Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction (Mackenzies & McBrides #9)(17)
“I called her Mum.” Alec’s mother had been a duchess, as his father was the ninth Duke of Kilmorgan. But it had been a title to his mother, not what she was. The merry, laughing Allison McNab would never have insisted her sons call her Your Grace. Sadness touched him. “She’s gone now, poor woman.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Celia did sound sorry—she wasn’t mouthing a polite condolence.
“Long ago it was. Me dad, he never truly lived again. He didn’t pine away—oh no, that’s not his way.” Bluster and rage was more the duke’s way of grieving. “But he lost himself that day.” The one thing saved from the fire at Kilmorgan had been the portrait of Allison, Duchess of Kilmorgan, mother to six unruly sons, only three of which were left. Alec was determined not to make it only two.
“I apologize, Mr. Finn. I did not mean to bring up a painful memory.”
Alec blinked, realizing he’d sunk into his real self, leaving Mr. Finn far behind. Celia had a way of making him forget about everything but the truth.
How did Will do it? Be a different person continuously without slipping back into his own personality?
Alec cleared his throat. “Dinnae worry yourself. She was a happy woman. Now, are we to have this drawing lesson or no?”
“I beg your pardon.” Celia flushed and flicked her gaze back to the mirror. “I do not much understand the use in drawing me.”
“All artists do self-portraits,” Alec said. “The great Rembrandt did dozens of them—sketches, studies, paintings of himself in different costumes, making different faces. Daft people say it was vanity, but I think the man was trying to learn to draw many different expressions and was too dirt poor to pay a model.”
“I am not the great Rembrandt,” Celia pointed out. “I am an Englishman’s daughter with rudimentary skill.”
“Ye let me be the judge of your skill, lass. I’m the master here. Now.” He pointed at the blank paper. “Draw.”
Celia touched her pencil to the page. Her first stroke was shaky, but Alec watched her grow intrigued as she went along, her determination to get the lines right, the proportions correct. He noticed when she ceased seeing her reflection as herself and regarded it as a living being to be rendered on the paper. Her eyes fixed as she concentrated, the tip of her tongue coming out to touch the corner of her lip.
A lovely young woman. Alec was partial to them. He’d have to watch himself.
“Now then. Tell me about this rake ye refused to run away with.”
The pencil jerked. Celia hastily lifted it so she wouldn’t mar the page, and then she returned to the drawing, becoming absorbed once more in the task.
“The Marquess of Harrenton,” she said as she sketched. “He has several immense estates of thousands of acres each, with fine manor houses all over England. He is Whig to the core, a staunch supporter of my father, and an odious man who smells of fish oil. The sordid story, which I am certain you will hear from anyone with a penchant for gossip, is that I was found in a compromising position with him. All would have been well if I had married him, but I refused his gracious offer. Therefore, I am disgraced and ruined, not to mention ungrateful and spoiled.” She added a line that defined a curl drooping to her forehead, the stroke swift with indignation.
Alec’s anger rose. Compromising position? What did that mean? Had this marquess touched Celia, pinned her against him while he groped her? More still?
Rage climbed as the image came to him, and he overlapped it with one of himself seizing the marquess and slamming his head into the floor. That anyone would dare touch this gentle, pretty young woman made redness dance before his eyes.
He forced himself not to move, but when he answered, his voice was hard. “I’m glad you refused. No lady should be married off against her will to an odious man who smells of fish oil.” Who would be dead soon, if Alec had anything to say about it.
Celia glanced at him in surprise. “Well, you are the only one who believes so. Even my brother told me I was ungrateful. I could have been mistress of properties greater than those of my father, a hostess without equal, he said. Though my father’s sister left me a small legacy in trust, so I am not penniless, it is nothing to what settlements the marquess could have made. Lord Harrenton is thirty years my senior, my brother reminded me, and so I might not have had to put up with him long. I ought to have gritted my teeth and borne him.”
“No’ much of a marriage,” Alec said his anger remaining high. Bloody cold English and their bloody cold ideas for matchmaking. “A business arrangement, that is.”
“Is it so different in Scotland? Are ladies allowed to choose their own mates?”
Alec had to shake his head. “Not so different. Fathers marry off daughters to strengthen ties to families or to rub rival families’ noses in it. My mum defied her family and took up with m’ father—she was to have been married into a different clan. In the old days the lasses had no choice. These days … well, I’m not much in Scotland these days, so I don’t know, and I have no sisters. Just as well. I doubt my father would have allowed the poor things to marry anyone.”
“Did you marry by choice?” Celia asked. “Or was it arranged?”
The image of Genevieve, bright like a shooting star and burning out as quickly, flashed into Alec’s head. Her laughter, her white-hot tempers, her vividness—he’d known her so very briefly that some of the memories were slippery, elusive.