by Virna DePaul
“You have notecards?” Molly asked.
He pulled a stack of numbered cards from his jacket pocket, making Molly nod and grin. He found her mischievous and playful grin infectious, but he kept his face stern and tight. In fact, he thought, he shouldn’t refer to her as Molly, not even in his own thoughts. Molly had the wild, daring eyes and wet curls in the rain. Molly had dimples in the small of her back, skin soft and warm in the firelight. Molly wore a white fisherman sweater and a dream of what lay underneath.
She should be Miss Lane instead. Miss Lane was her real name, after all. She was the woman who was soon leaving. Miss Lane would be with him for a few more hours and then she’d be gone. Miss Lane was a distant memory just waiting to disappear from thought. He could handle losing Miss Lane. He was not so sure he could handle losing Molly.
“Notecards ensure I’ll say what I’m supposed to say, Miss Lane.”
“Miss Rose,” Miss Lane quickly corrected.
“Of course,” Callum said, glancing around to make sure no one had heard his slipup. “Notecards ensure I’ll say what I’m supposed to, Miss Rose.”
She stood on her tiptoes to sneak a peek at the fine letters printed across the cards, but Callum tucked them tightly to his chest.
“They’re kids, Your Grace.” She stuffed her hands into her pockets. “Just speak from the heart.”
He scoffed, and she raised an eyebrow.
“They won’t know the difference,” he insisted.
There was no hint of joking in her voice when she responded, “They most certainly will.”
He wished she wouldn’t say things like that. Things that forced him to stop and look at her more closely. Things that caused every thought to rush from his mind and leave only her words, spoken so softly, so sweetly, so purely, on loop until he could no longer forget them even if he tried. They were things no one else ever said to him, spoken in a manner no one else used around him.
They were words that made him want to lay in bed with her, bare legs intertwined, naked chests pressed tightly together, his fingers in her hair, his eyes locked on hers, as she told him anything and everything that was on her mind. For hours he could imagine himself listening to her and those magical, sacred, whispered words. He wanted his every thought to echo with her words.
She intrigued him. Her persistence in knowing him intrigued him. Her mischievous grin and wild curls intrigued him. Her life intrigued him.
Callum shouldn’t have listened in on her conversation earlier on the phone, but he had, wanting to know more about her. Hence, he’d heard her difficulties with paying for a storage unit. He’d heard her promises to pay based on a new job. He’d heard her desperation when she said the contents of the storage unit were the most precious things to her in the world. It all made him exceedingly curious about her and what she was hiding.
His immediate thought was to help. He had more than enough money, more than he really even knew what to do with. Gone were the days where he could spend it on expensive, boozy nights out or low-cut, designer dresses to rip off of whichever girl he was fucking that week or private jet weekend getaways to Ibiza or the French Riviera or the Maltese Islands. As such, he could pay for Miss Lane’s storage unit instead. Surely it wouldn’t cost much. But Callum feared he’d be willing to pay anything for her. As much as he tried to repress his feelings, he cared for her, even as he tried her patience.
Paying, however, required admitting that he’d eavesdropped and, even worse, admitting the truth that he did indeed care. And so to save her pride, and his own, he had pretended to have found her as she hung up the phone, pretended to have barely heard anything.
Callum glanced over at her in the small cafeteria as she doodled in a notebook, its spine barely hanging on. What was it, he couldn’t help thinking, that was most precious to her in the whole world?
Just then, the prim and proper school administrator cracked open the side door to the gymnasium, interrupting Callum’s thoughts.
“We’re ready for you, Your Grace,” she whispered.
Wiping his sweaty palms against his pants one last time, Callum, followed by Molly—Miss Lane—headed right into the gymnasium. Immediately, he was aware of every pair of young eyes trained on him as if he was a field mouse being watched by a flock of hawks. He straightened his shoulders and adjusted his tie, clearing his throat when he reached the microphone.
Mack and Mol—Miss Lane—stood against the wall to his right, waiting for him to speak just like the fifty or so children in the gymnasium.
“Good afternoon, children of Kelso Primary School,” he started.
The silence was heavy and obvious. He cleared his throat again. One little boy sitting cross-legged in the front row turned and whispered to the girl next to him. They were going to revolt against him, Callum thought. They were going to band together and rush him and he’d be powerless in their tiny, grimy hands. He gripped the podium.
“Of art,” he continued, “Aristotle said that the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
“Oh, Christ,” he thought he heard Mol—Miss Lane—fuck it—Molly, whisper from the side of the gymnasium.
He glanced over, and she buried her shaking head in her hands. A few giggles traveled through the rows of seated children. Callum gripped the podium tighter and stared down at his notecards.
“And so, children, art is therefore a way for us to study the inward significance of our selves, our fellow man, and our society. The exchange of art between us elevates us all. It is for this reason that I am the most ardent of advocates for the continuation of the invaluable art projects being conducted through the schooling here in Kelso.”
A teacher near the back clapped twice before the pervading awkwardness settled back in.
“Thank you,” he muttered, flipping the first notecard over.
Out of the corner of his eye, Molly whispered with a school administrator and then abruptly disappeared down the hallway. Even with her absence, he continued his speech. One by one the children’s attention dropped away. More and more, the teachers had to scold a student for talking or urge another to sit still. Callum also grew increasingly uncomfortable; his fingers fidgeted against the podium, his feet bounced, his mind kept drifting away from the printed notecards.
He knew he looked the part of a duke. His suit was pressed and tailored to perfection. The pocket square on his breast pocket complimented his tie. Hair gelled neatly, beard trimmed, shoulders back. He spoke clearly and succinctly and professionally. Everything that was required of him, he did.
But as was too often the case, he didn’t feel like the commanding Duke he should be, and that feeling was confirmed by how his current audience was responding to him.
And according to the stack of notecards on the podium, he wasn’t even a quarter of the way through. During a brief pause, he suddenly heard Molly’s voice.
“Hey, who wants to paint?” she shouted.
Startled, he watched her bustle into the gymnasium, pushing a cart laden with buckets of paint and bundles of brushes tumbling off the edge.
He saw a few kids timidly raise their hands. Molly tossed each of them a paintbrush and popped open cans of red, orange, and yellow.
“Who else?” she asked, searching the gathered children.
Five or six more brave hands stretched into the air.
“Great.” Molly grinned. “One for you and, yup, you back there.”
The children sat in anticipatory silence as attentive eyes blinked up at her. Even Callum found himself leaning over the podium, eager to see exactly what she was going to do next.
“Well, go on then,” she said.
The children either stared with confusion up at Molly or whispered in confusion to their neighbor. Callum shared their confusion. Finally, one child raised her hand and Molly pointed to her.
“Yes?”
“Ma’am, we don’t have any paper. We only have the brushes and paint.”
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Molly pretended to be surprised by this fact as she tapped her chin in thought. Callum couldn’t stop himself from grinning. Her blonde curls swung as she twisted around and walked to the nearest wall.
“What about right here?” she asked with a smile.
Callum glanced at the school administrator, who looked appropriately nervous right back at him. What exactly was she doing? The children giggled amongst themselves.
“What?” Molly asked, putting her hands on her hips. “What’s so funny?”
“We can’t paint on the wall,” the same girl who had asked the question answered. “We’re not allowed.”
“Oh, yeah?” Molly challenged.
The school administrator clasped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Molly grabbed a paintbrush, dipped it in a vibrant fuchsia, and streaked it right across the cinder block walls.
“There are no boundaries to art,” she said to the children. “All you need is what you already have—your imagination. You can create art anywhere and everywhere, with anything and everything.”
The children’s eyes hesitantly sought out their teachers. Before Callum could convince himself otherwise, he leaned in closer to the microphone.
“Go on then,” he said. “Get after it.”
A duke’s word was a duke’s word; the teachers shrugged and nodded. In an uproar of excited cheers, the children flooded to the gymnasium walls. Within moments, splashes of orange and yellow and green and purple covered the drab gray concrete.
To accept his berating with dignity, Callum looked nervously for the school administrator. Instead, he found the prim and proper woman wedged between two curly red-headed boys, a brush dripping blue paint onto her tweed skirt. To his surprise, he even spotted Mack hoisting a young girl up onto his shoulders to paint a bright yellow sun.
“Your Grace?”
Molly was suddenly right there, holding out a paintbrush and a bucket of pink paint. Callum shook his head and fumbled with re-stacking his notecards into a tidy pile.
He knew she intended nothing sexual in the slightest as she stood there with paint-speckled hands and a grin. There was no seductive tilt to her hip or alluring quirk to her eyebrow and not even a dangerous flash in her eyes. Everything was casual, friendly, sweet. It was abundantly clear to the rational side of his mind, along with anyone else who could have occasion to see the two’s interaction, that Miss Lane meant only to suggest that the Duke of Roxburghe join her in painting the wall.
And yet Callum could think of nothing more, even see nothing more, than painting all over the naked, quivering, exposed body of Molly Lane. He saw it perfectly. The very brush she held in those petite, delicate fingers, he would hold in the firm grip of his own. She would put it there in his palm, the paintbrush that is. She would want him to paint every inch of her.
He could no longer see the scuffed floor of the gymnasium, nor the lines marking out the boundaries for basketball games. He couldn’t see the gray concrete walls or the children or the teachers. He could see only Molly as he tugged up the hem of her shirt and pulled it up and over her head.
She grinned devilishly, victoriously at the first uncontrollable sign of his erection as she undid the button of her pants and kicked them off. His grip on the paintbrush tightened as she unhooked the clasp of her bra, which fell to the floor, soon to be joined by her thong. Her hand extended out to him and he took it, following her to the canopy bed in the guest room of the castle.
She lay down in the center of the bed and arranged her hair like a halo around her head and looked up at him, still holding his paintbrush.
“What are you waiting for?”
He laughed nervously when he suddenly realized those words had come not from the Molly in his fantasy, but the Molly standing right in front of him, in a school gymnasium full of children.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked, quirking her head to the side and giving him an amused look.
Callum shook his head and hoped when he spoke he didn’t betray where his mind had been. “I think it quite for the best,” he said slowly, “that I do not.”
She grabbed Callum’s hand before he could stop her and wrapped his fingers around the paintbrush. He couldn’t help but notice the warmth of her hand around his or the cold from its absence. She started to walk away, leaving him frozen from her touch.
Callum stared up at the ceiling and cursed the world. He was trying to keep her at a distance, he really was. Every ounce of his self-control was employed in not giving into her charms. But he felt everything in the universe was conspiring against him. What chance did he stand against the universe?
Molly glanced at him over her shoulder.
“If you don’t hurry up, I’ll have to assume it’s because you’re staring at my ass.” She whispered the last word, likely not wanting any of the kids to hear her, but Callum heard her just fine.
Callum made a play of groaning and trudging after her, but he secretly feared just how easy it would be for him to follow those bright blue eyes and that eager, adventurous grin. And now all he could think about was painting her ass. Fuck.
“How do I do this?” he asked her when they stood together at an open spot along the wall, attempting to focus on something, anything other than how the bristles of the paintbrush would move over her body.
He watched a boy next to him add whiskers to what was most likely, but not definitely, a cat.
“How do I do this?” he asked her.
“How do you breathe?”
Callum wasn’t sure he heard her. “What?”
Molly created a spiral on the shell of a snail and then smiled up at him, shaking her head. “Stop thinking, Your Grace,” she said.
Stop thinking? What an absurd thing to say. What an absolutely absurd thing to say. He stood petrified in front of a blank expanse of gray cinderblock, paintbrush held in his grip. What if he made an incorrect stroke? What if he needed to erase? He glanced around the room for a bucket of soap and water, but found only vibrant color seeping onto the floor.
Abruptly, Molly smeared a blob of red paint across the empty section of wall right in front of him. “There,” she said. “Now you can’t ruin it.”
She returned to her multicolored snail and didn’t pay him any further attention. Staring at the red paint dripping down the wall, he took his brush and swept it across. There. He’d done it. He’d started. Tentatively, he checked either side to see if anyone was watching or judging or critiquing, which was something he was used to as the new and untested Duke.
But the children were smiling and laughing at their own works. Teachers were running around with paper towels. Molly was delicately adding round circles to the tops of the snail’s antenna.
And so, Callum returned his brush to the wall and painted the other side of a bird’s wing. Maybe no one else would know what it was. He was no artist. But it was his. And he was standing next to Molly for at least a few more minutes. So while it wasn’t the same as painting her breasts, he still found himself smiling nonetheless. Maybe he could make it through without giving in to the wild, hungry beast inside, after all.
Or maybe the beast was just biding its time.
Chapter Seven
Molly
After the school visit, Molly climbed back into the black sedan. Her hand accidentally bumped the Duke’s, resting on the seat. He pulled his hand away as if severely burned and apologized, diverting his eyes from her face. She’d bumped into strangers in intimate subway scenarios who showed her more of a reaction than the Duke.
She laughed curiously, then leaned her head against the window to admire the beautiful countryside scrolling by beneath the gathering afternoon clouds.
Did she scare him? Was it improper to touch a duke’s hand? Had she transgressed some unspoken international treaty, throwing Scotland and the United States into the early stages of World War III?
But earlier, in the gymnasium, she’d grabbed his hand and he hadn’t pulled away. Of course, she hadn�
�t allowed him to. She’d just grabbed him and not let go. Maybe he wasn’t used to that.
“Um, Miss Rose?” Callum asked.
Molly turned in the leather seat as Mack drove. “You call me that again, Your Grace, and I’m going to call you Cal for the remainder of our time together.”
He frowned. “What would you prefer me to call you?”
She was about to respond with her real name, but the Duke nodded toward Mack in the driver’s seat. She tapped her hands on her knees and sighed.
“Priscilla,” she said with little enthusiasm. “I guess you can call me Priscilla.”
“Priscilla, may I ask you something?”
“Certainly, Your Grace.”
“How did you engage so quickly with the children back there at the school?” he asked.
“Don’t you remember, Your Grace?” she winked. “I have extensive volunteer experience with the Boys and Girls Club.”
He rolled his eyes dramatically to admit his amusement, but Molly could tell that he truly wanted an honest answer. Slightly surprised that he wanted to have such an open, personal discussion, she decided to give him her full attention. She wiggled in her seatbelt until she was fully facing him.
“I think I just have my heart in it,” she explained. “I love art. Above all else I love art and everything it represents, everything it can be, everything it can do. And, well, I love to see young kids get involved with it. I love seeing what their young, unfiltered, unbiased minds can create. I love seeing that same love I have grow in them.”
Molly half expected him to ask her to stop so that he could pull a notepad and pencil from his lapel to take notes. He seemed to nod at the right moments and say, “Emhmm” and “yes, yes, all right”. But when she searched his eyes, she sensed he really had no idea what she was talking about.