Chapter Nineteen

Molly

“Did you make the necessary changes I requested, Miss Rose?”

Sweeping her paintbrush across the canvas, Molly just didn’t feel like looking up at Isla or answering her question.

Gray clouds and pattering rain against the stained glass windows drenched the ballroom in dim light. At least in his portrait, Callum was bathed in the warmth of a bright afternoon sun. She mixed red into the brown hues on her palette to paint his hair. She knew, just knew, that if she ever saw his hair on a truly sunny day, it’d catch red like embers. Thanks to Scotland’s gloomy summer weather, she hadn’t seen it yet. But she knew. She closed her eyes for a moment to make sure she’d gotten the color just right.

“Miss Rose,” Isla continued as if Molly was actually listening. “Per our discussion, have you muted the colors?”

Again, Molly paid her no heed from behind the canvas, but instead raised her eyes to Callum sitting across from her. His shoulder-length hair was gelled back as usual for these sittings or professional functions as the Duke of Roxburghe.

But as Molly’s paintbrush dipped and swayed across the canvas, she just didn’t have the will to paint him the way she saw. In a few days, she’d be sitting in an office and, just like Isla, a boss would be telling her exactly what colors to use and what subject to illustrate.

Today was Saturday. Wednesday was fast approaching.

And so, without any thought whatsoever for Isla’s requirements, Molly moved her brush in fluid, untidy strokes. She painted Callum’s hair the way she wanted to remember it—soft and slightly messy, falling in his face. She painted it the way it had looked when he leaned over her on his bed, or like that day at the Highland Games when his eyes found hers in the crowd.

“Miss Rose, are you even listening?” Isla said. “I demand the Duke’s portrait be painted according to custom. Do you hear?”

While painting Callum’s hair with those fluid swaths of red and brown, her thoughts drifted to last night. Molly, I want you to stay. That’s what he said. And she could even believe that in the moment, while wrapped up in the heat of a fantasy of an impossible life together, he meant it. But she had a much harder time believing he’d mean it in a week, let alone a year. Two years. Three. A lifetime.

She also wanted to believe he’d changed. That he no longer felt compelled to be the man he clearly wasn’t—his brother Jamie. But life had a way of tugging even those who meant well back to the mud, back to reality. His mother demanded he act a certain way. As Duke, he was under enormous pressure to live up to his father’s name. He had responsibilities and duties and none of that would change. She feared he didn’t know how difficult it was to truly be one’s self.

She knew all too well. She’d tried for years. Had sacrificed a lot, and then sacrificed even more. It involved ramen dinners and dodging calls from the electricity company and hour after hour in the subway getting enough crumpled bills to pay the storage facility. It was hard work and draining and she was giving up.

But before she left, she wanted to give Callum one last reminder of the real man she saw and would always see. So, after the final intricate details, she finished his portrait.

In the end, it really wasn’t a duke’s portrait. It was the portrait of the man she’d held and who’d held her. He was vulnerable and strong, kind and stubborn as hell, daring and reckless and dangerous. A man who’d opened his heart even when it had been painful and difficult to do so.

Isla marched right over to Molly, her heels echoing sharply on the ballroom floor.

“Miss Rose, are you quite deaf?”

With one last assessment of her art, Molly set down her paintbrush and stepped back. She was done. But the threatening storm had at last arrived, and there was no time to board up the windows. She was going to get swept away, and she accepted it.

“For ten minutes, I’ve been asking if you’ve made the appropriate chang—”

Horror spread across Isla’s face, and she put her hands up to her pale cheeks. The portrait was nothing like the stern and stiff ones in the hallway. If Isla hung Callum’s portrait next to those, it would stick out like a crimson cardinal in a green forest. But Molly knew that. That’s what she’d intended.

“Who is that?” Isla asked in a high-pitched voice.

Callum raised his eyes in concern and stood quickly to come right over to the easel, seemingly ready to put out a fire in case Isla had matches on her.

“Don’t you recognize him, ma’am?” Molly asked. She was in no mood for any of Isla’s shit. “Can you really not see your own son?”

Callum’s mother frowned so fiercely that she looked more terrifying than Molly expected, but Molly stood her ground even when Isla stepped closer and pointed her finger at her chest.

“You listen here, girl,” she hissed. “I don’t know why you did this, but you will amend this immediately. That is not the Duke of Roxburghe.”

“Mother, please.” Callum jumped in, hands raised to diffuse the escalating tension. “It’s just a different style.”

Molly turned to him. “No, it’s not,” she insisted. “It’s a different person.”

“Please don’t do this,” he whispered, eyes pleading. “It’s fine.”

Shaking her head and swatting his hand away as he tried to reach for her, Molly again faced his mother and squared her shoulders. “Your son is a wonderful man, ma’am, and I wish you could see that.”

Isla merely stared at her, too stunned to speak. Molly seized the silence and continued, summoning all the bravery she could.

“I wish you could see how he smiles when he talks about Kelso, about his people. Or how he laughs when he doesn’t think anyone is listening. I wish you could feel his pride when he competes in the games, and know the strain it causes him to act the way he thinks you want him to act because of what happened to Jamie.”

Isla’s eyes had remained frozen this whole time, but at the mention of her passed son, they immediately jumped to Callum.

“He’s not the Duke you expected,” Molly continued. “Maybe he’s not even the Duke you wanted. He can be reckless, acting from his heart when you want him to think with his head. But he’ll be a passionate, dedicated, hard-working duke. This man right here.”

Molly pointed to the portrait.

“But the man you want me to paint will be a shell of a man. He’ll dress like you want, act like you want, speak like you want. He’ll be the Duke you want. But he will not be your son.”

Daggers flew from Isla’s eyes, but Molly could tell she’d hit a nerve. Somewhere deep down. But she’d hit it.

Next to her, Callum groaned, covering his face and shaking his head, but Molly wouldn’t relent under Isla’s dark glare. Not even when footsteps approached from outside the ballroom and she heard Mack’s voice.

“Your Grace, I need to speak to you.”

“Not now, Mack,” Callum said wearily. “Mother, please—”

“Sir,” Mack interrupted. “I’m terribly sorry, but it really is quite urgent.”

“Really Mack, we’re in the middle of something. I’m sure it can wait.”

“It is very much an emergency, Your Grace.”

Isla rolled her eyes, turning to Mack as he fidgeted nervously in the doorway. “Well,” she said, “what is it then?”

“It’s something I must speak to the Duke about privately. Right now, please.”

Molly looked at Callum and his eyes met hers. Then he sighed and moved towards the door.

“Really Mack, I do hope this is important, because—”

A woman briskly brushed past Mack, who made a pretty good attempt at trying to stop her, and strode right into the ballroom. At first glance, she looked startlingly like Molly. The commotion of her arrival forced Molly to step back, stumbling into the easel.

Arms crossed, Isla assessed the newcomer with suspicion. “Who in God’s name are you?” she demanded.

She should have asked Molly, who knew exactly who this woman was.

The woman straightened her sodden raincoat and lifted her chin. “Why, I’m Priscilla Rose, of course.”