Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage

Chapter 21

The family Mackenzie have descended on the capital, with the astonishing announcement that the youngest of them, Lord I—, has taken a wife. The artist Lord lately of Mount Street moved into a hotel for so brief a stay in Town, and his Lady, who had been sleeping at the same hotel, immediately changed her lodgings. —August 1881

Mac didn’t return. Rain came and went, and the day darkened, but Mac was not back by the time Morton tapped the gong to announce the evening meal. Isabella sat alone in the dining room, picked at her food, and sent most of the meal back untouched.

She paced the drawing room, watching the maid draw the curtains against the growing night. Isabella hated not knowing where Mac was and what he was doing. Were he and Fellows scouring London for Payne? Had they found him? Or had something happened to them? Inspector Fellows would surely send word to her if Mac had been hurt. Wouldn’t he?

The clock ticked away slices of the night: eight, nine, ten, eleven. At midnight, Evans stood on the landing with her arms folded, her way of indicating that she thought her mistress should be in bed.

“Not until I hear word from Mac,” Isabella said. “Not until then.”

By three o’clock, Isabella’s body drooped, though her thoughts still spun with agitation. When she found herself being supported by Evans, she succumbed and allowed herself to be put to bed.

She’d let herself sleep, she told herself. When she woke, Mac would be home. Or at least have sent a message.

It was strange, Isabella reflected as she curled up under the covers, that earlier in their marriage, when Mac had not turned up at home at his usual time, Isabella had never worried. She’d been annoyed, yes, but never seriously concerned. She’d known that he was simply out with his friends or had run off to Italy or some such place and that he or Bellamy would send word to her sometime.

Tonight was different. A dangerous man stalked them, and Isabella’s worry kept her awake. Something new had begun between her and Mac, a deeper understanding, a deeper knowledge of each other. Their new relationship was fresh and fragile, and Isabella feared to lose it.

No, to be honest, she feared to lose Mac himself, no matter what was between them. She loved him. Losing him would put a hole in her life that nothing could ever fill.

Isabella rolled over into the pillow he’d slept on the night before, inhaling his lingering scent, and fell asleep, dreaming of his warm body on hers. She woke to find the sun high and Mac still gone.

TWELVE HOURS EARLIER

Lloyd Fellows allowed Mac to accompany him and his team of constables in the search for Payne. Fellows hadn’t wanted to let Mac come with them—Mac knew the inspector would prefer it if Mac stayed the hell out of the way, but Mac couldn’t. He simply could not sit at home waiting to hear that Fellows had lost track of Payne again. He wanted Payne caught, dealt with, and out of their lives, to know that Isabella was finally safe.

Mac’s Highland ancestors would have gone after the beggar and run him through, then returned home and celebrated with much drinking, dancing, and bedding. Mac could forgo the drinking and dancing, but his blood was up, and he wanted to find the man. He’d deal with him and then spend three days bedding Isabella.

All through the afternoon, he moved with Fellows’s constables through Chancery Lane and its environs, beginning with Payne’s last known place of residence. Payne had never returned here, but he knew the area, and it was possible that he’d find someplace nearby to hide.

Mac made his way through Fleet Street and down through Temple Bar to the Strand. The traffic was thick, the thoroughfare jammed with carriages. Mac stepped on and off the road, around people, barricades, wagons, horses. He walked up Southampton Street, which had only a slightly lesser crush, to the wide market at Covent Garden.

They saw no sign of Payne. At least, Mac thought, he had plenty of people guarding Isabella, so even if Payne doubled back to North Audley Street, he’d never get near her. Bellamy might have a bad knee, but he knew how to fight dirty, and he was a dead shot. The man had also talked to his old chums, street toughs, most of them, and had them help him watch the house.

Mac and the constables joined up with the others, continuing to search until the sky was black. The rain poured down, and clocks all over the metropolis struck three. Fellows advised Mac to go home, giving him a look that said he was ready to haul Mac there himself.

Mac conceded and found a hansom cab. He wanted to tell Isabella what they’d discovered—nothing—and then decide what to do.

No, truth to tell, Mac wanted to shed his wet clothes and slide into bed next to Isabella, letting her warm him with her soft body. Damn Payne; Mac refused to let the man disrupt his life.

He sank into a half-doze as the hansom took him home, imagining how he’d kiss Isabella’s skin and feel her fingers glide down his torso to the cock that hardened at the thought. Isabella’s touch was skilled. She knew how to stroke him, how to glide her fingers around the tip and back down the shaft, slowly bringing Mac to the ready, but never letting it finish too quickly. Sweet, sweet woman.

A wash of chill rain filled the hansom, and Mac snapped his eyes open. A dark figure climbed into the cab and slammed the door.

Mac let out a roar and lunged for him, wanting nothing more than the feel of the man’s throat under his hands. A cold ring touched his face, the end of a pistol barrel. Payne regarded Mac over the revolver, a Webley, Mac thought distractedly, the kind Hart liked. Payne’s eyes were wide, dark, and full of fury that matched Mac’s own.

Mac’s heart thumped in rage. Payne would kill him. He didn’t fear so much for himself or even for Isabella’s safety—she was a sensible woman, and Hart, Cam, Ian, and Bellamy would protect her. What Mac feared was dying without seeing her again.

He wanted so much to see her again.

“I’ve got you,” Payne said. His voice was scratchy and thin. “While you were hunting me, I hunted you.”

“How bloody convenient for you,” Mac growled.

The pistol dug harder into Mac’s cheek. “You will stay the hell away from my wife,” Payne said.

Mac’s rage rose. “You touch Isabella, you son of a bitch, and I will kill you.”

“You are in no position to make threats to me.”

“I don’t have to be. Even if you shoot me, you can be sure you’ll never get away from Hart. He’s a fucking obsessed bastard, and he’s touchy about people harming his sisters-in-law. You will be praying to have me alive once Hart is on your trail.”

Payne didn’t look worried, which only proved how stupid the man was. Hart could be viciously vindictive, and he never gave up.

“Just tell me one thing,” Mac said. “Why the hell do you want to be Mac Mackenzie?”

Payne’s eyes flickered, and Mac expected any second to learn what a bullet felt like going through his skull.

“Mac has everything,” Payne said. “Talent, friends, family.”

“Samson Payne had that,” Mac pointed out. “Family back in Sheffield. Talent. I’ve seen your work—it’s bloody good. I don’t know about friends. You’ll have to tell me.”

“Samson can’t have art lessons. Samson can’t leave home. Samson can’t do anything but drudge all his life, while soft-handed lords have anything they want. I can do that. I can paint just like him. I’ll do it so well that no one will be able to tell the difference, and then they’ll think he’s the fraud. The aristocrat’s son stooping to steal the work of poor Samson Payne.”

His singsong voice chilled Mac’s blood. “You are all twisted up inside, aren’t you? I would have given you the lessons, Payne. I would have helped you. It was yours for the asking.”

“You would have seen how much better I was than you.”

“Hell, scores of artists are better than I am. I paint what I want and don’t give a damn about contributing to the art world. That’s why I give the bloody paintings to my friends, and they indulge me by hanging them on their walls.”

Payne didn’t appear to be listening. “Get out,” he said.

Mac stilled, calculating the odds of smacking the gun away before Payne could shoot him. Pistol or no, Mac had no intention of diving out of this hansom cab and letting Payne finish the journey to North Audley Street and Isabella.

The pistol barrel was cold on his skin, Payne almost caressing him with it. Mac wondered why he didn’t feel more fear, but maybe rage took care of that.

“If you shoot me, it will make a hell of a lot of noise,” Mac said in a reasonable tone. “And people will have you.”

“They will understand why I had to do it.”

Miss Westlock is right; he’s a complete madman. In Payne’s mind, he would have shot the false Mac, and Isabella would welcome him into her arms for it.

The thought of Isabella waiting for Mac, perhaps in that dressing gown that clung to her body like water, made the berserker in him roar to the surface. Mac knocked his elbow into Payne and ducked as the pistol exploded in his ear. He fought through the ringing in his head, trying to knock Payne away. The hansom spun sideways as the horses bolted at the sound, the driver’s shouts dim in Mac’s deadened hearing.

Mac had no way of knowing what had happened to the damn pistol, but the mad Highlander in him didn’t care. Killing the man with his bare hands would be so much more satisfying.

Payne slithered from Mac’s grasp. As the hansom rocked, the door flew open, and Payne scrambled to the pavement.

“No ye don’t, ye bloody bastard.” Mac leapt after him. He yanked at Payne’s coat, but Payne gave a mighty twist, plunged in front of a cart, and darted into a narrow passage on the other side of the street.

Mac went right after him. Rain poured down, blotting out all light. Mac had no idea where they were, but the streets were rubbish-strewn and narrow, and Payne ran through them with the ease of familiarity. Mac ran fast, faster, pounding through puddles and filth, rain pouring into his face.

Payne kept darting through the maze of passages, the man surprisingly swift on his feet. They crossed a wider street filled with carriages, too damned many for this time of night.

Payne put on a burst of speed, but Mac had plenty of energy to keep up with him. After Payne died, then Mac could rest.

Payne charged into another narrow lane, and Mac sprinted behind him. This passage was dark and noisome, with the skittering of rats to go with it.

Rats in a hole, Mac thought grimly. Payne kept good company.

He reached the end of the passage, a blank wall with no doors. And no Payne.

Damn the man, he’d doubled back. Mac turned to run after him.

A light flashed, followed by a horrible noise that penetrated even his deafened ears. After two steps, Mac’s feet no longer worked. His knees buckled against his will, and the pavement rushed up to meet him.

What the hell? What the hell? Mac put his hands on the cold ground, trying to push himself up, but his breath was gone. A large wet patch stained his side—he must have fallen into a puddle. He’d let Payne face Bellamy for that. The former pugilist enraged about Mac’s clothes was a fearsome sight.

Payne’s footsteps echoed as the man walked down the passage to Mac. Mac smelled the acrid stench of a pistol that had just been fired. He opened his mouth to shout, but his lungs wouldn’t work. For some reason, he could barely breathe.

And then pain came. Terrible, blossoming pain, spreading from his side up into his arm and down his leg. Damn it to hell.

Payne, silhouetted by the brighter street beyond the passage, holstered his pistol, scooped Mac up by his armpits, and began to drag him away.

“I don’t know where he is,” Inspector Fellows repeated in irritation. “We hadn’t found Payne by three, and Lord Mac said he’d go home to tell you. He got into a hansom cab, and that was the last I saw of him.”

Isabella rubbed her hands and paced the drawing room. She’d barely been able to stay still while Evans dressed her, but she reasoned she couldn’t rush downstairs in her dressing gown. She was a proper Englishwoman, an earl’s daughter, and an aristocrat’s wife. She could not appear in undress in front of visitors. Both Fellows and Cameron had answered her frantic summons, arriving very quickly after her messages.

“He never came home,” she said in a bleak voice. “Morton and Bellamy were looking out for him especially.”

She did not want to voice the thought that Mac could be dead. The world would cease to turn if that happened. As fear welled up in her, Isabella knew that she loved Mac with all her heart, and she did not care whether he wanted to live with her forever, or run back to Paris to paint, or stay out all night with his friends, or spend all day in bed with her. She simply wanted Mac home, whole and safe and sound.

“We are looking,” Fellows said.

Isabella clenched her hands. “Look harder. I don’t care if every man in Scotland Yard must be out on the streets searching for him. I want him found. I need him found.”

“I’ll find him,” Cameron said. “I’ll make damn sure.”

“I’m coming with you,” Isabella said. As the two men exchanged a glance, she swung from them in irritation and called to Evans to fetch her coat.

Cameron stepped in front of her. “Isabella.”

“Don’t ‘Isabella’ me, Cameron Mackenzie. I am coming with you.”

Cameron’s scarred cheek twitched, and his eyes, more golden than Mac’s, regarded her steadily. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose you are.”

Mac’s first thought upon waking was surprise to be alive. His second was terrible need to see Isabella.

He peeled open his eyes, wincing when bright gaslight stabbed through them. He lay on a floor, and though he felt the prickle of a thick woolen carpet, the flat surface was hard. His side hurt like hell. He made the mistake of moving and groaned out loud when pain raked through him.

Mac let his head drop back, trying to calm his breathing. He needed to think, to figure out where he was, to decide how to get away.

The smell here was stuffy and wrong, like a house too long shut up. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that the colors of the room were garish, the walls done in bright pinks and reds and covered with gold-framed paintings his eyes were too blurred to make out. Money had gone into making this room, but his artist’s soul cringed at the gaudiness. Cost without taste. A bloody crime.

His vision began to clear, and Mac saw the pictures.

Hell.

They were Mac’s. At least some of them were—originals he’d done years and years ago. Many were paintings done in Mac’s style, but he knew he hadn’t painted them. There were pictures of Kilmorgan, of the house in Buckinghamshire, various views of Paris and Florence, Rome and Venice, of Cam’s horses, of the Mackenzie dogs.

Two whole walls held nothing but Isabella.

Cold seared Mac’s stomach. Every painting portrayed Isabella nude. Isabella sitting on a straight-backed chair with her legs spread, Isabella reclining on a sofa, Isabella stepping out of a bath, lying on a rug, standing outside naked with one hand on the branch of a tree.

She’d never posed for these, Mac knew she hadn’t. Mac knew she wouldn’t. Likely Payne had drawn a model, probably Mirabelle, Aimee’s mother, then had painted in Isabella’s head, the opposite of what Isabella had asked Mac to do with the erotic pictures.

Mac wanted to be sick, and at the same time his rage rose so swiftly that his entire body pulsed with it.

“You’re a dead man.” Mac drew in as much air as he could and shouted it. “Do you hear me? You’re a dead man!”

The door swung open. Mac couldn’t screw his head around to see who’d entered, but he heard a man’s tread move toward him. Booted feet stopped at Mac’s side, and Mac stared up at Payne.

Now that he had light, Mac saw that the man did resemble him, at least superficially. Payne’s eyes were brown and set deeply into his face; his hair had been brushed the way Mac wore his, but it fought a widow’s peak. His cheeks were more hollow, and Mac suspected that what Fellows had suggested was true: that he filled them out with cotton wool when he needed to. He hadn’t at the moment, and the hollow cheeks gave his mouth a drawn look.

He wore a full dress kilt of Mackenzie plaid, formal coat, and polished boots. Seen at a distance or in the dark, or by someone who did not know Mac well, Payne could easily pass for him.

“You have it wrong,” Payne said coldly. “It is I who will kill you.”

Mac laughed. It came out feeble and hoarse. “Then why haven’t you already?”

“Because I need her to come to me.”

Mac’s blood chilled as he understood what Payne had done. He hadn’t planned to shoot Mac in the hansom at all—he’d wanted Mac to chase him through the back streets of London to this place. Leading Mac as a fox led the hounds. Except the fox was in his hole now, ready to annihilate the hound foolish enough to follow him down it.

“She’ll never come here,” Mac said. His head spun with dizziness; it took so much damn effort to speak.

Payne went down on one knee next to him. “She will come here to watch you die. I alerted a constable that I’d found Payne, and he ran off with the news. She will be safe with me, where she belongs, with her husband who will take care of her.”

“Like hell she will.”

“Isabella has been trying to get away from you for some time. I thought she’d managed it when she left you three years ago, but no, you kept turning up. Following her about, insinuating yourself on her when she made it clear she didn’t want you. You should die for that.”

Fear bit him when he realized Payne had been watching her for that long. And none of them had known. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t watched out for her well enough. “Isabella is the only thing I care about,” Mac croaked. “Hell, why am I arguing with you? You’re a madman.”

“You don’t care for her. You love yourself too much and care nothing about what she wants, what she needs. That is how I know you are not the true Mac, her true husband. I cherish Isabella. I will keep her and protect her, dote on her. I will worship her as she deserves.”

“If you think Isabella wants to be put on a pedestal, you don’t know her very well. She likes her independence.”

Payne shook his head. “She wants to be cared for, and I will live to care for her. Not to prove to my father that I can make something of myself, not to prove to Hart that I’m not a wastrel. For her. Even my art isn’t as important as she is.”

Dear God, it was humiliating to hear truths coming out of Payne’s mouth. Yes, Mac had tried desperately for years to make his father proud, even when he told himself he cared nothing for it. He’d gone on trying to prove himself to his father even after the man was dead.

He’d even been trying to prove himself to Hart, and to Cam, and to Ian, he realized. His three brothers had turned their obsessions into practical living, while Mac had devoted himself to art for its own sake, as he’d explained to Payne in the hansom. For its own sake? He wondered now. Or had he decided not to try to exhibit or sell his paintings because he feared he’d be a failure?

Isabella had never once thought Mac inadequate.

“I do love her,” Mac said, his anger stilling to a point of calm.

“Then why didn’t you stay with her? Why did you keep running away, leaving her vulnerable to every man with designs on her? This is how I know I am the real Mac Mackenzie. Because I would never have done those things to Isabella. I’d have treated her like an angel. You never understood what you had in her.”

Damn, the man was mesmerizing. Mac needed to concentrate.

“She’ll never come to you,” Mac said. “She’ll know the difference.”

Payne rose swiftly to his feet, cocking the revolver. Well done, enraging the madman with the gun.

“She will come. She will come, and she will stay with me.”

Isabella, be sensible, don’t come. Let me rot.

Payne walked away, his Mackenzie plaid swirling around his knees. Mac’s vision began to cloud, and despair washed over him.

He would never see Isabella again. He’d never see her bend over him, her red hair falling to tickle his face, never see her green eyes flash in anger, never smell the attar of roses that clung to her skin. He’d never again touch the petal-soft smoothness of her, never cup the firm perfection of her breast.

His senses drifted, and he was dancing with her again at Lord Abercrombie’s ball, when she’d been dressed in the blue satin ball gown with yellow roses in her hair. The beauty of her cut like a knife. She’d talked to him in a voice smooth like fine wine, and he’d drunk her in.

Bare your soul, Ian had advised.

Mac hadn’t done it yet. He’d let her love him again, but he’d not surrendered the entirety of himself to her. He knew that, and the knowledge beat at him.

I dragged her off and married her, because if I hadn’t simply taken her, if I’d given her the choice, she never would have chosen me.

But Mac had changed. He’d given up everything but moving doggedly through life. For her.

For her? The nagging thing inside asked. Or so that she’d feel sorry for you and acknowledge your martyrdom?

Hell and damn, he couldn’t even win an argument with himself.

Isabella, please, I need to see you one more time.

He’d loved the determined and naïve debutante he’d met that first night. He’d loved the young woman she’d become, bold enough to fall into step with Mac’s life, putting up with his dissipated friends and his skin-baring models. Mac had loved showing off how well his proper young wife took Mac’s scandalous life in stride, and he’d never realized just how strong Isabella had been to do it. Nothing in her upbringing or education at her select academy could have prepared her for someone like Mac, not even the redoubtable Miss Pringle. And yet, she’d done it.

Mac had loved the woman she’d become: admired by society, able to stand on her own and look her neighbors in the face, notwithstanding that her family disowned her and her marriage fell apart. The world hadn’t blamed Isabella; they’d blamed Mac.

Perceptive of them.

I want to love you, Isabella. Not as Mac the scandalous, or the reformed Mac, but as myself. The Mac I truly am.

The one who loves you.

I love you, Isabella.

And he’d never have the chance to tell her.