Beth shook the reins impatiently, and the horse tossed his head. While Beth didn’t regret turning down Lord Ian’s proposal, it was a bit galling to find that he’d been quarreling with his brother over the heavy-bosomed soprano shortly after Beth had refused him. She’d have liked him to feel a little bit sorry.
She tried to forget the story and concentrated on maneuvering through the wide Parisian boulevards that became the jumbled streets of Montmartre. At the top of the hill she found a boy to watch the horse and buggy, and she trekked to the little green she liked, Katie grumbling behind her. Montmartre still had the feeling of a village, with narrow, crooked streets, window boxes bursting with summer flowers, and trees dotting slopes down to the city. It was a far cry from the wide avenues and huge public parks of Paris, which, Beth understood, was why artists and their models had flocked to Montmartre. That and the rents were cheap. Beth set up her easel in her usual place and sat down, pencil poised over a clean piece of paper. Katie plopped onto the bench next to her, listlessly watching the artists, would-be artists, and hangers-on who roamed the streets. This was the third day Beth had sat here studying the vista of Paris, the third day her paper had remained blank. She’d realized after her initial excitement of purchasing pencils, paper, and easel that she had no idea how to draw. Still, she’d come up the hill each afternoon and set out her things. If nothing else, she and Katie were getting plenty of exercise.
“Do you think she’s an artist’s model?” Katie asked. She jerked her chin at a lovely red-haired woman who strolled with several other ladies on the other side of the street. The woman wore a pale gown with a gossamer overskirt pulled back to reveal a beribboned underskirt. Her small hat was tastefully trimmed with flowers and lace and tipped provocatively over her eyes. Her parasol matched her dress, and she carried it at a becoming angle.
She had an air of allure about her that made heads turn when she passed. It wasn’t anything she did on purpose, Beth decided with a touch of envy. Everything about her enticed. She was simply a joy to look at.
“I couldn’t say,” Beth replied after an all-over surveillance.
“But she certainly is very pretty.”
“I wish I were beautiful enough to be a model.” Katie sighed. “Not that I would. Me dear old mother would whip the skin off me. Dreadful wicked ladies they must be, taking off their clothes to be painted.”
“Perhaps.” The woman disappeared around the corner with her cluster of friends, lost to sight.
“And what about him? He looks like an artist.”
Beth glanced to where Katie indicated, and froze. The man didn’t have an easel—he lounged on a bench with one foot on it and moodily watched a twitchy young man glob paint on a canvas. He was a big man, barely fitting on the delicate stone bench. He had dark hair touched with red, a square, hard face, and enticingly broad shoulders. Beth’s breath poured back into her lungs as she realized the man was not, in fact, Lord Ian Mackenzie. He looked very much like Ian, though, the same forbidding face, the same air of power, the same set of jaw. But this man’s hair shone redder in the sunlight, he having set his hat on the bench next to him.
He was definitely another Mackenzie. She’d read that Hart, the Duke of Kilmorgan, had traveled to Rome on some government business, she’d met Lord Cameron in London, so by process of elimination, this must be Lord Mac, the famous artist.
As though he felt her scrutiny, Lord Mac turned his head and looked straight at her.
Beth flushed and snapped her eyes back to her blank paper. Breathing hard, she put her pencil to the page and drew an awkward line. She let herself become absorbed in the line and the next one, until a shadow fell over her paper. “Not like that,” a deep voice rumbled.
Beth jumped and looked up past a watered silk waistcoat and a carelessly tied cravat to harsh eyes very much like Ian’s. The difference was that Mac’s gaze fully met hers instead of shifting away like an elusive sunbeam.
“You’re holding the pencil wrong.” Lord Mac put a large gloved hand over hers and turned her wrist upward.
“That feels awkward.”
“You’ll get used to it.” Mac sat himself down next to her, taking up every spare inch of the bench. “Let me show you.”
He guided her hand over the paper, shading the line she’d already drawn until it looked like a curve of the tree in front of her.
“Amazing,” she said. “I’ve never taken drawing lessons, you see.”
“Then what are you doing out here with an easel?”
“I thought I’d give it a try.”
Mac arched his brows, but he kept his hand on hers and helped her draw another line.
He was flirting with her, she realized. She was alone with only a female companion, she’d been blatantly staring at him, and this was Paris. He must have thought she wanted a liaison. The last thing she needed was to be propositioned by yet another Mackenzie. Perhaps the newspapers would print reports of Ian and Mac fighting over her. But the hand cupping hers didn’t give her the same frisson of warmth that Ian’s had. She dreamed about Ian’s slow, sensual lips on hers every night, and then she’d jump awake, sweating and tangled in the sheets, her body aching. She glanced sideways at Mac. “I met your brother Lord Ian at Covent Garden last week.”
Mac’s gaze snapped to her. His eyes were not quite so golden as Ian’s, more copper-colored with flecks of brown. “You met Ian?”
“Yes, he did me a kindness. I met Lord Cameron as well, but only briefly.”
Mac’s eyes narrowed. “Ian did you a kindness?”
“He saved me from making a grave mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“Nothing I wish to discuss on top of Montmartre.”
“Why not? Who the devil are you?”
Katie leaned around from Beth’s other side. “Well, that’s a bloody cheek.”
“Hush, Katie. My name is Mrs. Ackerley.” Mac scowled. “I’ve never heard of you. How did you manage to scrape an acquaintance with my brother?” Katie glared at Mac with Irish frankness. “She’s a bloody heiress, that’s who she is. And a kind lady what doesn’t have to take rudeness from the likes of forward gentlemen in a French park.”
“Katie,” Beth admonished her quietly. “I beg your pardon, my lord.”
Mac’s sharp gaze flicked to Katie, then back to Beth. “Are you certain it was Ian?”