“Then why did you leave him?” Louisa fixed her with an accusing glare. “If you loved him so much, and the marriage was so wonderful, why did you run away? Did you send word to him or simply disappear as you did from me?”
Isabella gasped, stung. “Louisa.”
“I’m sorry, Isabella. I’ve been angry at you for so long. If you loved Lord Mac enough to turn your back on all of us, why did you turn your back on him as well?”
Isabella rose swiftly to her feet. “I did not turn my back on you. Papa turned his back on me. He refused me the house. He wouldn’t let me speak to you or Mama. Never.”
“You could have defied him. You could have found some way around him. Your husband is rich enough—you could have paid Papa’s debts and let his pride go to the devil. You didn’t come back because you didn’t want to.”
Tears streamed down Louisa’s face. Isabella stared at her, aghast, hating the fact that her sister might be right. Isabella had been so angry at her father that she’d built a wall between her old life and her new. She wondered now if she could have worn down her father’s defenses if she’d tried harder. But Isabella had been too hurt by Lord Scranton’s fury, too defiant to reason with him. Isabella had loved Mac, still did, and she’d been angry that her parents had not rejoiced in her happiness. Lady Scranton not talking her father ’round had upset her too. And Louisa, caught in the middle, had only seen Isabella walking away from them.
“Louisa, I’m sorry,” Isabella whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Do you love Lord Mac?”
“Yes.” Isabella’s heart went into the word. “I love him very much.”
“Then why?”
“Marriage is not simple, I’m sorry to say. There are so many facets to it, and every year brings something new. For the good and for the bad. I suppose that’s why the marriage vows say for better or for worse.”
“But you love him?”
“I do.”
Louisa moved to stand in front of Isabella. They were of the same height now, Isabella’s funny little sister all grown up.
“I’m glad,” Louisa said. “I’m glad that you found someone to love. Does he love you?”
Isabella nodded, the dratted tears welling in her eyes again. “Yes, he does. Rather a lot, I think.”
“Then you were wrong to leave him. Why did you throw that away?”
“Because he didn’t love me enough. It is difficult to explain. Mac loved me so intensely that he did maddening things for me and because of me. He’d disappear without a word for weeks, because he thought that would make me happy. He never thought to ask me what would make me happy, or what I needed from him. Mac did everything based on what he felt, never noticing what I felt.”
“And that’s why you left him?”
“In the end, yes.”
Isabella remembered the dark days after she’d lost the baby, the despair she’d felt when Mac finally came home too drunk and crushed himself to comfort her. Everything between them had built and built into a wall of anger and hurt and sadness.
“One day I woke up and saw things clearly,” Isabella said, half to herself. “I knew that Mac would never learn to love me without hurting me. I couldn’t stay with him while he did the same things over and over again. I no longer had the strength to face him.”
“Did you tell him? Give him a chance to try?”
“You didn’t see the truth of us.” Isabella sighed. “I don’t know if you knew this, Louisa, but I was carrying a child, and I lost it. I needed a long time to recover after that ordeal, and Mac couldn’t give that to me. He was hurting too, and he didn’t know how to make everything all better. That drove him a little insane, I think.”
She explained how the physical pain of the miscarriage had given way to months of grief, and then of tiredness. She’d no longer had the energy for the comet that was Mac Mackenzie.
“What about now?” Louisa asked. “I saw him arrive with you today, and my maid says he has been living in your house with you.”
Isabella nodded. “Mac has changed. He is calmer—a bit. And he seems to think about things more.” She laughed a little. “Usually. He still is impetuous and exasperating. It’s part of what makes him so charming, I suppose.”
“And you still love him?”
Louisa held her gaze, her look stern. Isabella realized at that moment that it would be Louisa who held the family together after this tragedy. Their mother was too worn down, too uncertain how to live without a cushion of money and security beneath her. Louisa would be the strong shoulder everyone leaned on.
Isabella’s heart swelled as she thought of Mac, who was even now running all over London to make certain that Isabella’s mother and sister wanted for nothing. Mac had no legal obligation to her family, and no emotional one to the people who had refused to speak to him after he’d married Isabella. He could have washed his hands of the Scrantons, claimed that Isabella’s family deserved what they’d got.
But he didn’t, and Isabella knew he never would. His compassion was as large as his heart, Mac, who’d decided to adopt a helpless little girl like Aimee so she wouldn’t grow up in the gutter.
Even when Isabella had left him, Mac had made certain that Isabella continued to live as lavishly as she’d grown accustomed to. He hadn’t punished her. He hadn’t rushed into the arms of other women for consolation. He’d stopped drinking, stopped his all-night revels with his rakish friends, stopped wasting himself.
For her.
“I think I do,” Isabella whispered to Louisa. “I do.”
It was a heady feeling, this surge of love, and very, very frightening.
Chapter 20
It is said that the Scottish Lord has returned to the Continent to Paint, and rumor has it that his Lady has also taken a holiday there. They were seen in close proximity to each other in Paris, but each seemingly never noticed that the other was there. —June 1881
Mac saw little of Isabella in the following weeks, because she was distracted with funeral arrangements and looking after her mother. But whenever they met in passing, Isabella would flash him a smile that set his heart throbbing. Other parts of his anatomy too.
He longed to stop her when she kissed his cheek on the way out of the breakfast room or rushed about packing up her mother’s house to find out why she looked so pleased with him, but he also had much to do. He and Cameron spent most of their time with bankers and investment houses sorting out the tangle of Scranton’s debts, buying them up or settling them outright.
Mac intended to take the debts he’d paid and make a show of ripping up the notes in front of Lady Scranton’s face. He hoped to make the sad lady smile. And perhaps Isabella would seize Mac in an embrace of passionate gratitude and make some of his baser fantasies come true. Well, he could hope.
The fact that Cameron was just as willing to help warmed him. Cameron wasn’t known for suffering fools gladly, but when Mac mentioned his gratitude, Cam said in surprise, “Isabella is family.”
Hart, too, pulled stings from afar, and Ian himself came down, with Beth, of course, breaking the journey so not to tire her. The two of them stayed in Hart’s town house, because Isabella’s house now overflowed with her mother and sister, Aimee and Miss Westlock, and Mac. Beth and Ian spent most of their time at Isabella’s nonetheless, and so did Cameron, which made finding time alone with Isabella damned difficult. But Mac, after three years of loneliness, couldn’t help but like having the house full. Isabella, he noticed, never once suggested that Mac move into Hart’s London mansion with Ian and Beth.
Mac kept a strict eye out for Payne, but the man seemed to have made himself scarce. Payne delivered no more paintings to Crane, nor did he stop to collect his money, and neither Mac nor Fellows nor the other policemen saw him lurking. Payne had never tried to find Aimee, which both relieved and disgusted Mac. What kind of man abandoned his own child? On the other hand, Mac had grown fond of Aimee and was happy enough
