“He was introduced to me as Lord Ian Mackenzie,” Beth said. “I suppose he could have been an impostor in an excellent disguise, but that never occurred to me.” Mac didn’t look impressed with her humor. “He never would look directly at me.”
Mac released her hand, tension draining. “That was my brother.”
“Didn’t she just say so?” Katie demanded. Mac looked away, studying the passersby and the would be artists struggling to make sense of what they saw. When he switched his gaze back to Beth, she was startled to see moisture on his lashes.
“Put your terrier on a lead, Mrs. Ackerley. You say you don’t draw. Would you like me to give you lessons?” “As a reward for my rudeness?”
“It would entertain me.”
She stared in surprise. “People demand your paintings left and right. Why would you give a novice like me drawing lessons?”
“For the novelty of it. Paris bores me.”
“I find it quite exciting. If it bores you, why are you here?”
Mac shrugged, the gesture so much like Ian’s. “When one is an artist, one comes to Paris.”
“One does, does one?”
A muscle moved in his jaw. “I find people of true talent here and try to give them a leg up.”
“I have no talent at all.”
“Even so.”
“It will also give you a chance to discover why Lord Ian would bother with someone like me,” she suggested. A smile spread over Mac’s face, one so dazzling Beth imagined most women who saw it fell at his feet. “Would I do such a thing, Mrs. Ackerley?”
“I do believe you would, my lord. Very well, then. I accept.” Mac stood up and retrieved his hat from where he’d set it on the ground. “Be here tomorrow at two o’clock, if it’s not raining.” He tipped the hat to Beth and made a slight bow. “Good day, Mrs. Ackerley. And terrier.” He placed the hat on his head and swung away, his coat moving with his stride. Every female head turned to watch him as he passed.
Katie fanned herself with Beth’s sketchbook. “He’s a good-looking man, no doubt. Even if he is rude.” “I admit he is interesting,” Beth said.
Why the man wanted to find out all about her, she didn’t know, but she intended to use him to learn all about Lord Ian.
You are entirely too curious, Beth my girl, Mrs. Barrington had said to her often. A very unattractive trait in a young lady. Beth agreed with her. She’d vowed to have nothing more to do with the Mackenzie family, and here she was accepting an appointment with Lord Mac in hopes of gaining more knowledge about his younger brother. She smiled to herself, knowing she looked forward to the next afternoon with too much interest.
But when Beth turned up at Montmartre again on the morrow, the sun sailed brightly in the sky, the clocks struck two, and Lord Mac was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Four
“See what I mean?” Katie said after a quarter of an hour had gone by. “Rude.”
Beth fought down her disappointment. She wanted to wholeheartedly agree with Katie and say a few choice phrases she’d learned in the workhouse, but she restrained herself. “We can hardly expect him to remember such a thing. Giving me lessons must be a trivial matter to him.” Katie snorted. “You’re a lady of consequence now. He has no call to treat us like this.”
Beth forced a laugh. “If Mrs. Barrington had left me only ten shillings, you wouldn’t consider me a lady of consequence.” Katie waved that aside. “Anyway, me father wasn’t as rude as this lordship, and he were drunk as a lord all the time.” Beth, familiar with drunken fathers, didn’t answer. As she gazed across the square again, she noticed the lovely young woman she and Katie had speculated about yesterday staring at them.
The lady looked at her for a long while from under her parasol, her gaze pensive. Beth returned the look with lifted brows.
The lady gave a determined nod and started for them.
“May I give you a bit of advice, my dear?” she asked when she reached Beth. Her voice was English and very well-bred, no trace of the Continent about her. She had a pale, pointed face, finely curled red hair under a tip-tilted hat, and wide green eyes. Again, Beth was aware of her arresting quality, the indefinable something that drew all eyes to her. The lady went on. “If you are waiting for his lordship Mac Mackenzie, I must tell you that he is extremely unreliable. He might be lying in a meadow studying the way a horse gallops, or he might have climbed to the top of a church tower to paint the view. I imagine he’s forgotten all about his assignation with you, but that is Mac all over.”
“Absentminded, is he?” Beth asked.
“Not so much absentminded as bloody-minded. Mac does as he pleases, and I thought it only fair that you know right away.”
The lady’s diamond earrings shimmered as she trembled, and she grasped her parasol so tightly Beth feared the delicate handle would break.
“Are you his model?” Beth didn’t really think so, but this was Paris. Even the most respectable Englishwomen were known to throw propriety to the wind once they set foot on its avenues.
The lady glanced around and sat down next to Beth in the very spot Lord Mac had occupied yesterday. “No, my dear, I am not his model. I am very unfortunately his wife.” Now this was much more interesting. Lord Mac and Lady Isabella were separated, estranged, and their very public breakup had been a ninety-days scandal. Mrs. Barrington had savored every drop of the newspaper reports with malicious glee.
That had been three years ago. Yet Lady Isabella sat in agitated anger as she confronted a woman she thought had made a tryst with her husband.
“You misunderstand,” Beth said. “His lordship offered to give me a drawing lesson because he saw how ignorantly I did it. But he became interested in me only when I told him I was a friend of Lord Ian’s.”
Isabella looked at her sharply. “Ian?”
Everyone seemed surprised Beth had even spoken to him. “I met him at the opera.”
“Did you?”
“He was very kind to me.”
Her brows arched. “Ian was? You do know, my dear, that he is here.”
Beth quickly scanned the green but saw no tall man with dark red hair and unusual eyes. “Where?” “I mean here in Paris. He arrived this morning, which is likely why Mac didn’t come. Or possibly why. One never knows with Mac.” Isabella peered at Beth with new interest. “I mean no offense, my dear, but I can’t place you. I’m sure Ian has never spoken of you.”