“Isabella,” he said. “We lived apart and in silence for three and a half years. Now we are speaking to each other, living with each other, even sharing a bed from time to time. The world will assume us no longer separated. There is no reason not to make it legal.”
“Except that I wish to remain separate.”
Mac’s temper stirred. “Even when I’m so willing to make another go of it? A good solicitor would advise you to let me try.”
Gordon, the good solicitor, kept himself occupied with his papers and pretended to be elsewhere.
“But I don’t want this.” Isabella’s voice took on a panicked note.
“What other course can we steer, sweetheart? I’ve given you no grounds for divorce. I don’t beat you, I don’t keep a fancy lady, I haven’t touched a drop of whiskey in years. I haven’t abandoned you—in fact, of late I’ve been quite reliably at your side. We have been living as man and wife. We should become that in truth again.”
Isabella was on her feet. “Damn you, Mac Mackenzie. Why can you not leave things alone?”
Mr. Gordon made a discreet cough. “Perhaps I can return at a later date, my lord, after you have discussed this with her ladyship.”
“Please do not bother, Mr. Gordon,” Isabella said coldly. “I am so sorry that you were forced to witness this rather sordid scene. Please pass on my regards to Mrs. Gordon.” She stormed to the door, skirts swirling like blue froth, and out into the foyer.
Gordon looked distressed, but Mac leapt to his feet and stormed right after her. “And where the devil are you going?”
“Out,” Isabella said.
“Not alone, you are not.”
“No, of course not. Morton, will you please send for the landau, and have Evans meet me upstairs? Thank you.”
She swept up the stairs with her head high, as Gordon discreetly emerged from the drawing room, his case in his hand. Morton handed the solicitor his hat.
“Thank you, Gordon,” Mac told him. “I’ll write you when I have this sorted.”
“Yes, my lord,” came Gordon’s tactful reply, and he was gone.
Upstairs a door banged. Mac planted a chair by the front door, seated himself on it, and waited.
He had no intention of letting Isabella out of the house without him; he didn’t care how furious she was. He knew he’d miscalculated, moved too fast. But, damnation, she’d given him every sign of reconciliation. Last night—sweet God, last night. How he could have stayed away from the beautiful, desirable Isabella all this time, Mac had no idea. She’d become his love again, the woman to whom he’d taught every game of pleasure, the woman who’d learned her lessons well. Isabella had skills that made him hard just thinking about them.
His skilled lady sailed down the stairs the same moment Mac heard the landau pull up outside. She’d exchanged her frilly blue dress for a snug bottle-green jacket over a gray walking dress, and a hat stuck to her curls with colorful beaded hatpins.
She tugged on her gloves on her way to the door. “Please get out of my way.”
“As you wish.” Mac grabbed his hat from the hall tree, opened the door for her, and followed her out.
At the landau, Isabella ignored Mac’s outstretched hand and let her footman help her into the carriage. The lad shot an apologetic glance at Mac, but Mac only winked at him and climbed in after Isabella. The footman slammed the door, and the landau jerked forward as Mac landed on the heavily padded seat facing Isabella.
She shot him an angry look. “Can I not have a moment to myself?”
“Not with a madman assaulting you in parks. I was not joking when I said I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.”
“My coachman and footmen will let no one near me, and I don’t intend to walk through any dark, deserted passages by myself. I’m not a ninny, and this isn’t a gothic novel.”
“No, I believe we are in a comedy of errors, my love, but that doesn’t mean the man isn’t damned dangerous.”
“Then why not send Bellamy with me? He is plenty dangerous himself.”
“Because I need him to guard the house, in case our friend Payne decides to try his trick of wandering in pretending to be me. Even you mistook him for me at first glance.”
“Yes, very well, I take your point.” Isabella huffed out her breath, which made her bosom move in an agreeable way. “We should be careful. But the separation? Why are you allowed to decide when we will end it? Why did you not consult me before sending for Mr. Gordon? The poor man was most embarrassed.”
Mac heard the growl emerge from his throat. She was right that he shouldn’t have presumed, but bloody hell, he was tired of everything on earth being his fault.
“Did you consult me when you decided we would have a separation in the first place? Did you consult me when you wanted to leave me? No, you disappeared and sent me a damned note. No, wait. You didn’t even send it to me; you sent it to Ian.”
Isabella’s voice rose. “Because I knew that if I sent it to you, you’d never take it seriously. I trusted Ian to make certain you read it, to make certain you understood. I feared that if I sent it directly to you, you’d simply laugh and toss it on the fire.”
“Laugh?” What the hell was she talking about? “Laugh that my beloved wife had decided to leave me? That she told me she couldn’t bear living with me? I read that bloody letter over and over until I couldn’t see the words anymore. Your idea of what makes me laugh is damned peculiar.”
“I tried to tell you myself. Believe me, I tried. But I knew that if I faced you, you would only talk me ’round, convince me to stay with you against my better judgment.”
“Of course I would have,” Mac shouted. “I love you. I’d have done anything to get you to stay, if you’d only given me the chance.”
Chapter 17
Both the Scottish Lord and his Lady appeared at the opera house in Covent Garden this past evening, but they might have been in two different opera houses altogether. The Lord lounged in the box of the Marquis of Dunstan while the Lady appeared across the house with the Duke of K—, the Lord’s brother. Observers say the Lord and Lady passed each other in the mezzanine but never spoke to, or even seemed to notice, one another.
—February 1879
Isabella’s green eyes snapped in fury. Even raging, she managed to be beautiful. “I gave you three years of chances, Mac. Very well, perhaps you would have talked me into staying, but what then? You’d have downed a bottle of champagne to celebrate, and I’d have woken the next morning to find you gone off somewhere in the world, with a note—maybe—to tell me not to worry. I decided to give you a taste of what you had given me for the three years of our marriage.”
“I know. I know. I was an idiot. But damn it, I’m trying to make it right, now. I’m willing to try, but you are determined not to let me.”
“Because I am tired of being a fool about you. Look at us—I give you an inch, and you jump a mile. I go to you for comfort, and you decide we are reconciled and send for our solicitor.”
Mac’s chest burned. “Comfort? Is that what last night was?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you like. You have a lofty opinion of yourself.”
“A lofty opinion, is it?” As happened when he got angry enough, Mac’s Scots accent banished years of English veneer. “I believe you were the one cryin’ out in climax four or five times last night. I remember. I was quite close to ye at the time.”
“One’s bodily reactions are not always under one’s control. That is a medical fact.”
“I did no’ couple with ‘one.’ I was with you, Isabella.”
Isabella’s face flamed. “You know you were taking advantage of my loneliness. I should have kept my door locked.”
Mac hauled himself across the landau into the seat next to her. She didn’t cringe away; Isabella would never show fear, especially not to him. “If ye say ye came to me for comfort, then you were taking advantage of me. I’m not blame
less in this.”
“You’ve been following me about. You admitted it. Somehow you finagled yourself into my house and back into my life. I think I should have a say in that.”
“If ye think it through, ye live in my house. ’Tis my money that pays for the house and servants and pretty frocks. Because ye are still my wife.”
Isabella rounded on him. “Do you think I am not aware of that every day of my life? Do you know how weak it makes me feel that I live entirely on your charity? I could beg Miss Pringle to give me a job teaching younger students, but I have no experience, and I’d be living on her charity. So my pride remains in tatters while you pay all my bills.”
“Bloody hell.” Mac cast a glance out the window, but he found no help in the clogged traffic of Oxford Street. “I don’t give ye charity. Paying for your living is the least I can do for anyone fool enough to marry me.”
“Ah, so now I am foolish as well as weak.”
“You enjoy putting words in my mouth, do ye? Your method of arguing is to decide what I say as well as what you say. I might as well go fishing while you finish. Send me word when the argument is over.”
“And you try to win by shouting about everything but what it is you’ve done to make me angry in the first place! You decided to revoke our separation without bothering to tell me. Remember?”
Mac couldn’t deny the charge. He had hoped to put the revocation through so fast she wouldn’t have time to object. No, to be honest, he’d hoped Isabella would give him a big, warm smile and tell him she was glad he’d done it. She would be happy that they were truly together again.
Too fast. He’d rushed in before she was ready.
“Can you blame me for wanting this to be real?” The Scots started to fade as Mac tried to rein in his temper. “Haven’t we had enough time apart, Isabella?”
“I don’t know.”
She was so elegantly beautiful sitting there next to him, her red hair in perfect curls, her jacket hugging her lovely torso. How could any man not want her?
Mac could have divorced her for abandoning him, but he’d decided, even before Gordon advised him, that he’d be damned if he would give the world more food for vicious gossip. Divorce would have made Isabella a ruined woman, vulnerable to any unscrupulous man. And Mac would die before he let any man touch his Isabella. As much as she’d hurt him, Mac was happy to set up Isabella in her own house to live an independent life. He’d protect her from afar, watch over her as well as he could. He loved her enough to do that.
“I think we’ve spent plenty of time apart,” he said.
“But how do I know our time together now won’t be the same as it was before?” she asked, anguished. “With you coming and going without a word, you deciding when we’ll be together and when I need a rest from you? You don’t get to decide everything, Mac.”
Mac spread his arms. “Look at me. I’m different now. Never drunk. Home for dinner, in my place for breakfast. No carousing with my friends. I am the model husband.”
“Good heavens, Mac. You aren’t a model anything.”
“I want to be the man you want me to be: sober, dependable, reliable . . . God, all those boring adjectives.”
“You think that is what I want?” Isabella asked. “I fell in love with the charming, unpredictable Mac all those years ago. If I wanted dependable and dull, I would have banished you and pursued the men my father had chosen for me.”
“You are insanely difficult to please. You don’t want the wild Mac, but you don’t want the stay-at-home Mac, either? Is that what you are saying?”
“I want you to stop trying to be what you’re not. I predict you’ll become bored with your new role in a few months’ time. You alternately obsess over something and then grow tired of it and forget all about it. Including me.”
Mac regarded her in silence for a long moment. She colored under his gaze, but his anger had receded to hollow-ness. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “You are a fool, Isabella Mackenzie.”
“What?” She looked hurt.
“You have decided what kind of man I am, which makes it damned difficult to talk to you. You don’t believe I can change, but I already have. You simply won’t see it.”
“I know you stopped drinking. I’ve noticed that improvement.”
Mac laughed. “Stopped drinking? You make it sound so effortless. I was sick and disgusting for an entire year. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been using whiskey to blunt the pain of my own existence. I found myself facedown on a hotel room floor in Venice, hurting like hell, praying for the strength to not go in search of wine to ease the agony. I’d never truly prayed before. I was taken to chapel as a boy to mouth prayers, but this time I prayed. It was more like begging, actually. Quite an unusual experience for me.”
Isabella listened, her lips parted. “Mac.”
“I could tell you tales to make you blanch, my love, but I will spare you. The begging and praying didn’t last one night. I did it for many, many nights, never ceasing. And then, just when I thought it was over, and I felt better, another night would come. My friends thought they’d ‘help’ me from time to time by holding me down and pouring whiskey down my throat. They ceased when I discovered the trick of spewing it back, all over their fine clothes. Eventually, my friends deserted me. Every last man of them.”
Isabella’s face was white. “They had no right to do that.”
Mac shrugged. “They were wastrels and sycophants. Not a true friend among them. There is nothing like hardship to teach you who truly cares for you.”
“Did you have no one at all? Oh, Mac.”
“I did. I had Bellamy. He made sure I ate food and kept it down; he was the one who realized I could drink tea by the bucketful when water merely made me sick. I became quite the tea connoisseur, even beyond the haughty English who believe their knowledge of tea unsurpassed. An Assam tea brewed with jasmine is quite fine. You ought to try it.”
Isabella’s eyes were wet. “I’m glad Bellamy took care of you. I will tell him how grateful I am. He deserves a gift. What would he like, do you think?”
“I already gave him a large rise in wages,” Mac said. “And I lavish constant praise on him. I worship Bellamy as a god, which, I assure you, embarrasses the hell out of him.”
Isabella looked away. She was a regal, proud woman, and his wanting of her consumed every waking moment of his life. Staying away from her had been absolute hell, but when she’d left him, Mac had made himself let her, because she was right. If he’d gone back to her before withdrawal from drink had forcibly reformed him, he would have continued the pattern until he’d driven her so far away he could never have reached her again. Because he’d given her time to heal, he could now sit so close to her and drink in her scent.
Isabella looked out of the window for a long time, and when she finally turned to him, the rigid anger had faded from her eyes. “Whatever happened to your friend?” she asked. “The one you told me about at Lord Abercrombie’s ball.”
Mac went blank. “Friend?”
“The one who needs lessons in courting.”
“Oh, that friend.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, he is still anxious to learn courting techniques.”
“We began practicing them once before. Perhaps we should start over again?”
“Is that what you wish to do?” Mac asked. “Start over?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
Mac studied her in breathless silence. She looked back at him, her glittering green eyes so beautiful.
“In that case,” he said in a light voice, “we should forget all about what happened last night in your bedchamber. That was far too scandalous for a courting couple.”
She smiled a little. “Indeed. Quite improper. You must not mention last night to him.”
“I never breathe a word about what goes on in my bedroom to my friends. It is none of their bloody business.” Mac lifted her gloved hand, pressed a light kiss to it, and moved himself back to the opposite seat.
“A gentleman should never occupy the same seat as the lady in a conveyance. He should sit with his back to the coachman, giving her the forward-facing seat.”
Isabella laughed. Damn, it was good to hear her laugh. “It will be amusing to watch you trying to be highly proper,” she said.
Mac pinned her with a look, no more teasing, no more cajoling. “If that is what it takes, I will do it. I want to win you back, Isabella. No matter if it takes me one year or twenty, I’m a patient man. I will win your heart again, I swear it. Even if I have to be so highly proper my ancestors turn in their graves to see me change myself for a Sassenach.”
Isabella smiled, but the look on her face told him she hadn’t given in. But her quiet acceptance of his presence for the rest of the ride and her errands that followed made him know that she’d give him a chance. She wanted him to try, and she wanted him to succeed. That, at least, gave him heart.
The next morning, a bouquet of hothouse flowers arrived with a note for Isabella. Isabella touched the blossoms, noting that the bouquet was small and tasteful—yellow roses, violets, and baby’s breath. No orchids or other exotics. The card was edged with gold and read, in Mac’s handwriting:
I am most grateful, my lady, for the privilege of driving with you yesterday afternoon. Might you give me leave to walk in the park with you today, if the weather holds fine? I will call on you at three o’clock if that is convenient.
Your most obedient servant,
Roland F. Mackenzie
Isabella smiled to herself. Mac was certainly playing the proper gentleman, especially using his real name. He hated being addressed as Roland Ferdinand Mackenzie, or Lord Roland, preferring the nickname that had been pinned to him at the age of two, when he couldn’t pronounce any syllable of his long name but “Mac.”
“A gentleman sending you flowers?” Mac asked in a mock gruff voice behind his breakfast newspaper. “Is he a proper sort of gentleman?”