A Scot to the Heart (Desperately Seeking Duke #2) - Caroline Linden Page 0,74
not to nag, and not to undermine me.”
“I never—!”
“The drawing room was painted while I was away, without my permission.”
Jean shot to her feet. “Instead you would shame me before all my friends who come to call, painting the sky on the ceiling like some sort of sybarite! Your father would be cruelly disappointed in you, lass.”
Ilsa was fighting back tears, half fury, half guilt. Jean had always been able to do this to her. “Perhaps our arrangement is no longer satisfactory. Perhaps you would be happier with Papa.”
The color fled Jean’s face. “You’ve grown so headstrong. I can’t imagine what your mother would think but ’tis glad I am she’s not here to see it.” Chin high, she marched from the room.
Ilsa sat, vibrating with tension. Abruptly she jumped up from the table and rushed out of the house, barely waiting for Robert.
She was still shaking when they reached Calton Hill, Robert trotting to keep up with her. Headstrong! Sybarite! As if she were a wicked child. As if she weren’t entitled to some privacy and independence. As if a painted ceiling was decadent and sinful. She was a grown woman, and her aunt had promised to respect her wishes. She paused, breathing hard, and Robert snuffled gently at the edge of her sleeve. “How could she?” she burst out to the empty field.
Robert gave her a sympathetic look before heading off to crop the tall grass.
“Have I not been clear to her?” she demanded. “Can she just not help herself?”
Robert shook his head with a jangle of his halter, and Ilsa sank down into the grass beside him. “I know,” she said quietly, squinting up at the peak of the hill, the sun rising behind it. “She still sees me as a child in need of discipline. Not as a grown woman, capable of choosing her own friends, deciding where she goes, managing her own money, painting her own drawing room . . .”
And taking her own lover.
Jean would be horrified if she knew Ilsa had kissed Drew, played pranks, ridden astride, and spent the night in bed with Drew. Proper ladies, she would say, treat their reputations as if they were made of cut glass: delicate, valuable, and impossible to repair if damaged. That was certainly how Jean tried to live, never one toe out of line.
Ilsa didn’t aim to thumb her nose at propriety—indeed, she didn’t think she did, much. Skipping church for golf wasn’t well done, perhaps, but it happened only once. Jean’s notions of propriety, though, were twenty years old; she thought everything Ilsa enjoyed was a ghastly affront to decency, from walking alone on the hill to not finding another husband the moment her mourning for Malcolm was over.
“She’s old-fashioned.” She plucked at the grass. “And strong-willed. I knew it, and still I let her live with me. ’Tis my own fault, aye?”
Robert gave a low whinny and nibbled at her hair. She swatted him away with a reluctant smile.
And now everyone knew Drew would be a duke. Everyone would be watching him, and with whom he interacted. If they were seen in company before he left for England, people would whisper that he’d thrown her over—that he might bed a woman like her, but never marry her. Malcolm’s friends had never accepted her, a tradesman’s daughter, even before the nightmare of the trial. This would only stir up those whispers again.
She’d known she wasn’t going to be a duchess, but she’d thought her affair with Drew might last until he left. Now she would have to give up his company entirely, for his sake and hers.
She was still sitting there, unready to return home, when something made her look up. Drew stood some fifty yards away, watching her. He looked so familiar and dear, so much not like a duke, that a lump sprang into her throat. For a long moment they simply gazed at each other, and Ilsa was suddenly gripped by the strangling fear that he would turn and walk away—that this was farewell, that the distance between them wasn’t mere rocks and heather but something far less passable.
Then he started toward her, and her lungs worked again. “Good morning,” she murmured when he reached her.
“Good morning.” He held out a hand and helped her to her feet. Robert trotted over eagerly, and Drew fed him a piece of carrot without looking away from Ilsa.