Chapter Three

Molly

As the churning gray sky spit tiny rain droplets down on her, Molly hurried down the dirt road leading from the castle to the small village of Kelso. She pulled her hood tighter over her hair, ducking her head and berating herself as her shoes crunched on the wet gravel.

“So stupid,” she muttered. “You asked him about his lovers. Who does that? You should have left the minute you stepped inside that ballroom. Oh, but instead you stayed and asked him about his fucking lovers. Stupid, so stupid.”

She knew why she’d stayed. And she knew why she’d asked. And asked. And asked. She’d wanted to see his eyes unguarded again. She’d wanted to see the wall torn down, the mask pulled away, the eyes of the Duke replaced with the eyes of the man she’d first seen.

And what a man he appeared to be. Molly had seen the tension in the cords of his neck as he’d strained himself to stay in control. She’d wanted to paint them, to remember them, to touch them. He’d tried to appear cool and calm and collected, and to almost anyone else he would have, but Molly had sensed the restraint he was exerting. His whole body had been like a spring and she had searched and searched for the lever to release it.

She’d failed.

After that first tiny peek past the curtains, the Duke was as stoic and stiff as a brick wall. Every time she’d tried to chip it away, he buckled down. His lips drew tighter together, and his jaw grew tenser, and his fingers gripped the arm of his chair even more firmly.

Really, he’d succeeded more in unraveling her than she had in unraveling him. She hoped he hadn’t seen her attention slip toward his hands when he mentioned what he could do with them in bed. She’d known that’s what he’d wanted and she’d tried to restrain herself, but her will hadn’t been as strong as his, and now she was stuck with the image of his strong, large hands roving over her body.

As she continued down the road, her eyes briefly fluttered closed and she could almost feel his hands on her. Where would he touch her first? Would he lay one of those strong, large hands right above her heart? Would he feel her heart racing through his palm? Would his green eyes betray that he knew how his touch made her heart flutter?

Or would he touch her first on the arm? Her lower back? The small of her waist?

One second she thought he’d devour her, the next, he was so damn controlled. It intrigued her, the way he seemed to fight his baser nature. She couldn’t deny that. She wanted to know him and understand him even as she painted him. She wanted to talk to him and hear him laugh and listen to his stories.

Yet it was clear he wasn’t going to share.

“That’s not the fucking point,” she hissed to herself. “The point is you are not Priscilla Rose. You snuck somewhere you weren’t supposed to and got caught. You need to get the hell out of here before they figure it out.”

Well, this wasn’t the first time her heart had taken over the decision-making process. She’d learned it from her mother, after all. She’d avoided a steady job for as long as she could, choosing instead to do art she cared about. She’d managed to scrimp and save what little money she did have to support herself, and when the time seemed right, she’d used the money her mother had left her and her own meager savings and planned this trip to Europe, because it had been her dream, yes, but also because it had been her mother’s dream for her. No, she wasn’t known for making logical decisions. She jumped without looking.

But a month before she’d left for Europe, things had changed. Her father, who’d barely been functioning after the death of her mother, had lost his job. Suddenly, she didn’t have just herself to support, she had to support her father, too. So she’d interviewed for a job, gotten an offer, set things in motion, and because the plane tickets had been non-refundable anyway, had set out on her European adventure, somehow finding herself painting a duke.

“Miss Rose?”

Squeezing her eyes shut, she clenched her fists and groaned before turning around with a sweet smile. The Duke of Roxburghe sat on top of a large, gray horse that trotted right up to her.

The angry skies seemed to suit him. He looked like a god atop that horse, and in turn the horse responded to every click of his tongue, every press of his heel into its flank, every gentle tug of the rein, eager to do his bidding.

As she had in the ballroom, Molly imagined how well he could command her. Touch yourself there. Turn onto your stomach. Faster. Deeper. Swallow.

“Where are you off to?”

He guided the horse in a wide circle around her, like he was a hawk and she a helpless rabbit.

“Um, walking to the village. To my hotel room.”

“Didn’t you tell us you’d be staying in the castle while you completed my portrait?”

Shit. Shit! As he circled around on his horse again, she noticed an amused grin across his face. So what? Now that he was out of the castle, he didn’t have to hide his true feelings behind that blank mask he’d worn. The idea almost stopped her in her tracks, but she forced herself to keep going.

“Well, um, yeah, I have to get my bags,” Molly lied. “I arrived early and stayed in the village.”

He nodded and glanced back at the castle. “You could’ve asked Mack to drive you. It’s quite a hike to the village.”

She shrugged. “I don’t mind. Good to stretch the legs after such a long flight from Boston.”

“Right. How do you like Boston, Miss Rose?”

“Oh, Boston is, Boston is just…the best,” she said as she continued to walk, with him on his horse trotting beside her.

She’d never fucking been to Boston.

“That must have been quite an accomplishment, attending Harvard, Miss Rose.”

She cleared her throat and eyed the horse. What were the chances she could outrun a thoroughbred through the mud? She finally ground to a halt, sighed, and blinked up at the Duke through the steadily increasing specks of rain.

“Harvard was just…”

He leaned over his horse and closer to her. “The best?”

She nodded. “The best.”

As their gazes clashed, somehow her mind wandered away from talk of Boston. Instead, she suddenly saw the two of them on the grassy knoll just behind his shoulder; it would serve perfectly as a place for him to lie her down. If he tore away her clothes, stripped her down and exposed her, what would his ravenous eyes devour first? Her nipples would be hard and peaked and yearning. Her hair, the curls caught in the thistles and thorns, would lay around her head, debauched and eager for his touch. The blood running through the vein along her neck would be racing as she stretched it out for his hot breath, his scalding tongue, his bruising teeth. It would all be his to feast on.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

Yours, she thought. I want to be yours. I want to be the girl who succumbs to the appetite of a duke. I want to give myself to you and in return have you give yourself to me.

Only that was quite impossible. And not because she was a commoner and an imposter. But because he was a stranger to himself.

“I’m Priscilla Rose,” she said, not blinking. “And I must be leaving.”

She turned to continue down the road to the village, but he blocked her with his horse’s wet nose.

“I know you’re not Priscilla Rose. So, who are you?”

“Your horse is blocking my way, Your Grace.”

“His name is Sir Galahad. What is your name?”

She rolled her eyes. Of course the horse’s name was Sir Galahad.

“My name is Priscilla Rose and you and Sir Galahad are blocking my way.”

Instead of leading his horse out of Molly’s way, he urged the horse to take a step closer, forcing her to backtrack on the gravel road. As she attempted to duck around them, the Duke matched her movement by guiding the horse’s head this way and that. She glared up at him as she stumbled down the small embankment off the road. Still, the Duke forced her backward.

“What is your name?” he repeated.

Molly tried to stand her ground, but Sir Galahad nuzzled his nose against her shoulder and she tripped backward again.

“Is this how you treat all your international guests, Your Grace?”

He shrugged even as the thunder clouds churned behind him. “Only the ones that try to take me for a fool. Now, tell me your name.”

Molly threw up her hands. “Priscilla Rose. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m Priscilla Rose.”

Her backward progression abruptly stopped when her shoulders collided painfully with the sharp bark of a tree trunk. She stood there as the Duke studied her, head quirked to the side, eyes mistrusting. Then he suddenly dismounted and dropped the reins. Sir Galahad wandered off to graze on the wild grasses, but Molly still could not move.

He held his hands loosely at his sides, but they might as well have been pinned to the tree on either side of her head. His feet stood shoulder width apart across from hers, but she imagined them kicking each of her boots further apart and wedging themselves between her legs. He held himself a foot away from her and yet she couldn’t have moved less had his body been pressed squarely against her, holding her tightly against the tree, his groin pushing eagerly against her, his attraction obvious.

Molly couldn’t move. She didn’t want to move.

The rabbit was trapped.

Panicked, she forced herself to look past his demanding gaze to follow the dirt road that wound through the lush green hills of the Scottish countryside. She didn’t want to be tempted to share her secrets with this man. And she knew the more she looked at him, the looser her lips would become.

They stood in silence, the only audible sounds the wind through the grasses and the occasional swish of the horse’s tail.

“Why did you paint my eyes the way you did?” he asked, and Molly swore she caught a hint of vulnerability in his expression, the same vulnerability she’d seen when she’d first entered the ballroom. He shifted from one foot to the next and for the first time appeared to be anything but comfortable and in control. It was his eyes, now, that flickered away from her.

“I’m not going to drag you to prison or press charges or anything. I just need to know… why’d you paint my eyes that way?”

If she let her brain do the talking, she could just play dumb, tell him she needed to get to the village, and never look back. But he was genuinely confused, and allowing himself to be vulnerable, and she couldn’t resist being honest with him.

“My name is Molly Lane. I’m traveling around Europe to study art and when I was in your castle I noticed the William McTaggart hanging—”

“The what?” he interrupted.

“The painting. The painting in the hallway, just past the section restricted from the tourists? Famous Scottish painter, William McTaggart?”

He shrugged. “Never had much time for art, I guess.”

Molly stared at him as if she was a priest and he’d just shouted blasphemy inside a church. She could understand no time to cook a healthy dinner. She could understand no time to do dishes or vacuum or dust bookshelves, or to watch the nightly news.

But art? There was always time for art.

“Anyway,” she continued, ignoring what she’d just heard, “Mack saw me and mistook me for Priscilla, and I was going to leave, but then…well…then I saw you.” She looked down, feeling her cheeks burn slightly. “I painted what I saw.” It was so hard to find the right words to answer his question. “I painted who I saw.”

He shook his head, the movement almost angry.

“You’re not the ‘quietly and attentively sit for an official portrait’ type,” she said.

“It is my duty,” he answered, robotically, automatically, thoughtlessly.

Molly knew better.

“You’re not as prim and proper as you try to be, Your Grace. I could see it.”

His jaw clenched.

Molly stepped closer to him until only a few inches kept them apart. “I saw how hard you had to try to keep yourself under control. You wanted to touch me.” She amazed even herself by stating it so bluntly. She expected him to laugh disdainfully. Deny it. Instead, his eyes blazed like a million suns, and he whispered, “You don’t know me.” Only, she heard the uncertainty in his voice. Could he?

She lifted her chin. “But I do. You’re passionate and wild and restless. You’re not the Duke you pretend to be at all. I saw that. I painted that.”

“That wasn’t me,” he insisted.

Why was he fighting what she was saying? Why were the eyes she’d painted on that canvas so foreign to him, so unlike himself, so impossibly not him? For whatever reason, he must be guarding himself from strangers, possibly even those close to him. But maybe he was guarding himself from himself as well. And that, she thought, would be the saddest possibility of all.

She tried to make what she wanted to say less insane than it sounded in her mind, but she kept fumbling for words. She wanted to say that the past few months, she’d traveled all around Europe and stood transfixed before the greatest works of art ever created. And she’d stood transfixed because the paint on the canvas, the clay molded on the stand, the watercolor streaked across the page, were each a part of that artist. To make art like that required opening yourself and pouring yourself into the art.

Her mother, a talented and devoted artist herself before her death, had always told Molly she couldn’t hide anything in art. She had to show the good, the bad, the ugly. She had to show her insecurities and her doubts, her jealousies and her anger, her passion and her frustrations. The acrylic had to feel her heartbeat, her sweat, her tears, and Molly had to let it.

So, every time Molly stood in front of great art, she was in awe, not just by the sheer brilliant skill required to make it, but by the artist’s honesty, the openness of their heart, the vulnerability of their soul.

After she stumbled into the ballroom and locked eyes with the Duke of Roxburghe, she’d stood transfixed the same way she had before the Mona Lisa. Because nothing had been hidden from her.

But that really did sound insane. Even Molly, wearer of an occasional feather in her hair, hugger of strangers that needed a hug on the subway, crier at a beautiful sunset, knew that was crazy.

“Do you see the man you painted standing in front of you right now?” the Duke finally asked.

She shook her head. “You’re hiding.”

An arrogant smirk played across his face as he closed the distance between them, forcing Molly to stumble back into the tree. He straddled her legs and loomed over her. “I’m right here,” he said.

“No, no, you’re not,” Molly insisted. “You just think I’ll be distracted by your dick pressed against my stomach.”

He chuckled darkly and braced his hands on either side of her head. “Is it working?” he asked.

His lips were just inches from her own. She could see the shades of green in his eyes, more varied than the landscape sprawling in every direction around her.

“Here’s another question for you,” he whispered when she remained stubbornly silent. “Knowing what we were asking of you, knowing you were supposed to be painting my official portrait, why did you paint me the way you did?”

He was so close to her. She was so close to him. Only an idiot wouldn’t be able to see there were miles and miles between them.

Just say “I don’t know,” Molly. Do it and get away from him. Instead she said, “I didn’t have a choice.”

His eyes flared and his head lowered and she swore he was going to do it.

He was going to kiss her.

Then the steady drizzle from the darkening sky turned into a torrent of heavy, loud droplets. The sudden roar was deafening. And to her combined relief and dismay, the Duke stepped away from her.