the lovely young woman she and Katie had speculated about yesterday staring at them. The lady looked at her for a long while from under her parasol, her gaze pensive. Beth returned the look with lifted brows.

The lady gave a determined nod and started for them.

“May I give you a bit of advice, my dear?” she asked when she reached Beth. Her voice was English and very well-bred, no trace of the Continent about her. She had a pale, pointed face, finely curled red hair under a tip-tilted hat, and wide green eyes. Again, Beth was aware of her arresting quality, the indefinable something that drew all eyes to her. The lady went on. “If you are waiting for his lordship Mac Mackenzie, I must tell you that he is extremely unreliable. He might be lying in a meadow studying the way a horse gallops, or he might have climbed to the top of a church tower to paint the view. I imagine he’s forgotten all about his assignation with you, but that is Mac all over.”

“Absentminded, is he?” Beth asked.

“Not so much absentminded as bloody-minded. Mac does as he pleases, and I thought it only fair that you know right away.”

The lady’s diamond earrings shimmered as she trembled, and she grasped her parasol so tightly Beth feared the delicate handle would break.

“Are you his model?” Beth didn’t really think so, but this was Paris. Even the most respectable Englishwomen were known to throw propriety to the wind once they set foot on its avenues.

The lady glanced around and sat down next to Beth in the very spot Lord Mac had occupied yesterday. “No, my dear, I am not his model. I am very unfortunately his wife.”

Now this was much more interesting. Lord Mac and Lady Isabella were separated, estranged, and their very public breakup had been a ninety-days scandal. Mrs. Barrington had savored every drop of the newspaper reports with malicious glee. That had been three years ago. Yet Lady Isabella sat in agitated anger as she confronted a woman she thought had made a tryst with her husband.

“You misunderstand,” Beth said. “His lordship offered to give me a drawing lesson because he saw how ignorantly I did it. But he became interested in me only when I told him I was a friend of Lord Ian’s.”

Isabella looked at her sharply. “Ian?”

Everyone seemed surprised Beth had even spoken to him. “I met him at the opera.”