Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction (Mackenzies & McBrides #9)(22)

Celia barely heard him. Why the devil had Mr. Finn done this to her—shown her what she could be, what she was losing? This morning, she hadn’t mourned her existence, and then in a few swoops of the pencil, Mr. Finn had showed her devastating truth.

“Might I keep this?” Her father lifted the paper, turning it to the light, completely ignoring the stilted sketch of Mr. Finn’s arm on the next page. “It is delightful. I shall frame it and hang it where I can look upon it every day.”

Celia snapped back to herself. The floor rocked beneath her feet, and she dragged in a breath. Her father was being kind, affectionate as usual. At least Celia had that. Her father bothered with her, a refreshing oddity in a time when so many fathers were sublimely uninterested in their daughters.

“Yes, certainly,” Celia said, her voice a croak.

“Thank you. I’ll have Matthews take it to be framed. A most lovely gift, my dear.”

He patted Celia’s shoulder, the closest the duke ever came to making an overture of affection. She’d never seen him so much as touch her mother. Edward always jested that it was a miracle he and Celia had been conceived at all.

Celia patted her father’s hand in return and daringly kissed his cheek. The duke jumped and then waved her away good-naturedly.

“Tell me about your drawing master. This Mr. … Finn, is it?”

Celia experienced another jolt. She thought of Mr. Finn as she’d left him today, the gleam of golden eyes as he’d swept his gaze over her, the corners of his mouth lifting as though holding back a smile.

He’d made light of his bruises, but she’d known he’d been in a fight for his life.

Did she dare reveal that Mr. Finn was a Highlander, here in London for who knew what purpose, using an assumed name?

She’d tried to ask him about his background today, and he’d answered evasively. But she must be right that he had nothing to do with the Uprising, if only because Lady Flora would never condone a traitor to the crown living under her roof. Not only was she a staunch loyalist, she’d thought the Scottish Prince Charles a buffoon too young to have an opinion about anything, and the rebelling clansmen foolish and ungrateful knaves. Lady Flora would have found out every scrap of information about Mr. Finn before she let him set foot in the front door.

Mr. Finn had denied fighting for either side of the Uprising and supposedly had been living in France for some years, painting for a living. Then why had he inexplicably decided to travel to London and try his luck here?

None of it added up to anything reasonable.

Celia cleared her throat. “He is Irish, I believe.”

“So Lady Flora has said. But I did not mean his nationality. I mean, is he a gentleman? Not a ruffian or a shopkeeper with talent?”

“Oh.” Celia hadn’t thought about him in those terms. Her father meant—is he one of us?

Not necessarily an aristocrat, but at least from an established, landed family who hired people to do anything laborious. Celia thought about how she’d come upon Mr. Finn yesterday morning, sleeping with Jenny in his arms, and the authority in his voice when he’d told Lady Flora that he’d dismissed the nursery maid for giving his daughter gin.

Command had rung in his words, and Lady Flora had responded apologetically, a thing unheard of.

“Yes,” Celia managed. “I’d say he was a gentleman.”

“I wondered if I might have a word with him—there’s an Irish question in debate and I’d enjoy the opinion of a man from there. Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.” The duke beamed at his own joke.

Celia did not want her father anywhere near Mr. Finn. The duke wasn’t a fool—when he engaged Mr. Finn in conversation, he’d soon realize the man knew nothing about Ireland.

“He’s spent many years in France,” she said quickly. “It’s likely he knows nothing of what is happening in his own country at present.”

The duke shrugged. “Possibly. I will have Lady Flora quiz him. She ought to have been an interrogator for the army, that lady. We’d have no more traitors or even any lost buttons if soldiers knew they’d have to face her for it. Eh?”

Celia agreed completely with her father’s assessment of Lady Flora. She nodded, and the duke laughed.

“Don’t tell your mother I said so. Now be off with you, my daughter. Have a good evening.”

“And you, Papa.”

Celia gave him another kiss, at which the embarrassed duke shooed her away, and took herself out and closed the door, not bothering with the portfolio. Celia did not trust herself to carry it, and one of the footmen would bring it upstairs later.

The paneled walls of the hall, the large framed painting of their estate in Kent at the end of it, and the high ceiling with its gilded cornice spilling golden vines down the walls, had changed since she’d walked into her father’s study. She was trapped inside this cage, Mr. Finn had showed her, a prisoner of her world. Instead of the light and airy feel her mother had forced upon the house when she’d redecorated ten years ago, the atmosphere was heavy, the painting a reminder of the duke’s power, and the cornice Celia had always found charming overwrought.

Like her senses. There is nothing wrong with me, Celia chided herself as she made for the staircase to her bedchamber. Mr. Finn only made the sketch of me better. It has nothing to do with my life.