Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction (Mackenzies & McBrides #9)(29)
“Of course. I told you—ye have talent. It just wants bringing out.”
Celia took a step closer to him and lowered her voice. “Are you truly an artist famous throughout France?”
“Oh, aye. Commissioned by Madame du Pompadour herself to paint a rhinoceros for her.”
More blinking. “I beg your … Did you say a rhinoceros?”
“I did. Haven’t ye heard of her? Clara is her name. Brought back from India by a Dutch sea captain, and now she’s having a grand tour of Europe. I was commissioned to seek her out and paint her portrait for the royal collection. Louis is trying to bring Clara to Versailles, but I was sent forth in the meantime. Haven’t caught up to the beast yet.”
“I see.”
Her tone told Alec Celia did not quite believe him, but he spoke the truth. Clara was all the rage on the Continent and already had sat—or rather, stood—for several portraits. She’d even been modeled in porcelain at Meissen.
Celia shook out her skirts, sending a wave of brocade over Alec’s shoes. “Well, I must decide whether teaching a duke’s daughter is one step up or down for you from painting a rhinoceros.”
“Ye ponder that all ye like,” Alec said. “I already know what I prefer. Come tomorrow at the appointed hour, and see what you will see.”
“Not a rhinoceros, I take it?” she asked lightly then her eagerness returned. “Actually I’d quite like to see her. Do you think Clara will come to London?”
“I have no doubt. When she does, we’ll visit her, and I’ll fulfill my commission for the King of France’s mistress. She’s been installed less than a year and already wields more power than any queen.”
“The famous Madame du Pompadour?” Celia asked. “Or the rhinoceros?”
Alec did not contain his laughter. “Ye are good for me, lass. Ye keep me on this earth. I’ll be leaving ye now, before I kiss you again, because I very much want to. I doubt your mother would try to force you to marry me if she caught us.”
“Of course not. I’m only to fall for rakes if they are highborn and have grand estates.”
Alec moved himself to the door but for some reason, he couldn’t turn the handle to open it. He was highborn and from a grand estate—but he was also Alec the itinerant painter as he now pretended to be.
“God bless you, lass,” he said quietly, and finally made himself leave her.
His last glimpse of Celia, watching him with her hazel eyes, her hands in fists, her lips awaiting another kiss, did nothing to calm him. Alec took the vision with him up the back stairs to his chamber, kept it next to him after he kissed his sleepy daughter good night, and let it sustain him in the dark loneliness of his bed.
Celia’s hammering heart would not ease for the rest of the salon, so much that she feared she’d need a tonic. Just when she thought she’d calm, she’d feel anew the sensation of Alec’s mouth on hers, his tongue sweeping past her parted lips, and the hammering would begin again.
The Marquess of Harrenton’s disgusting kisses had been wet and intrusive. Alec’s were strong, warm, practiced. A man who knew how to kiss so a woman enjoyed it, how to make her feel beautiful and wanted.
Celia longed to hug herself, laugh, and spin around the room. She restrained herself with difficulty until the interminable salon was over, then again as she rode in the carriage the short way home.
Her mother had been annoyed at Celia for slipping away—apparently no one had noted her leaving, being too caught up in their own conversation. The duchess believed her explanation that she’d been overly warm and also distressed at the topic of discussion. Her mother agreed such subjects were too violent for a young lady, but it was Celia’s own fault for throwing away her innocence, and so could no longer expect to be protected from them.
Celia let her mother run on, paying little attention. Her thoughts were all for Alec, her Highlander. He’d worried her with his rage—she’d been certain he would slay every gentleman in Lady Flora’s drawing room—but his kisses had been tenderness itself.
Alec was a paradox. Celia had glimpsed the dangerous man inside him, but she wasn’t wrong when she concluded him a good father, with kindness in him. But then, his fury at the salon’s heartless conversation had revealed an untamed man barely contained.
Celia kept her speculations about what he’d show her at her upcoming lesson at bay during supper but let them run rampant when she lay alone in her bed that night.
For her first lesson, he’d bared his torso and dared her to draw it. Would he do such a thing again? Or perhaps more?
She shivered in warm hope. Alec’s body was a fine thing, all tightness and exact proportions. He’d had scars on his arms, deep ones, and now she understood why. He was a fighting man, one who had suppressed that urge to act as a drawing master to earn money for his daughter.
The Highlanders were to be reduced to dire poverty, she knew from listening to her father and Uncle Perry. She’d heard Uncle Perry go on about the Act of Proscription being worked up to take away their language, the plaid cloth that was their national dress, their customs, their land. Uncle Perry had spluttered that some fools in Parliament thought it too harsh. We need to bring those traitors under our thumb for once and for all, he’d snarled. As a younger son, Uncle Perry had no seat in the Lords, and when he’d stood for Commons, he’d lost, despite Celia’s father’s help, and so he was left to helplessly criticize other MPs and badger the duke.