“And you’ve changed?”
He laughed at the skepticism in her tone. “I’d like to think so. I want to make up for all I’ve done.”
Isabella turned in his arms. Her eyes were wet. “May we not talk about it just now, Mac? Please?”
Mac nodded. He was still an idiot—wanting Isabella to admire him for having changed, when she clearly had her mind on other things. Was this his true punishment? To watch the woman he’d treated so rottenly remain indifferent to his efforts to make amends?
“Ainsley wrote me,” Isabella was saying. “The letter was waiting when I came home from shopping.”
Mac didn’t give a damn about anything but Isabella at the moment, but he made himself answer. “How are things progressing?”
“She’s planned to let me meet with Louisa. After all these years, I will finally be able to see my sister again.”
Mac held her a little tighter, knowing how important this was to her. “Excellent news. Where and when is this meeting to take place?”
“Tomorrow afternoon in Holland Park. And no, you are not invited. This is something I must do alone.”
She gave him a stern look, and Mac smiled. “Very well, my dear. I will banish myself.” He wouldn’t entirely, but she did not need to know that.
“Thank you.”
Mac bent his head to kiss her, but just then Aimee awoke. Isabella pushed abruptly from Mac, snatched up the doll, and went to Aimee, giving the girl a wide smile as she showed Aimee her new toy.
Isabella arrived at the meeting place in Holland Park well before the appointed time of four o’clock. She paced the path, imagining all sorts of reasons that her sister would not be able to come. Perhaps their father would get wind of the scheme and lock Louisa in her bedroom. Perhaps Louisa would change her mind, still angry at Isabella for her elopement.
But no, she could trust Ainsley. Ainsley had charm—she could get ’round anyone, and the fact that she was a queen’s lady would hold much weight with Isabella’s mother. Ainsley was also resourceful. If anyone could arrange a secret meeting between Isabella and Louisa, it was Ainsley Douglas.
Still, Isabella clenched and unclenched her hands as she paced. What would she say to Louisa when she saw her? How have you been the past half-dozen years? My, how you’ve grown?
That last time Isabella had spoken to her sister, Louisa had worn her hair in pigtails. Louisa had admired Isabella, asking question after question about clothes, hair, marriage, and men, as though innocent Isabella were an oracle of sorts. Isabella had glimpsed her sister from afar since marrying Mac, noting how she’d sprung up into a lovely young woman, but she’d only been able to watch from a distance with a sore heart.
Isabella heard a rustle behind her, and her pulse raced. She stepped onto the narrow path between thick-standing trees and saw the broad back of a man with dark red hair walking away from her.
“Mac,” she said in exasperation, then the man turned.
Not Mac. Isabella whirled and took two steps before he caught her by the waist and pulled her off her feet. He clapped a hand over her mouth as she opened it to scream.
“Isabella,” he said, hot spittle touching her ear. “My darling, never leave me again.”
Chapter 15
Lady I—M—surprised London by hosting a soiree at her new abode in North Audley Street, for the express purpose of introducing Miss Sarah Connelly, a mezzo-soprano lately come from Ireland, to those of discerning tastes in London. So many responded to this coveted invitation that the modest house was quite bursting at the seams.
—March 1878
Isabella bit and fought and kicked, but the man didn’t let her go. He dragged her down the path and through an opening in the tall hedges, cutting her off from the world.
This was madness. She was in the middle of a park, in the middle of London, in the middle of the afternoon, but this isolated copse could have been deep in the countryside.
She heard church clocks striking four. Ainsley and Louisa would be arriving at the appointed spot. But what would they find? No Isabella. She’d not had the presence of mind to drop a handkerchief or a brooch as every adventurous heroine should. Ainsley might assume that Isabella had been delayed, or worse, had changed her mind. What Louisa would think, Isabella couldn’t imagine.
The man swung her to him. Isabella clawed at his face, and he struck her. She tasted blood.
“Don’t fight me, my Isabella. We belong together.”
He might look like Mac, this tall man with Mac’s coloring, but he sounded nothing like him. Instead of Mac’s velvet baritone, his voice was scratchy and thin.
Isabella heard a shout, and without warning, the man let her go. She stumbled and fell, shrubbery scratching her as she went down. Booted feet pounded on the path, and then hands pulled her up again.
She fought blindly until she heard a breathless “Isabella.”
Isabella cried out and threw her arms around the real Mac, clinging to him in relief.
Mac pried her from him and examined her face, his eyes bright with rage. “Bloody hell. I’ll kill him.”
Isabella was too out of breath, too terrified, and too angry to argue. She held on to Mac, absorbing his warmth, his strength, the safety of having him here.
“That was him, wasn’t it?” she heard him ask. “My doppelganger?”
She nodded. “He looked so like you from the back.”
“And from the front?”
“Like you, and yet not.” Mac smelled so good, like male and the scent of outdoors. “No one who knew you well would mistake you after the first moment.”
“God damn him. Forging paintings and burning down my house is one thing. Touching my wife is unforgivable.”
Isabella closed her eyes. Her heart pounded with fear, not only for herself but at the thought of Mac chasing after a madman. All she wanted to do was relax into the circle of Mac’s warmth and go home.
“Stay with me.”
Mac held her so close she could feel the agitated beating of his heart, feel his hot, quick breath. “I will, sweetheart. I will.”
The strains of clocks chiming the quarter hour made her lift her head. “Louisa,” she said miserably.
Mac took her arm and towed her back through the bushes and down the path to the spot where Isabella was to have met Louisa. No one was there. Across the park, Isabella saw Ainsley and the tall form of Louisa walking away arm in arm. Other people strolled near them, and they were too far away for Isabella to call out without drawing attention.