Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction

by Jennifer Ashley

  Alec flushed. “That it was. And no, lass, I did not put my hands on the marquess.”

  His words rang of truth, but not the entire truth. Blast the man. He stirred Celia’s anger and curiosity in the same measure.

  She gave him a nod. “Just so we understand each other. I should depart, Mr. Finn, lest you miss your next appointment.”

  Alec didn’t move. “Ye don’t understand me at all.” His voice was low, harsh. “But ye can trust me. Believe that.” He took a step closer to her. “When those around ye are making your world hell, ye can trust me. Promise me you’ll remember that.”

  Celia listened in bewilderment, her lips parting. “Of course,” she said with difficulty.

  Alec shook his head. “No. I need ye to promise. When everything seems at its worst, ye put your trust in me.”

  He fixed her with a fiery stare, as though her answer was very important. Celia swallowed. “I promise,” she said.

  “Good.”

  The one word, spoken in broad Scots, rang through the room. He stood motionless, fingers of one hand resting on his thigh-hugging breeches.

  Celia drew a breath, ducked around his unmoving body, and scuttled out. Leaving the warmth of him was difficult, and her breath was ragged as she scrambled down the stairs, snatched her cloak from the waiting footman, and ran out into the rain to climb into the chair.

  She had no idea why Alec had made her promise to trust him, but the words, his gaze, the timbre of his voice, had all declared he was a rock she could hold on to. Celia certainly hoped that if it came to it, that rock would not crumble to dust under her touch.

  For the next few days, Celia attended her drawing lessons at eight o’clock on the dot and left again at the stroke of nine. Alec never referred to their discussion about trust and hell, or about his outings, the soldiers, Lord Harrenton, or anything but the picture of London he was helping Celia create.

  If not for the undercurrent of tension in Alec, and indeed the entire house, Celia would have enjoyed the instruction. She learned how shadows could be made with only a few lines, altering the entire character of the drawing. How distant objects could be suggested and yet look precise, how to project a grid to the vanishing point yet not make it obvious.

  On the third day Alec taught her how to mix paints. It was smelly and messy, the room filled with the sharp odors of linseed oil, beeswax, and the metals in the crushed pigments Alec lay out in mounds on the board.

  With a large smock over her gown and her sleeves pushed well out of the way, Celia worked melted wax into the oil and then the pigment, scraping and mixing. After that she’d roll a round glass pestle-like tool Alec called a muller over the paint until it was smooth and glistening. They made burnt umber first, a color Alec said would lay the foundation for the London painting.

  He scraped the finished paint into a glass bottle, as the lesson was over, and told her they’d begin transferring her final drawing to the canvas the next day, and begin laying on paint after that.

  Celia left, excited, pushing aside her misgivings about Alec and the uneasiness she sensed whenever she walked into Lady Flora’s house these days.

  Alec had kept himself distant during the lessons, no more flirtation or kissing. The more his bruises and cuts from his fight faded, the more he drew away from Celia. His tension was like a bowstring, one stretched so tight there was an even chance it would snap rather than release its arrow.

  There was something about art, however, that cut through Celia’s troubled thoughts and became a reality of its own. She could float in the bubble of creation, no matter how difficult it was to make the picture come out to her satisfaction. She even enjoyed the scents and physical sensation of mixing the paint. Alec had been right—she’d felt the paint come together, the different textures melding to become a puddle of vibrant color.

  Later that afternoon, Celia’s anticipation died abruptly when she entered her chamber to find her mother standing over her portfolio, turning the pages within.

  “Mama,” she said, startled. “I mean, Your Grace.”

  The duchess did not look at her. “This is what you have been doing at Lady Flora’s?” She pointed to the master drawing Celia had finished under Alec’s tutelage, based on the five sketches she had done using the camera obscura, each from a slightly different position.

  “Yes.” Celia’s enthusiasm bubbled up. “We will start painting very soon. Al— Mr. Finn has obtained quite a large canvas for it, and says it will be like Signor Canaletto’s paintings.”

  “Mr. Finn says?” The duchess snorted. “A trumped-up Irishman claiming to know about great painting is like a fish jumping off the plate and explaining how to sauce itself. You are to be learning portrait painting, Celia. Not scribbling pictures of a city anyone can see looking out their windows.”

  “We will do portraits,” Celia said, her breath coming fast. “Mr. Finn says I have a talent for landscape that he would hate to see wasted. And I do need to work on faces—though he says I’m good at noses.”

  The duchess listened to her babbling with a look of exaggerated patience. “That is excellent, I am certain. Let me remind you, daughter, that I allowed this mad idea of Lady Flora’s so that you could acquire a useful skill, not to indulge your strange interest in sketching views of London. Your landscapes will never hang alongside Signor Canaletto or Monsieur Lorrain, so let us put a stop to that nonsense at once.”

  The duchess caught up the pages of the London drawings and began to tear them to shreds.

  Chapter 14

  Celia let out a strangled cry as the duchess tore the drawings several more times and hurled the pages to the carpet.

  “Mama!” Celia choked out, forgetting she was to address her mother by her title. “How could you?”

  Her days of frenzied work, of Alec bringing forth a new world for her, showing her how to translate what she saw onto blank paper, gone in the space of a moment. Alec had opened her eyes to what was possible, and though Celia did not believe she’d achieve the greatness of famous painters, she could at least create something that pleased.

  Tears flooded her eyes, and she clutched a chair to stay on her feet. “How could you?”

  “Do not scold me, Celia. You are an ungrateful and disobedient child, spoilt and indulged by your father. There will be no more drawing lessons. Your uncle Perry and I have discussed what is to be done with you, and we still believe marriage is your best recourse.”

  “Marriage …” Celia could barely speak the word, could scarcely breathe. Her heart was breaking, her work torn and trampled by the duchess’s high-heeled slippers.

  “You took yourself well off the marriage mart by refusing the marquess,” the duchess went on. “You are now considered a light skirt, but as the months have gone by, and no child has come of it, other gentlemen not so fastidious will now consider you. Your husband will never trust you, I’m afraid, but if you are obedient and give him an heir, he will perhaps forgive your faults.”

  Celia’s anger flared through her grief. Throughout her childhood, Celia often wondered what she’d done to make her mother dislike her, but in a sudden flash, she realized she’d done nothing at all. Her mother was a single-minded, ambitious woman who did not see Celia as a person, but as a thing to be used to further those ambitions. The duchess had married for the same reason, having no use for the duke once she’d made him her husband and borne two children by him.

  “And who is this paragon who will accept me with all my faults?” Celia demanded.

  “Keep a civil tongue, daughter. He is not a marquess but the brother of one. A quiet young man who will not amount to much, but at least he has good connections and has said he is willing to marry you. He is James Spencer, younger brother of the Marquess of Ellesmere.”

  Celia had met this young man once, a few years ago, when the current Lord Ellesmere, great-nephew of Lady Flora’s husband, had come up to London to go over some business or other with Lady Flora. Lady Flora had invited the duke and du
chess for supper with Ellesmere and his brother, and Celia and Edward had come with them.

  Celia remembered a rather vapid young man two years older than herself, with limp clothes, a long, pale face, and teeth already rotting. Rumor had it he was a sodomite, although rumor said that about any gentleman who was not well liked and hadn’t yet married.

  Younger sons of aristocrats often went into politics or the military, but James Spencer seemed to do not much of anything. He was languid and lazy, and one of the most unprepossessing gentlemen Celia had ever met.

  “You cannot mean me to marry him …” Celia’s breath went out of her, blackness closing in. Her stays were far too tight, her stomacher cutting into her abdomen.

  “Turning up your nose again, are you?” The duchess sniffed. “Haughty creature. Are marquesses and their families beneath your notice? Lady Flora herself proposed the match. Perhaps she is so fond of you that she wishes to call you niece.”

  “Lady Flora.” Celia wheezed the name, fear piling on top of dismay.

  “She agrees you are a handful. James lives with Ellesmere on their estate in Hampshire. You will not be a hostess there, of course, as Ellesmere is married, but I’m certain you will be of some use to Lady Ellesmere as her sister-in-law.”

  Celia could form no more words. Lady Flora intensely disliked the current Lord Ellesmere—which was not surprising, as she had intensely disliked the former one, her own husband. That Lady Flora would believe his brother would make a good match for Celia … Either James Spencer had much changed since that supper, or Lady Flora had run mad, or else she was setting up this marriage as some machination of her own.

  Celia had the sudden urge to discuss the matter with Alec. To pour her troubles out on him, to beg for his advice. To feel his hand on her arm, to hear him rumble, “Ah, poor lass.”

  But Alec had troubles of his own—he would hardly wish to listen to hers, would he? What would the sorrow of a young gentlewoman coerced into a loveless marriage be to a man far from his home and family, terrified of speaking his own name?

  Through the fog in Celia’s mind came Alec’s quiet but emphatic words from a few days before, when he’d momentarily dropped his cold distance.

  When those around ye are making your world hell, ye can trust me. Promise me you’ll remember that.

  Celia had answered, I promise.

  Had he known of Lady Flora’s and her mother’s plans? Had he been warning her?

  “Your father has already approached Ellesmere about settlements,” the duchess said. “The wedding will be quiet, a special license here at home, and then you will be off to Hampshire. We will take you out into the world a bit to get people used to seeing you again while we make preparations, but you must not expect to be too much in society once you are married.”

  No, Celia was to rusticate in the country, the family embarrassment shunted aside. “Papa agrees to this match?” she asked in incredulity.

  “He sees that it will be best. He indulges you too much, as I say. It will be good for the pair of you to have you out of his influence.”

  Her mother had bullied her father into it, she meant. The room spun, and Celia had to sit down, though she was never allowed to sit while the duchess stood.

  “No, I will not …”

  The duchess’s lip curled. “Do not begin about what you will and will not do. I hope Lord James will cure you of this obstinacy with the back of his hand. If he does not, Ellesmere will. Now, tomorrow night you will accompany me and Lady Flora to the Spring Gardens at Vauxhall. We will go in fancy dress—this will be one of Lady Flora’s extravagant outings, and you must be paraded about as Lord James Spencer’s betrothed. Have your maid fix you a costume—one of the commedia dell’arte—Pierette, say, not one so ostentatious as Columbine. Do not speak to me again until then.”

  So ending her speech, the duchess swung around and strode out of the room. She did not bother to slam the door—a footman closed it decorously behind her.

  Celia slid from the chair to the floor. She groped for the torn drawings, the lines and curves she’d painstakingly drawn now forlorn scraps.

  No more tears would come. Her eyes burned, her grief twisting inside as she gazed upon the destruction of work she’d labored over for the last week. Celia had poured her heart into the drawing of London, and Alec’s hand was in it—it was art they had created together.

  As Celia gathered the fragments and held them close another realization poured over her. It wasn’t simply the picture she mourned, but what it represented—the hours she’d stood close to Alec, his hand brushing hers as he showed her how to bring the drawing to life, his breath on her skin as he scrutinized her strokes.

  He’d been as caught up in the creation as she had been. Time had at once stood still and flown by, magical moments of Alec and Celia working side-by-side, both of them excited about the vista of London unfolding before their eyes.

  The duchess had destroyed that beautiful time with each rip of the paper.

  Celia could never marry Lord James Spencer. Even if the young man had been a paragon of gentlemanliness, Celia could not pledge her heart, her loyalty, to him. It would be a lie, through and through. She would live in misery, and it would be unfair to James, as unpalatable as he was.

  But would she have a choice? Her father must have decided that giving in to the duchess was the quickest way to peace. Celia had watched him give way to her all his life—it was unlikely he’d cease now, no matter how much he sympathized with Celia. And perhaps her father had been convinced that marriage to the brother of a marquess would be better for Celia than no marriage at all.

  When those around ye are making your world hell, ye can trust me.

  Celia gathered up the pieces of the drawing. She couldn’t save it, but perhaps she could save herself. She’d seek out Alec and pour out her tale. Even if he could do nothing to help her, he might have some advice, or at the very least, he’d comfort her in his low, rumbling tones that made her want to stand close to him and simply listen.

  She’d dress up and go to Lady Flora’s gathering and be sweet as honey, coercing an entry into Lady Flora’s house. If the lessons were at an end, she couldn’t simply turn up—she’d have to plan a way for Lady Flora to invite her so that she could speak with Alec alone.

  Celia restored her portfolio the best she could and lugged it herself out of the room and up the stairs. Her determination was high, but her heart was lead in her chest.

  The shaft of light that had kept her life bearable these last days had been suddenly and inexorably extinguished.

  Alec climbed into Lady Flora’s carriage the next night to find himself facing a lady in a diamond-patterned dress of bright green, red, and black, with a lace ruff at her neck, jewels glittering on the fabric. A tricorn hat rested on Lady Flora’s fair hair, and she held a black mask in her gloved hand. Next to her was Mrs. Reynolds in more subdued colors but with the same kind of lace ruff, tricorn hat, and mask.

  Lady Flora took in Alec’s plain breeches, frock coat, boots, and hatless hair with disapproval. “You are supposed to be in costume.”

  The coach jerked forward, wheels bumping over cobbles on its way out of the square.

  Alec lifted the flap on the pack he’d set next to him, revealing a fold of white velvet trimmed with black. “I’ll not ride through London dressed as a clown. Ye have to take me as I am for now.”

  Lady Flora’s eyes tightened in annoyance. She had laid plans, and she didn’t like any alteration to said plans. “Make certain you are ready in time. It would never do for Celia to go off with the wrong Pierrot.”

  Mrs. Reynolds put a soothing hand on her arm. “I will steer her right.”

  Lady Flora let out a sigh, but sank back into the cushions as the carriage moved down South Audley Street to Piccadilly. From there they wended their way through St. James’s to Charing Cross with its pillory in the center, empty tonight. Whitehall took them farther south, past palaces full of British government ministers
and the admiralty who would have collective apoplexy if they knew a rebel Highlander rolled in a comfortable carriage through their midst.

  Whitehall petered out into meandering streets full of people enjoying drink, cock fights, and general laziness. A few of these denizens ran after the coach to beat on it and demand coin. Lady Flora’s coachman snarled at them and flicked his whip menacingly.

  The carriage emerged unscathed to Mill Bank where the coachman halted at stairs leading to the river. Footmen who’d clung to the back of the coach jumped down to assist Mrs. Reynolds and Lady Flora, and Alec lent his hand to help them into the hired barge that awaited them at the bottom of the stairs.

  The barge was hung with paper lanterns for the occasion, its benches cushioned with velvet. Lady Flora and Mrs. Reynolds settled in, their masses of skirts leaving little room for Alec. He shoved fabric aside with his boot as he sat, chuckling when Lady Flora scolded. The end of this night would work to Alec’s satisfaction, and he decided to push aside his anger and enjoy the absurdity.

  The river didn’t stink quite as much here as it did farther downstream, but even so Alec put his gloved hand to his mouth as the water slapped their barge. Lady Flora and Mrs. Reynolds lifted pomander balls to their noses, the scent of spice and dried oranges drifting through the fetid air. The waterman, used to the stench, rowed on, heading the barge to the opposite bank.

  At the stairs on the Lambeth side of the river, Alec helped Mrs. Reynolds and Lady Flora from the barge. At the top of the steps another coach waited, arranged by Lady Flora to take them the short distance to the Spring Gardens.

  The gardens at Vauxhall had been popular for some time now—Alec had seen them on a London visit before the Jacobite Uprising had made his life hell. He led the ladies through an open gate in a thick wall, where an acrobat in a backbend scuttled past to encourage them inside.