Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage

Chapter 10

The evil rumor that the Scottish Lord has taken up with a lady of Lesser Status has been refuted by all and sundry, and proven to be False. His Lady seems happy to have her Lord returned to her after another sudden absence, and the entertainments once again flow in the Lord and Lady’s home. —January 1877

Beth lay under the covers, her face pale above a lace-collared nightgown. Ian, in his kilt and shirtsleeves, stretched out beside her, one large, brown hand splayed across Beth’s abdomen.

“Poor Isabella,” Beth said as Isabella closed the door. “I didn’t mean to give you such a fright.”

Isabella crossed to the bed, sank onto the chair beside it, and clasped Beth’s fingers between hers. “Are you all right?” she asked shakily. “The baby?”

“Is fine,” Beth said, smiling. “And I’m in good hands, as you can see.” She looked fondly at Ian, who’d not glanced up at Isabella’s entrance.

“Thank God.” Isabella bent her head over their clasped hands. The simple prayer poured out of her heart. “Thank God.”

“I really am fine, Isabella. I became overheated, that is all, first jumping up and down for the races and then sitting inside the stuffy tent. Also, my lacing was too tight, and you saw me gobbling up all those cream cakes.”

Her voice was light, ready to make a jest of the whole event. How silly I am, she was saying. And haven’t I paid the price? Isabella closed her eyes and rested her forehead on Beth’s hand.

Beth stroked her hair. “Are you crying, Izzy? I truly am all right. What is it, darling?”

“Isabella had a miscarriage,” Ian rumbled beside her.

Through a wash of painful memory, Isabella felt Beth start, heard her shocked exclamation.

“Four years ago,” Ian went on. “She was at a ball, and I had to take her home. I couldn’t find Mac. He was in Paris.”

Beth took in Ian’s disjointed sentences without question. “I see. Goodness, no wonder you two rushed me here in such alarm.”

“The child was a boy, three months gone,” Ian went on, reducing the most terrible event of Isabella’s life to short, exact phrases. “It took me five days to find Mac and bring him home.”

Five days in which Isabella had lain alone in her bed lost in the blackest melancholia she’d ever experienced. She’d thought at one point that she’d die; she hadn’t the strength to fight to live. But her body had been young and strong, and she’d recovered physically though not in spirits.

“And for that, I’ve never forgiven myself,” Mac said behind her.

Isabella raised her head to see Mac standing in the doorway, watching her with somber resignation.

“I’ve told you,” Isabella said. “You couldn’t have known it would happen.”

Mac unfolded his arms and walked into the room with slow, measured steps. “You were the person I most treasured in the world, and I wasn’t there to take care of you. You were right to hate me.”

“I didn’t . . .” Isabella trailed off. She had hated him at the time, hated that she’d had to suffer her grief alone. She’d also hated herself because she’d instigated the argument that had made Mac disappear two weeks before the miscarriage. She’d lashed out at him, telling him she was tired of his constant drunkenness and wild escapades with his equally drunken friends. Mac had decided, as usual, that the best thing he could do for her was to leave.

“I don’t hate you now,” she amended.

Mac sent Beth a faint smile. “Do you see what a very wretched life Isabella led with me? I made her miserable, alternately smothering her and then deserting her. Most of the time my head was fuddled with drink, but that’s no excuse.”

“That is why you became a teetotaler,” Beth said, understanding.

“Partly. Let that be a lesson to those who overindulge. Drink can ruin a life.”

Isabella rose with a rustle of skirts. “Don’t be so dramatic, Mac. You made a mistake, that is all.”

“I made the same mistake repeatedly for three years. Stop excusing me, Isabella. I don’t think I can take your pitying forgiveness.”

“And I can’t take your self-flagellation. It’s so unlike you.”

“It used to be unlike me. I’ve taken it up as a hobby.”

“Stop,” Ian growled from the bed. “Beth is tired. Go have your row outside.”

“Sorry, old man,” Mac said. “I came in here, in fact, to bring something to Beth. To cheer her up.”

Isabella watched rigidly. She felt a fool now, panicking over Beth while Mac and Ian had kept their heads. She realized that her fear of watching Beth live out Isabella’s remembered ordeal had rendered her unable to think or act.

“I adore presents,” Beth said, smiling.

Ian propped himself on his elbow as Mac approached, remaining by Beth’s side like a protective dragon. Mac took a large sheaf of banknotes from his pocket and laid them on the blanket.

“Your winnings, madam,” he said.

“Oh, heavens, I forgot all about them! Bless you, Mac. What a fine brother-in-law you’ve turned out to be. You fetch me a carriage and a doctor and my ill-gotten gains—all in one afternoon.”

“The least I can do for you for looking after my baby brother.”

Beth smiled in delight. Mac looked smug, and Ian . . . Ian had lost the train of the conversation and was tracing patterns on Beth’s abdomen.

“What about my winnings?” Isabella asked, her voice still shaky.

“I’ll distribute those to you outside. Good night, Beth.”

Isabella kissed Beth’s cheek, and Beth pulled Isabella into a tight hug. “Thank you, Isabella. I’m so sorry I gave you a fright.”

“Never mind. You are well. That is the important thing.” Isabella kissed her again and left the room through the door that Mac held open for her.

Mac strolled in silence with Isabella down the gallery while the dogs flowed around them, sensing that the crisis was over.

“Well,” Isabella said, wishing her cursed voice would stop trembling. “Are you going to give me my money?”

Mac turned her to face him. “Certainly. After I exact my price.”

Her heart jumped, and she didn’t like that his nearness made her want to melt to him again. Being held by him had felt too good.

“I am hardly a lady of easy virtue, thank you very much. I won’t kiss you for a guinea.”

“It’s one hundred guineas, and that is not what I had in mind.” His eyes glinted. “Though it’s an interesting suggestion.”

“Mac.”

Mac put his hands on her shoulders. Warm, sure hands, which burned through her thin gabardine. “My price is that you promise to stop carrying your grief alone. You accused me of self-flagellation, but you’ve folded in on yourself so tightly you barely let anyone touch you. Promise me you’ll cease keeping it to yourself.”

Anger rose through her worry. “And who am I to share this painful part of my life with? Who will be willing to listen to me bleat on about my tragedy without feigning an excuse to leave the room?”

“I will.”

Isabella stopped. She opened her mouth to answer, but the lump in her throat wouldn’t let her.

“It is my tragedy as well as yours,” Mac went on in a gentle voice. “When I heard about our baby, I wanted to die. Doubly so, because I was so far away from you. You might have died that night too, and there I was, oblivious and stupid in a Montmartre hotel. Ian never says much, but I know he thought I could do with a few of the tortures he’d endured in the asylum. You thought so too.”

Isabella nodded, tears burning her eyes. “But at the same time I needed you so much I didn’t care how far Ian had to go to find you.”

“Well, he found me,” Mac said. He spread his arms. “And here I am again.”

“Yes, here you are. What am I going to do with you?”

“I can think of so many things.”

The air went still as they regarded each other. The sun warmed Isabella’s skin, the last rays shining through the window.

She asked because she didn’t know what to do with him springing back into her life. He’d given up drink because of her, and now he was a different Mac—sober, quieter, more cynical, but still with a touch of his old wicked arrogance.

Mac slid his hands around her waist, heating her through her corset. His large body enclosed hers, the strength of his hands both unnerving and comforting. He could easily overwhelm her, take from her what he wanted, and yet he never had. He’d never so much as tried. Not once.

Mac touched her face with gentle fingers. His eyes held no demand, no heat, though she could feel his obvious physical reaction through her skirts.

“I’m here,” he said. “You don’t have to bear the burden alone anymore.”

“For now.” Could she have sounded more bitter?

She thought Mac would flinch or grow angry, but he just smoothed her hair. “For always. I’m not leaving you again, Isabella.”

“We are separated.”

“By legal document. But if you need me—for anything, day or night—you have but to crook your finger, and I’ll be there.”

She tried a smile. “Mac tied to a woman’s apron strings?”

“I’d gladly lash myself to you, love, if you ever wore an apron.” He kissed the corner of her mouth, the warmth of his lips burning electricity across her skin. “Especially if you wore nothing but an apron.”

Mac could still make her laugh, that was certain. He touched another kiss to her lips, but then the house filled with sudden sound as Cam, Daniel, and Hart entered and started up the stairs to check on Beth, followed by all the dogs. Mac smiled at Isabella, kissed her lips, and turned with her to greet them.

Mac wasn’t fool enough to assume that Isabella would welcome him back with open arms after one brief kiss in the sunshine. They’d made a bit of progress, but he knew they had a long way to go.

For the next week in the Doncaster house, Cam and Daniel attended the races, Ian stayed with Beth, Isabella stayed home in case Beth needed her, and Mac moved between racetrack and house. He kept an eye out for the man Steady Ron had mistaken for Mac, but neither he, nor Steady Ron, nor the other bookmakers saw the Mac look-alike again. He also heard no word from Fellows in London, but Mac’s prickling feeling remained, and he could not relax his guard.

Hart had withdrawn his insistence that Beth act as his hostess in light of her brief illness, and the air between him and Ian thawed. Mac had the feeling that Hart would ask Isabella instead, which made him understand Ian’s annoyance. But neither Hart nor Isabella mentioned it. Besides, Hart seemed to vanish quite often from the house these days. He was involved in all kinds of schemes that Mac frankly didn’t want to know about. Hart had turned his former propensity for dark, sensual appetites to a ruthlessness for politics. But then, Hart had always had a genius for the game—he’d stood for election at age twenty-two and won by a landslide, years before he’d become the lofty duke and took his seat in the House of Lords. Now he had most of the Lords and Commons under his formidable thumb.

Beth and Isabella walked together in the large garden most days, two lovely ladies in colorful dresses, heads bent together. Mac heard much laughter from the two of them and wondered how they found so much to giggle about. But he liked hearing their voices. Most of all, he liked Isabella’s laughter.

While Mac and Ian read newspapers, smoked cigars, or played billiards in companionable silence, Isabella and Beth never ceased talking. They talked about everything—from houses and clothes to music to the flora and fauna of far-flung corners of the British Empire. It was domestic and pleasant, and Mac’s wild friends would be appalled at him for liking it so much.

At night, Isabella disappeared into her bedroom, and Mac, sleepless, roamed the house. His body was tight with need, and though he and Isabella spoke together more easily these days, he wasn’t stupid enough to simply slip off his clothes and slide into her bed. When he finally did gain entrance to that sanctuary, he vowed, he’d do it in such a way that he’d never have to leave it again.

The old house had no bathroom, which meant that when Isabella wanted to bathe, she reclined in a tub the footmen lugged into her bedroom. Mac could hear her in there through the wall between his bedroom and hers, Isabella splashing as she washed her body, her melodious humming arousing him to the point of pain.

One night, Mac couldn’t take it anymore. Beth and Ian were ensconced in their own suite, and Cameron and Daniel were out, as was Hart. Isabella’s voice drifted through the wall, a lady alone, happily bare in her bathtub.

Mac pushed open her unlocked door and walked inside, not bothering to knock. “Love, are you trying to drive me mad?”

Isabella dropped her sponge into the water with a large splash. She was quite alone, no Evans in sight. She’d piled her hair on top of her head, but a few escaped red ringlets had drifted to her wet shoulders.

Isabella fished up the sponge and regarded him over it in annoyance. “Not everything I do has to do with you, Mac.”

There was no alarm or anger in her voice. She might have been answering him in a drawing room over tea. Mac’s thoughts strayed to the last tea they’d taken in her drawing room, and he began to sweat.

He closed the door. “I’ve always admired your attention to cleanliness. Once a day, Lady Isabella is found in her bath, no matter how far the servants have to haul the water.”

“There is a tap at the end of the hall. They do not have to haul it far.”

Mac folded his arms so she wouldn’t see his shaking fingers. Soap suds and the damned sponge obscured the full view of her body, but the pink arms and the soft knee poking through the water made him ache.

“Did you not tell me that your mother once compared you to a duckling?” Mac asked in a light voice. “Because you like to splash about in whatever water is handy?”

“I suppose I never grew out of it.”

She was going to kill him. This was her dastardly plan—to let him glimpse what he couldn’t have so that he’d burn into ashes on the carpet. Evans could sweep him up and throw him in the dustbin; no more intruding Mac Mackenzie.

“Ian and Beth are returning to Scotland at the end of the week,” he said.

“I know.” Isabella ran the sponge up her arm, rivulets of soap and water trickling back into the tub. “Will you be going with them?”

The exact question he wanted to ask her. “That depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On how many musicales and little soirees you’ll be putting on in London. It’s too cold now for a garden party, so I don’t imagine you’ll be holding them at the house in Buckinghamshire.”

Isabella arched her brows and slid the sponge up her other arm. “My social calendar has been predictable for years. An opening and closing ball for the spring season, garden parties in July and August, the most important races of the circuit through September, shooting season and Christmas at Kilmorgan Castle. I see no reason to alter my plans this year.”

“My social calendar seems to be much the same as yours,” Mac said. “What a happy coincidence.”

“For a change.”

Mac went serious. “For a great change.”

Isabella regarded him with her beautiful green eyes, and then she lowered her lashes and floated one foot to the edge of the tub. Mac watched the sponge glide from toes to knee, and his hunger grew.

Isabella lifted the sponge. “Mac, will you please wash my back?”

Mac stood still a frozen moment. She looked up at him, and he back at her.

Then he was across the room and shrugging off his coat before the sound of the last syllable had died in the stuffy room.