A jar of yellow roses appeared in each painting, either in full bloom, or drooping with petals falling. The famous Mackenzie yellow balanced the scarlet hues of the draperies and ribbons.
None of the paintings showed Isabella’s face. Mac had painted her either in shadow or obscured by a fall of dark hair. No one viewing these pictures would realize that Mac had painted his wife.
Except Mac.
Mac tossed his brush into a glass jar filled with oil of turpentine. “They aren’t bad.”
Isabella gave him a look of surprise. “What are you talking about? They’re gloriously beautiful. I thought you said you’d lost your ability to paint.”
“I had.” Mac wiped his brush on a rag, then stood the brush upright in a jar to dry.
“An inspiring subject, perhaps. A woman ripe for play.”
“An inspiring model.”
Isabella rolled her eyes. “Please don’t pretend I’m your muse, Mac. You painted brilliantly before you ever met me.”
Mac shrugged. “All I know is that when you left me, and I ceased to be a drunken sot, I couldn’t paint a stroke. Here you are, and here’s what I’ve done.”
They were erotic paintings, yes, but not in the crass or crude way in which his friends thought of erotica. These were some of the most amazing things Mac had ever painted.
Drink might have been the thing that gave his paintings force before he met Isabella, but after meeting her . . . Mac had the right of it; she had become his muse. When he’d had neither drink nor Isabella, his talent had vanished. Now it had returned.
These paintings gave Mac giddy hope, excited him beyond happiness. He could paint without having to be drunk. He only needed to be intoxicated by Isabella.
Isabella studied the pictures. “Well, at least you’ll be able to make the awful Randolph Manning eat his wager. You’ve won.”
“No,” Mac said in a quiet voice. “I’ve lost. I will find my friends and tell them I forfeit.”
Chapter 18
The Scottish Lord and his Lady may be estranged, but the Lady’s Buckinghamshire fetes show no sign of diminishing in extravagance. The wicked try to put about that the Lady has admirers, but this observer is pleased to remark that she seems to keep herself above suspicion.
—July 1879
Isabella stared at Mac, who kept his gaze on the paintings, a strange look in his eyes. He’d thrown a shirt over his sweating torso but left the red kerchief in his hair.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “These are perfect, exactly what they expected.”
“Isabella, my sweet, the last thing I want is for Randolph Manning and the rest of my cronies to run their lascivious eyes over pictures of you.”
“But they won’t be. I mean, they will not know it is me. That was the point. You’ll bring in Molly and paint her head on my body.”
Mac shook his head. “No, I won’t.”
“We agreed. Molly always welcomes a job. You know she needs money for her little boy.”
“We didn’t agree.” Mac wore his stubborn Scots look, which meant that neither God nor all his angels could move him when his mind was made up. “It was your idea for me to mix up heads and bodies. I never remember agreeing to it.”
“You are the most exasperating man, Mac. What are you going to tell them? Why deliberately lose the wager?”
Mac tugged off his kerchief. “I will tell them that they were right, that I proved to be too much of a prude to paint the pictures.”
“But you are not a prude. I’ll not have them laughing at you.”
Mac seated himself on the makeshift bed and leaned back on his elbows. While the bed looked lavish in the final picture, it was in reality a mattress with propped up posts draped in red material.
Mac’s broad chest was damp within the V of the open shirt, his hair was a mess, and his bare legs were solid with muscle. The fact that this incredible man had singled out Isabella to be his lover and his wife still astonished her.
“Do you know why the pictures are good?” Mac asked.
“Because you are a brilliant painter?”
“Because I’m madly in love with the woman I painted. There’s love in every brushstroke, every dab of paint. I couldn’t paint when Molly posed because she’s only a model to me, like a vase of flowers. You are real. I know what your flesh feels like under my hand. I know how slick your cleft is to my fingers, how your breath tastes in my mouth. I love every part of you. That is what I painted, and no one in the world will get to see these pictures but the two of us.”
His words made Isabella warm and soften. “But you did so much work. Everyone at your club will ridicule you.”
“I no longer care what those shallow profligates think of me. Where were they when I was suffering and thought I’d die of it? Bellamy was there, and Ian. Cam and Daniel. Even Hart came to help me. The gentlemen who always claimed to be my friends either tortured me or made themselves scarce.” Mac gazed at the paintings and a smile played across his face. “Let them ridicule me. These pictures are for us, my wife. No one else.”
“They’ll make you join in with the Salvation Army’s band,” Isabella said unhappily.
Mac laughed as he hauled himself to his feet. “I’ve been practicing in my spare time. I clash a good cymbal.”
“You don’t own any cymbals.”
“Cook’s been letting me borrow her pot lids. I want to lose this wager, love. I’ve never been so happy to lose a wager in my life.”
He came to her and kissed her, a slow Mac Mackenzie kiss, one that said he wanted to kiss her all night.
“Will you come with me, angel?” he asked. “I’ll happily sing temperance tunes on a street corner if I know you’re nearby.”
Isabella smiled into his lips. “That is possibly one of the stranger requests a husband has made of his wife. Of course I’ll come with you, Mac.”
“Good. For now . . .”
The mattress was waiting. Isabella found herself laughing as she and Mac made good use of it.
One week later, on a chilly Wednesday evening, Mac stood with a five-member Salvation Army band at the end of Aldgate High Street where it widened into Whitechapel. He’d been practicing with them, and the female sergeant in charge was delighted that a twig of an aristocratic tree had joined their ranks.
A crowd had gathered by the time they started to play, consisting of a dozen of Mac’s club cronies mixed with a score of street toughs, as well as men and women simply making their way home from a hard day’s labor. Across the street from Mac, Isabella held Aimee, the two of them surrounded by Bellamy, Miss Westlock, and two of the strongest footmen to guard them.