by Nichole Van
He managed a tight grin at Lady Kildrum, as she took a seat behind the desk. She shot him a glance, expression unreadable.
She moved a stack of papers to the left, placing a pencil atop them, before lacing her hands together on the desktop.
She had lovely hands, long fingers with narrow, elegant fingernails, neatly trimmed and manicured. His fingers itched to draw them.
But as he imagined drawing the lines of her fingers, he noted another interesting fact—
Lady Kildrum did not wear a wedding ring.
Which was . . . odd. Surely there was a Lord Kildrum, was there not? Ewan was not fluent on forms of address, but he knew that you could not have a Lady Kildrum without there being a Lord Kildrum, too. Lords and ladies who bore a title were almost always a matched set.
He tore his gaze from her hands, bringing his eyes back to her face.
Should he speak first? And if so, what should he say? Surely she had utterly forgotten about their prior meeting, so mentioning those moments in her carriage would be absurd.
The silence stretched. Lady Kildrum was cataloging him as thoroughly as he had cataloged her. He sensed that her intelligent gaze missed nothing, from the tailoring and cut of his clothing to the wary hesitance in his voice.
Why was the room suddenly so warm?
He hated his fair skin. Sometimes it seemed as if the slightest errant thought would cause him to blush. Even now, he could feel the scalding heat threatening to climb over the edges of his jaw.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Thank ye for speaking with me, Lady Kildrum.”
She nodded her head. “I suppose I could pretend that I do not recognize you.” She dropped her eyes to the desk and then raised them back to his. “But given how you froze upon entering the room, that would only force both of us to lie. And I am an acolyte of truth-telling whenever possible.”
She did remember him.
The sharp candor of her words nearly stopped his breath.
Ah, yes. This was another reason why she had stuck so in his memory. The refreshing openness of conversation with her.
“Aye.” He shot her a small grin. “I remember ye well, my lady. I dinnae think I can ever truly express my thanks for your kindness that day.”
“I was glad to be of assistance.” She paused before continuing, “You informed Irvine that you are here to work with my uncle, Sir Joshua Kerr?”
“Your uncle? I dinnae ken that he was your uncle. But aye, I’m here to work with Sir Joshua. I dinnae realize that this wasnae his own house.”
“No, my uncle came to live here after the passing of my mother two years ago.” Her expression softened, as if their past acquaintance had knocked loose some of her reserve. “He keeps insisting that he will leave and return to his studio in London, but that has yet to happen.”
Ewan wondered if Lord Kildrum was an indulgent husband to tolerate his pretty wife’s relatives running amok in his household.
Though, Ewan supposed, if he himself had such a pretty wife, he would struggle to deny her anything.
“I shall try tae stay out of the way of the household as much as possible, then,” he said. “I dinnae want my presence tae be a bother.”
“Pardon? Why do you say that?” Her brow dented. “How long do you anticipate staying?”
Had Sir Joshua not informed her of any part of Ewan’s visit? Worry crept into his thoughts.
“Sir Joshua didnae specify a term” he hedged, “but I reckon we should be through the projects he described afore Christmastide.”
“Christmastide?!”
Her outrage was disconcerting. Ewan’s own alarm grew.
Was his employment not a foregone conclusion? Sir Joshua’s letters had certainly made it seem so, but Kilmeny Hall was not the older painter’s own home. Did Lord and Lady Kildrum need to sanction Ewan’s stay here?
Ewan had only met Sir Joshua a handful of times, but the man’s bonhomie had been palpable. He struck Ewan as the type to make decisions without fully consulting others.
So if this were the first Lady Kildrum had heard of Ewan joining her household, she was understandably dismayed. He winced, images of dealing with a haughty Lord Kildrum blowing through his head.
Blast Sir Joshua for landing him in this predicament! How could Ewan stay on, knowing that his presence was unwelcome?
But how could he bow out? Working with Sir Joshua was vital to Ewan’s career.
Something in his expression cut through Lady Kildrum’s own concern.
“Forgive my outburst,” she said. “It is only, I am puzzled why my uncle will need you as a model for so many months?”
Now it was Ewan’s turn to sit back, nonplussed.
“Model?” he asked.
“Yes.” She cocked her head. “Are you not here to model for uncle’s Greek battle painting? I know he prefers to use prizefighters whenever possible.”
Ah.
Something acidic and hot swelled in Ewan’s stomach . . . more than just his habitual hunger.
Something that dripped a caustic green and tasted suspiciously like shame.
“Such excellent musculature. Do you see that, the line there?” The icy-cold end of a paint brush trailed over his bare ribs. “Remember, he is a brute, not a man. His body is merely a series of lines and shapes. It is not an actual whole—”
Ewan shook off the memory.
Given how he and Lady Kildrum had first met, her assumption was logical.
But that was his past. He would never return to that place.
As if on cue, his stomach growled. Not a wee, polite sound that one could dismiss as the distant lowing of cattle.
No, it was a mortifying rumble, reverberating round and round. A gremlin lodged within.
Lady Kildrum’s eyebrows flew to her hairline. Ewan pressed a hand to his stomach—which affected the sound not at all and only highlighted his predicament—and willed the blush climbing his face to subside. The dry bread and cheese he had hours ago at an inn had been inadequate.
“Sally.” Lady Kildrum looked past him to the maid in the corner. “Will you order up some tea and a tray of sandwiches for Mr. Campbell?”
Ewan closed his eyes, his cheeks flaming.
But he had perceived this about Lady Violet . . . ehr, Lady Kildrum . . . all those years ago, had he not? She noticed and acted. And again, as like before, admiration for the lady rose in his chest.
The maid bobbed a curtsy and popped her head out the door, speaking to a footman outside before returning to her seat in the corner.
The entire episode only served to deepen Ewan’s blush.
“Thank ye, my lady,” he finally managed to say. “That is most kind. As ye can see, I am not a wee man. My body burns through food at an alarming rate.”
She gave a small smile.
“As to my time here,” he continued and then took in a steadying breath, “I must correct your assumptions. I am not come to model for Sir Joshua. I have been hired as his assistant.”
Ewan was not sure how he expected her to react to this information, but stunned silence was not it.
Though perhaps he should have anticipated it. After all, he had been half-dressed, battered, and dripping blood when last they met. Her ladyship naturally assumed that such brutality was still part of his life. How was she to know that he had left it behind the moment he stepped out of her carriage?
No one in his career as an artist knew of his prior existence as a prizefighter, and vice versa.
His past was best left as precisely that—passed.
“You—” Lady Kildrum paused, a V forming between her eyes. “You . . . are an artist?”
“Aye,” he nodded. “That I am.”
That furrow deepened. “An artist of such skill that my uncle, Sir Joshua Kerr, hired you to assist him?”
Ewan considered himself to be a man not given to masculine displays of prowess, his physique and past career choices notwithstanding.
He loathed his skills as a prizefigh
ter. He took no pride in them.
But he admitted to some vanity when it came to his talent as a painter. He had suffered and sacrificed greatly for his art. After all, a man did not become a professional painter without believing passionately in his own skill.
Ewan vowed that someday everyone in Britain would know his work. Employ with Sir Joshua was just one of the many steps toward that goal.
Assuming Lord and Lady Kildrum didn’t sack him beforehand.
“I studied under Sir Joshua at the Royal Academy of Arts, and I do believe your uncle saw merit in my work, which is why I am here.”
“You went from prizefighting to . . . painting?” That sharp V remained between Lady Kildrum’s eyes, as if the dichotomy of him were too great.
“Aye. I was fighting my way tae London and the Royal Academy when we met that day in your carriage,” he answered steadily. “Ye might say I choose beauty over brutality.”
He met her gaze evenly, his jaw surely sticking out in stubborn tenacity.
Her expression was best described as . . . highly skeptical.
His pride could not allow that to remain.
“If ye would be so kind as tae hand me that pencil and a sheet of foolscap”—he motioned toward her desk—“I would be happy tae confirm my skill for your ladyship’s approval.”
If she found his words forward or improper, she did not show it.
“Merely a quick sketch of your ladyship’s face,” he assured her.
Lady Kildrum nodded. She slid the requested paper and pencil across the desk to him and then handed him a hard-sided ledger to use as a desk.
Ewan placed the foolscap atop the ledger, balancing the lot on his knees, and began to draw.
Lady Kildrum sat with one elbow on her desk, hand propped under her chin. Her expression was likely irritation, but Ewan chose to see it as bemusement. The weak afternoon light filtered in from the window behind her, rimming her head in a celestial halo.
Abruptly, in his mind’s eye, she was no longer Lady Kildrum, but Athena in her bower. The goddess of wisdom.
The pencil lacked the fluidity of the Italian charcoal he preferred when sketching, but it was tolerable. Lady Kildrum’s eyes appeared first, then her finely arched eyebrows, her pert nose.
Ewan recognized that by Society’s standards, Lady Kildrum was likely not counted a traditional beauty. But he had long felt that precise beauty was tedious.
Lady Kildrum was interesting, her eyes a little too widespread, her chin a smidge too long, her forehead a bit too wide. And yet, all together, her features created a compelling woman.
As he was wont to do when drawing, he lost track of time. He lingered on the lines of her tapered fingers, the tactile drape of her hair slipping from its curl. It was not quite ashy blond nor rich brown nor reddish umber, but some shade in-between them all. And more to the point, it resisted being curled—stubborn in its determination to remain straight.
He found it utterly charming.
Ewan filled in the background with quick pencil marks, using the white paper to convey the suggestion of the light streaming behind her, the rim of gold circling her head.
Part of him longed to transfer the sketch to canvas. How would it be to linger on her face, to spend hours leisurely brushing paint in layer after layer?
He could already see it in his mind’s eye. He would begin with a ground of soft blue to act as an undertone for the yellow and orange paint atop it, giving the image luminosity and depth—
A throat clearing finally brought him back to himself. He looked up and blinked, seeing the butler standing in the doorway.
Lady Kildrum remained behind her desk, that inscrutable expression on her face.
“A repast has been laid in the breakfast room for Mr. Campbell, my lady,” the butler said, his tone loudly communicating his disapproval of Ewan’s presence in the household.
“Thank you, Irvine.” Her ladyship nodded her elegant head. “Mr. Campbell can await my uncle’s return there.”
“Very well, my lady,” Irvine replied.
Ewan smiled tightly and rose to his feet. He set the ledger and pencil back on the desktop but retained the foolscap in his hand.
Lady Kildrum stood as well, the scent of lavender wafting across to him. He noted that she was tall . . . remarkably tall, in fact, and curved in ways that a man appreciated. He kept his eyes firmly on her face.
She truly was unaccountably lovely. Briefly, he wondered if her husband treasured her as thoroughly as he should.
Such thoughts, of course, were utterly unhelpful. And, to be blunt, improper. He excised them from his brain with a surgical exactness that would do Alex proud.
Ewan bowed.
“Thank you for our conversation, my lady.” He took a step forward and extended the sketch.
She took it, eyes darting down to the paper.
Silence descended.
Lady Kildrum remained riveted on his sketch, pressing fingers to her sternum, a hard swallow moving up and down the elegant column of her throat. Her eyes darted back and forth over the paper.
He could paint her like this, too . . . the swooping line of her profile bent to look at the foolscap. Faint blue light casting purple shadows along her jawline, luminous golden sun behind, all representing the fascination that—
He turned from her with a jerk, swallowing hard. He nodded at the butler before following the man out of the room.
But damn if he didn’t almost look back.
4
Violet stared at the drawing long after the door closed behind Red . . . ehr, Mr. Campbell.
She was accustomed to seeing beautiful art quickly rendered. Her uncle, after all, was Sir Joshua Kerr, a leading member of the Royal Academy of Arts. Heavens, her uncle had been knighted five years previously for his contributions to the artistic merit of Britain as a whole.
In short, Violet was not easily impressed by displays of artistic greatness.
But this . . .
In the space of a few short minutes, Red had created such . . . beauty.
The drawing breathed with life.
Violet stared down at her own face, drawn with life-like accuracy and yet brimming with that intangible something that stamped it as Art.
He had sketched her as Athena—the ghostly form of an owl on her shoulder pronouncing her identity—a goddess in her heaven, looking down on mere mortals below. She appeared radiant, the secrets of nations hidden in her eyes, the glory of her power streaming in the light from behind.
Was this how Red saw her? The goddess of wisdom? Her?!
The very idea was so far off the mark she nearly laughed. She was still struggling to determine the wisdom of oats versus potatoes.
Hardly a goddess-level problem.
Moreover, the entire experience brought home why she remembered Red so many years on. Partially, it was his size and rather unique coloring, the sense of such battered desperation . . .
But it had been the dichotomy of him that lingered. How mismatched the man was. A poet’s soul in a prizefighter’s body. But even in that, she had not grasped the magnitude of what hid beneath his exterior. The sheer vibrance and beauty of it.
Watching him sketch had been . . . fascinating. His enormous hand gripping the pencil, the other hand bracing the ledger and paper upon his knees. The pencil was absurdly tiny in his hand, a child’s plaything. And yet he had moved it across the paper with fluid ease, his brows drawn down in concentration. The tightly leashed control of his towering body focused down, down, down to such a small point.
Her brain, most unhelpfully, paired that memory with another—Red seated across from her in that carriage, bare-chested and endless rippling muscle—
Heat scorched Violet, a dowsing flood of longing.
She braced her hands on her desk, eyes closed, willing her wayward imagination to behave.
She might share much of her sisters’ endless interest in the opposite sex, but Violet could not allow baser instincts to rule her head.
She must keep her reputation spotless. She could not entertain thoughts of this wholly unsuitable Highlander vastly below her station, no matter how compelling his art or how alluring his broad shoulders—
Enough.
Violet took another steadying breath.
Red—grrr, Mr. Campbell!—was simply no one to her. And must always remain no one.
You hear that, body?! No one!
Violet set Mr. Campbell’s sketch aside, intent on continuing her assessment of the estate’s current planting schedule, but the drawing hovered at the edge of her vision, nearly humming with vitality.
The problem, of course, was that even though Violet knew she must resist the lure of attraction to someone so unsuitable, the reality of that attraction remained.
Mr. Campbell was alarmingly magnetic, a potent mixture of raw masculinity and captivating artistry.
Seeing him had thrown her back to overhearing Lord Michael that afternoon. Even nearly eight years on, she could still feel the burn of humiliation, listening to Lord Michael’s words outside the carriage while staring into Mr. Campbell’s eyes.
Violet was not so naive as to assume that she would marry for overwhelming love. But she expected that her husband would genuinely like her. Being a countess should at least afford her that low bar.
And so, she had roundly rejected Lord Michael’s offer of marriage when it came, much to his lordship’s shocked dismay. In the aftermath, Lord Michael had spent months attempting to convince Violet of the sincerity of his affections. Even Smitty had tried to change her mind. To no avail, of course.
And now the lot had come full circle, with Lord Graham hovering as a suitor and Violet staring once more into Mr. Campbell’s eyes.
Yes, she wanted a husband and children. In her more truthful moments, Violet acknowledged that she longed for the physical intimacy of marriage. But along with that, she wished for a husband who put her first and foremost. Someone she could always rely upon to guard her interests.
Mr. Campbell’s drawing hummed at the edges of her vision, sending her thoughts pinging round and round. How could she concentrate on planting schedules now? Slamming her ledger shut, she excused the upstairs maid.