But so far, all his persuasion had proven most unpersuasive. Nor had his confession of love produced any softening. That hurt, too.
“You…you can’t love me,” she stammered, raising one shaking hand to her throat and retreating a couple of paces across the grass.
“I can.” He paused, knowing he was about to take a risk so much greater than confessing his feelings. “And I believe you love me.”
She went so white that her eyes turned into huge black pools in her ashen face. “I never said so.”
Interesting she didn’t deny it. Interesting and revealing. “Actions speak louder than words.”
“You’re reading too much into desire.”
He shook his head. “No, I dinna think so. Or are ye going to tell me I’m wrong?”
He watched her consider lying. Then it was as if she were a marionette and someone cut her strings. In some obscure way, she collapsed in on herself. “You devil, Mackinnon.”
Fergus didn’t smile, although he wanted to. “So you do love me?”
“How could I do otherwise?” She made a defeated gesture. “I was in love with you when I agreed to become your mistress. I must have been, or else I’d never have said yes.”
Her admission fell on his troubled soul like rain on parched ground, and he drew his first full breath in what felt like an hour. “Is it such a huge step from mistress to wife?”
Those fathomless eyes studied him, then she shook her head. “No, you won’t win against me, just because I’m stupid enough to love you.”
Impatience had him growling and running his hand through his hair. “Can’t you see that if you say yes, we both win?”
She subjected him to more of that ruthless stare, then her shoulders slumped and she turned away to gaze across the empty hills. “I can’t accept a man’s dominion, Mackinnon.”
“Even though you love me?” God almighty, despite everything, had he lost her? Was all their passion to end in a parting? How could he bear it?
The weight of sorrow in her voice crushed him like a rock fall. “Most of all because I love you. It’s too easy for you to gain the advantage over me.”
“Not so far,” he said sourly.
That made her face him. Her eyes had turned dull as he’d never imagined they could. He always thought of Marina as a creature of fire, but the woman who regarded him now looked as if every ounce of life and vigor had been sapped from her.
“I’m sorry, Fergus. I can see I’m making you unhappy, and I hate that.”
She sounded utterly exhausted. An hour ago, he’d have taken her in his arms and offered to comfort her. Now he could tell that his touch was the last thing she wanted.
He loathed that she rejected his proposal and his love. But the thought that she’d never let him touch her again made him want to smash something priceless into dust.
But he could see that haranguing her further would be cruel. She looked close to shattering. He had a brief, piercing memory of the gloriously vital and sensual creature who had brought him to shattering release such a short while ago. That seemed like a different woman.
He loved that woman for her passion and her strength. He loved this wounded woman, too. Her vulnerability was so raw.
Marina needed him as much as he needed her. All he could hope for was that she’d come to see that before she returned to Italy.
Noting the stubborn line of her jaw, he couldn’t be optimistic.
“Let me take ye home. I won’t push this now.”
Bleak amusement turned her lips down. “Now.”
He spread his hands. “I willnae give you up easily.”
“I know that’s true.” She raised her chin, and he watched her gather her strength around her. It was impressive, even if she used that strength against him. “But I won’t stay here to become your satellite, Mackinnon. Please accept that while I’m honored by your proposal, I can’t accept it.”
And that, he thought grimly, seemed to be that.
* * *
Dinner was an ordeal for Marina. Her father’s leg had healed to a point where he could come downstairs using a stick, and he was in a mood for celebration. She couldn’t blame him. He’d chafed under the restrictions of his long recovery.
With her hours in the hills, trying to finish the duke’s commission, she’d rather neglected him over recent weeks. She told herself she’d make it up to him, but that didn’t stifle a pang of guilt. She couldn’t put all the blame for her absence on hard work. During a lot of those hours when she was ostensibly sketching, she’d been lying in her lover’s arms.
Although her father’s mobility meant her departure from Achnasheen loomed closer, she struggled to appear happy for him. After this afternoon’s tribulations, she should be glad that her misery wouldn’t spin out indefinitely.
Fergus’s proposal had changed everything between them, but not so drastically as his declaration of love. Refusing him had come close to killing her, but she knew if she yielded, he’d end up subsuming everything she was and everything she’d achieved.
Right now, watching Fergus with her father—he hid his perturbation better than she did, but she knew him well enough to discern the turmoil beneath the Highland charm—she wondered whether her artistic calling was worth the sacrifice of his happiness. In forty years, would she regret giving up his love, and his friendship, and his company, and his kisses, and his children, and…
Santa pazienza, if she kept this up, she’d start howling like a lost puppy.
“Marina, per favore, walk me to my room,” her father said. “I’m still uncertain on my feet.”
“As you wish, Papa.” She rose from the table.
“Grazie, figlia mia.”
“Goodnight, Mackinnon,” she said without looking at Fergus. Thank God this interminable purgatorio of an evening would soon be over, and she could shut herself in her room and cry her eyes out for the rest of the night.
Fergus stood when she did. “Goodnight, Ugolino. Goodnight, Signorina Marina. I might take a stroll outside.”
His statement startled her enough to make her look at him directly. “But it’s pouring.”
As they’d come down the mountain, the weather had closed in. By the time they reached the castle, the wind blew a gale and the gusts carried sleet. The elements conspired to reflect her bleak mood.
Now she saw that the self-control that had sustained Fergus so far tonight was fraying. He looked drawn and unhappy, and that betraying muscle twitched in his lean cheek. He struggled for a smile, but she couldn’t even call the result a half-smile. “Och, just a wee Scotch mist.”
A wee Scotch tempest, more like. But she’d lost the spirit to argue.
She crossed to help her father out of his chair. “How’s your leg, Papa?”
Marina was sharply aware of Fergus leaving the room behind them. She wanted to call him back and say she was sorry for making him so unhappy. What was the use? She’d told him no this afternoon, and he’d refused to accept her answer. If she betrayed any weakness now, she’d forsake any hope of resisting him.
“It’s weaker than I’d like, but I’m so pleased that I can use it again. We have much to thank Fergus and his people for.”
“Yes, we do,” she said without enthusiasm. Not because she disagreed, but because the last thing she wanted right now was to participate in a discussion about her host’s generosity and all-round perfections. “Should I call Jock to help you up the stairs?”
“No, grazie. I can manage with your arm.”
* * *
Marina and her father didn’t talk much as they climbed to his room. His leg had healed well, but after all the enforced rest, his vitality soon waned.
“Please stay while I change into my nightshirt,” he said in Italian, once she got him inside his room.
Per pietà, was she never to find a minute to herself? She curled her hands so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. The sting helped keep her tears at bay. She knew she owed Papa some attention, but
she felt stretched to the limit of endurance. “Can I help?”
“No, this I can do for myself.” He limped behind the screen and eventually emerged ready for bed. Despite her misery, Marina was glad to see him moving about.
“You’ll be dancing before you know it,” she said, then feeling like she cut herself with broken glass, she went on, “A good dose of Italian sun will have you back to yourself in no time. It’s time we went home, Papa.”
“Yes, I miss Florence. It will be good to be back in my own house, kind as everyone has been to us here.”
Marina bit her lip and tasted blood. She turned to go before she started to cry. A few more minutes, and she wouldn’t have to pretend anymore.
Except her dear Papa didn’t understand that.
“Help me into bed, then stay and talk to me.”
Could she bear much more? “I’m very tired.” Unshed tears thickened her voice. “I’ve been working hard on the duke’s commission, and it’s another early start tomorrow.”
“A few minutes, cara. Surely you can spare that.”
Surely she could, if she hadn’t been concealing a broken heart all night and the effort was becoming too much. Hiding her reluctance, she crossed to perch on the edge of the bed. “It’s nice to see you up and about, Papa.”
“Tcha.” He made a dismissive gesture that matched the dismissive response he gave to her comment about his recovery. “The work, it goes well?”
“Very well.” She dared speak the words that superstition had stopped her from saying aloud until now. “I think these pictures will be the best I’ve ever done.”
Papa smiled. He’d never understood her talent the way her mother had, but he’d always supported her. “Marvelous. You’ve found the scenery here inspiring?”
“Any artist would love it. To think, I’m the first to capture it in paint.”
“And the laird of this glen, you find him inspiring, too?”
For a moment, talking about her painting, she’d almost forgotten what had happened this afternoon. Her father’s sly question brought all the anguish flooding back.
To evade his searching gaze, she stared down at the hands linked in her lap. She struggled to keep her voice steady. “While the Mackinnon has been very good to us, I imagine he’s looking forward to his chance-met visitors going home.”
“I doubt it. Tonight when he saw I could walk again, he looked like a hound whose master had died.”
Startled, she glanced up. “Papa…”
“Marina, I’ve struggled to hold my tongue.” His expression was serious as it rarely was. “After all, you’re no longer a little girl, you’re a grown woman. But I can’t see you as you are tonight, ready to snap into pieces like a dry twig, and stay silent.”
A sour stew of shame and misery churned in her belly. “You know?”
Her father’s smile was kind, and he caught her hand. “That you’ve at last met a man who makes you think of something other than pigments and paintbrushes? Of course I know. For the first few weeks here, you’re like a cat whose fur is rubbed the wrong way, all arched back and claws and hissing. Then in the space of a day, the cat is purring. While Fergus, he stops acting like a man on the rack and can’t keep his eyes off my daughter. When he looks at her, his face says he’s caught in a spell.”
Was that true? She supposed it must be.
Fergus hadn’t told her when he’d fallen in love with her. Perhaps it was weeks ago. She remembered how hungry he’d been for her before she went to his bed.
And afterward.
“You don’t mind?”
“That he takes my daughter as his mistress and not as his lawful wife, so she can celebrate her love in the sunlight? I mind it very much. But I also remember what it was like to be young and in love.” His eyes were sad, and she knew he was thinking of her mother. “Then tonight. Ah, tonight, the hissing cat and the mournful hound are back, eyeing one another off over the dinner table, and they’re giving me indigestion.”
“I hardly said a word,” she protested.
Her father shrugged. “You were hissing in your heart.”
Despite everything, a grim huff of amusement escaped her. “That’s not a very flattering description of either of us.”
Her father rolled his eyes. “Imagine how I felt having to look at you both.” He paused. “What’s happened? Has Fergus decided he no longer wants a mistress? The young can be fickle, but he doesn’t strike me as a shallow man. And he still looks at you as if he wants to gobble you up like a bonbon. No, I don’t think he’s tired of you. Perhaps you’ve tired of him. If you have, you don’t seem happy about the end of the affair.”
She shifted in discomfort. Her father was a worldly man, but she remained his daughter. “Papa, I’m not sure I can talk to you about this.”
He made a sound that indicated how asinine he considered that remark. “If you’re old enough to go to a man’s bed without benefit of marriage, you’re old enough to speak about what you’ve done.”
She winced. “You are upset.”
“Well, I’m your father. Now, tell me what’s happened, because I’ve held off giving you advice so far, but you look so woebegone tonight, I might be able to help.”
He’d been compassionate and perceptive, and better to her than she’d deserved. Anyway, he was right. She was making a horrid mess of things. She couldn’t forget how stricken Fergus had looked this afternoon when she’d told him she couldn’t marry him.
Marina looked down to their linked hands. The view became mistier by the second. “It’s all hopeless.”
Her father squeezed her hand. “He doesn’t love you?”
A tear trickled down her cheek. “He says he does.”
“So you don’t love him?”
“Of course I do. Do you think I’d have…”
“No, I didn’t think you would.” A prickly pause. “So he wants you as his mistress, not as his wife?”
Marina shook her head and more tears escaped. She lifted her free hand to wipe her eyes, but it didn’t help. “He asked me to marry him.”
Her father said slowly, “I’m not sure I see the difficulty.”
She drew a constricted breath and made herself meet his eyes. “Don’t you really?”
“You’re both in love. He’s proposed marriage. He’s a fine young man. You’re the best girl in the world—and don’t accuse me of being biased. Why are you crying your poor heart out to your papa, instead of announcing the good news?”
Since the day her mother died, Marina had missed her. She’d never missed her as much as she did at this moment, when she realized her father didn’t understand her at all, despite their long years together. The knowledge made her feel more alone than ever.
She tugged her hand free and fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief. “You must see marriage is impossible.”
Her father frowned in dismay. “Now I’ve upset you, when you’re already so unhappy.” His voice softened. “Tell your old papa why you won’t marry Fergus.”
She made a defeated gesture. They seemed to be becoming a habit. “I’m an artist, not a wife.”
“Can’t you be both?”
“I don’t know,” she said unsteadily. “I doubt it. The Mackinnon is a demanding man. He’ll ask a great deal of the woman he weds.”
“You have a great deal to give.”
“He’s stubborn and opinionated.”
“So you don’t think you’re strong enough to stand up to him?”
Fergus had asked her the same question. “I’m not,” she admitted, and blew her nose.
To her chagrin, her father laughed. “Cara, you’ve established a reputation as an artist in a world that disdained you as an amateur and even worse, a woman. If you can do that, handling a mere laird should be easy.”
She sniffed. “He isn’t mere at all.”
“No, he’s not. Neither are you.”
“And what if we have children? What about my painting then?”
“You
don’t want children?”
“Yes, I do. But can I be a mother and an artist?”
Papa’s smile was fond. “I believe you can be anything you want, Marina. So did your dear mother. If Fergus is willing to work with you, why can’t you have the things other women have, and still be an artist as so many other women can’t be?”
She began to tear at her handkerchief and spoke in a rush. “It’s more than that. It’s the practicalities. My life and work are in Florence. My patrons are in Florence, or traveling through it. And what happens to you? You don’t want to spend the rest of your life in Scotland. You and I have had such a partnership.”
He sighed and sent her a sheepish glance. “No, I don’t want to live in Scotland, although if I have grandchildren here, I’ll visit you often. This wet, gray country is too cold for my old bones. I want to go back to Italy.”
For an instant, she’d started to hope that perhaps she overestimated the barriers to a new life with Fergus. Her father’s answer, however expected, hurled her back into despair. “There you are, then.”
“There you are not, my girl,” he said. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, Marina, that I grow tired of this endless traveling. Bad roads. Bad food. Bad inns. Short-sighted coachmen who can’t see bridges in front of their noses. Breaking my leg is the last stick.”
“The last straw,” she said absently, as she regarded him in shock. “I’m so sorry, Papa. I thought you enjoyed the travel.”
He shrugged. “I did at first, but I’m a dozen years older than I was when we started out together, and the excitement has gone. I want to go back to Florence and find a nice comfortable widow to marry. Nobody will ever replace your mamma in my heart, but this is a lonely life, tesoro. I’d like the chance to stay in one place for a while.”
Marina stumbled to her feet, guilt joining the mix of unpleasant emotions already tormenting her. “I’ve been so selfish.”
He shrugged again. “You’re my daughter, and I love you, but to the ignorant, even a great artist like you is a fragile woman first. You needed a man to chaperone you and protect your good name. You’ve won so many battles, cara, but that weight of propriety, you couldn’t vanquish. Now, if you marry Fergus…”
The Laird's Willful Lass (The Likely Lairds Book 1) Page 21