“I’m fifteen. Besides, Da’ gives them to me. He says I need to learn the bad habits of gentleman right away so I won’t seem prudish when I’m older.”
“Perhaps Uncle Mac should have a word with your Da’.”
Mac backed away in surrender, the cigar held between two fingers. “Uncle Mac should stay the hell out of Cameron’s business. If my brother wants to spoil his son rotten, who am I to stop him?”
“But he don’t spoil me rotten,” Daniel protested. “He locks me up with an old man who can barely speak and who makes me read dull books in Latin all day. It’s not fair. Da’ was bad as bad could be when he was a lad. They still talk about wha’ he got up to at Harrow. Why can’t I be like him?”
“Perhaps Cameron has realized that being bad didn’t pay,” Isabella said.
Daniel snorted. “Not bloody likely. He’s still as bad, and now there’s no one to stop him.” His look turned pleading. “Can I stay here with you, Auntie? Please? Just until the races? If I stay with Uncle Mac, Da’ will find me and give me a thrashing. You won’t tell on me, will you?”
Though it was practiced, Daniel’s pleading touched Isabella’s heart. Cameron carelessly shuttled the lad between school and the Mackenzie brothers’ houses, not always having time for his son. Daniel was a lonely young man. But that did not mean that Daniel should be allowed to run wild, that Isabella should condone him disobeying his father. “I ought to say no.”
“That’s all right,” Daniel said cheerfully. “If ye turn me out, I can always sleep in the gutter, or in a bawdy house.”
Mac chuckled softly, and Isabella threw him a glare. “You’ll sleep in my back bedroom at the top of these stairs,” she said severely. “Go on up, and I’ll have one of the footmen make up the bed for you.” As Daniel started a happy jig, she went on. “Only until we go to Doncaster, mind, where I will turn you over to your father. And only if you behave. Any mischief, and I’ll send for him right away.”
“I’ll be good, Auntie. I don’t care if Da’ locks me up with monks afterward as long as I don’t miss the St. Leger.”
“And no cigars.”
Daniel removed the cigar from his mouth and dropped it into an antique porcelain bowl on a side table. “Say, Aunt Isabella, can a pretty maid come up and make my bed rather than a footman?”
“No,” Mac said at the same time as Isabella.
Isabella continued, “I’ll give my maids permission to slap you if you pester them. They work too hard to be annoyed by you.”
“Aw, I was only teasing.” Daniel seized Isabella’s hands and kissed her cheek. “Good night, Auntie. You’re my favorite aunt, you know.”
“I heard you say the same to Beth not more than a week ago.”
“Her too.” Daniel laughed as he charged up the stairs and into the room at the top. He slammed the door behind him so hard the stairs trembled.
Isabella let out a sigh. “He runs more wild each year.”
Mac fished the cheroot from her priceless antique bowl and laid the two cigars on the edge of the table, positioned so they wouldn’t burn the wood. “You’re good for the lad.”
“I’m too soft on him. He needs a firm hand.”
“He needs a gentle one as well,” Mac pointed out.
“I remember the morning after you married me, Daniel came charging into our house in Mount Street and mistook me for one of your models.”
“Aye, I remember boxing his ears for his impertinence.”
“The poor mite. He didn’t know.” Isabella turned to the railing, watching her guests talking and laughing below, wondering why she didn’t want to go back down to them. “He was all of nine years old, seeking refuge because he’d been sent home from school again and was afraid to tell Cam.”
“Spare him your sympathy. The ‘poor mite’ dropped a mouse down my coat to get back at me for the ear boxing.”
“I think perhaps none of you ever grew up.”
“Oh, but we did.”
Mac’s hands came around Isabella’s waist. His warmth covered her back, her bustle bent under his weight, and his lips burned the curve of her neck.
Chapter 6
A most lavish soiree held by the Lady of Mount Street Saturday last was marred somewhat by the failure of her Lord to make an appearance. The Lady assured her guests that his Lordship would be only a little late, but it was discovered in the small hours of the morning that he had gone to Rome instead. Perhaps he took a wrong turning? —February 1876
Isabella closed her eyes, gripping the railing until her fingers ached. “I should go down.”
Mac’s teeth grazed her skin. “They are enjoying themselves on their own. Your task is finished.”
He was right. The crowd had a new focus point—the soprano. Isabella’s mission had been to draw notice to the singer’s talent, and she’d done it. She was the director who could now retire to the wings. An excellent excuse to linger.
As Mac’s hands glided along the satin of her bodice, Isabella’s thoughts fled back through years, to the night she and Mac had hosted their first grand soiree at his Mount Street house. They’d stood like this on the landing while their guests roamed below, eager to see what effect Mac’s marriage had wrought on his bachelor’s abode. Isabella had felt wild and wicked and reckless. All those people, many well-respected members of society, had no idea that she stood in the shadows above, letting her rakish husband put love bites on her neck.
“You still wear yellow roses for me,” he said into her skin.
“Not necessarily for you,” she said faintly. “Redheads can’t wear pink ones.”
“You wear what you please and damn your detractors.” Mac nibbled her earlobe, her earring trickling into his mouth.
It would be easy to give in to him. Easy to let him touch her until she forgot pain and grief, despair and anger, and her burning loneliness.
She’d done it before. She’d smiled at him and welcomed him back after each one of his disappearances, and all would be sunshine between them again. More than sunshine—it had been happiness words couldn’t express, an expanse of joy that tore at her until she’d thought she’d come apart.
Then it would start again. Mac’s nearly obsessive attentiveness would give way to irritation, deteriorating tempers on both their parts. Their quarrels would start small and then escalate into blazing rows. Then more hurting, more sorrow, Mac retreating into drunkenness and wild behavior until Isabella would wake to find him gone again.
Mac pressed a kiss behind her ear, and the memory of the bad times dissolved into pure feeling. His mouth was hot, his clever tongue touching places that he knew aroused her. Below them, guests chattered and talked, unaware of the two in the shadows above. Mac moved his hand to her decolletage, slid fingers inside her bodice.
Isabella leaned back into him, letting him take her weight in his arms while his hard fingertips played with her breast. She turned her head, and Mac caught her lips with his.
Mac had taught Isabella to kiss, taking his time and showing her every technique. He’d begun the lessons on her father’s chill terrace, continued them in the carriage on the way to the bishop’s house. More still on the way back to his own house, while his ring, which he’d slipped on her finger during the makeshift ceremony, had weighed heavily on her hand.
He’d carried her up the stairs to his bedroom and then taught her that her preconceptions of what husband and wife did in bed were all wrong. No lying quietly while her husband took his pleasure with her body, as was her “duty.” No praying it would be over soon. No pain, no fear.
Mac had touched her as though she were an exquisite piece of art, learning her body while he encouraged her to learn his. He’d been so incredibly gentle and loving, and at the same time, wicked. He’d teased her and
