Portrait of a Scotsman (A League of Extraordinary Women, #3)

by Evie Dunmore

A new woman, then. A woman with opinions. A bluestocking. Her traipsing around unchaperoned and her loony tale about wanting to attend a gallery tour—rather than spy on him—might well be true, then. Her strange old cloak remained incomprehensible. He realized he was running his index finger over his bottom lip, back and forth, as though he were chasing any traces her soft mouth might have left behind. A very soft mouth. She had tasted sweet, a hint of sugared tea mixed into the flavor of the rain on her skin. Her scent still clung to him; he thought he could smell roses whenever he moved. He should’ve known the moment he’d seen her that Renwick had been wrong about her—her round brown eyes had held no knowledge or guile. Or he had known, and she had tempted him anyway—after all these years, precious things still exerted a magnetic pull.

“I read an essay by John Dewey a little while ago. He argues that art is art only when it succeeds at creating a shared human experience—a communication, if you will—between the work and the audience. If it doesn’t, it’s just an object.”

“You said he’s a Scotsman. Perhaps from the Highlands? He would look braw in a kilt.” Hattie blinked. Would he? And why was Catriona picturing men in kilts? “Why do you think he’s a Highlander?” Catriona’s smile was a little crooked. “They have a certain look about them when they enter a room full of Englishmen. A sharp glance in their eyes, like a broadsword at the ready to be drawn—You beat us at Culloden, it says, but our spirit remains unbroken.”

the things one had learned early often felt instinctual, as unquestionable as the act of breathing, and the familiarity of them mattered rather than whether they were good or harmful.

On impulse, she leaned in. “Tell me something no one else knows about you.” The cold depths of his eyes went very still. “I already have,” he then said. “You have?” He nodded. “My name.” “Lucian?” “Yes.”

A nervous sensation fluttered in her belly when their gazes locked. He looked as though he meant to say something, but instead, he was watching her closely while he brushed the backs of his knuckles over the curve of her jaw, then over the softness of her throat beneath. It was a liberty a lover or a husband would take, the kind of caress that left confusing heat in its wake, and her breathing quickened. He had to feel her treacherously galloping pulse against his fingers. He dropped his hand. “Harriet,” he murmured. “I think we’ll suit just fine.”

she couldn’t help but think that this was how Persephone would be dragged into the underworld in 1880s London: not screaming, not twisting wildly, but painfully composed while Hades wore a velvet jacket.

She now knows the name your mother gave you, he thought as he made his way to his study. Even Aoife only knew him as Luke. Apparently, the dirty, ignorant boy from several lives ago wanted to be a part of their union.

A silver pendant, perhaps half the length of her little finger, rested on a red velvet bed. She picked it up carefully. “It’s a tiny spoon.” The handle was intricately fashioned in Celtic knots and finished in a heart-shaped loop. “It’s a love spoon,” Lucian said. She turned it back and forth. “I know of them.” Celtic men fashioned them for their sweethearts. It looked freshly polished, but the inner sides of the braided strands were blackened with time, and there was a weight to the piece as though it had a history. Lucian’s expression was guarded. “My grandmother,” he said. “She gave it to me, for my future bride. My great-grandfather had once made it for his wife; he was a Welshman.” He glanced at it there in her palm. “I suppose we could set it with a diamond, if you want.” Her fingers closed protectively over the small heirloom. “I find it most precious as it is.”

please keep in mind that ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is a fairy tale. You do know the tale of the Beauty and the Beast?” “Of course,” Hattie said. “You are still speaking in riddles.” “The Beast traps the Beauty,” Lucie said, and sat down behind the desk, a fountain pen in hand. “In the end, Beauty saves the Beast— and herself—thanks to her gentle nature, self-sacrifice, and loving heart—so loving, she becomes smitten with an ugly, probably smelly monster that wanted to murder her father and kept her imprisoned.”

Now she knew why girls were not allowed to feel anger—there was a reckless hope in it, and power. She would not loathe the compliant woman she had been this morning, oh no; she would direct this precious anger outward, and her gaze forward. Les rousses viennent de l’enfer—redheaded women are from hell. Lovely was dead. Enter the witch.

you could not be farther from a Mr. Bingley if you tried.” He had no idea how to reply to such a thing, so he took a long draft of his ale. “You are beyond even a Mr. Rochester,” Harriet said, and he didn’t know that fellow, either, but he deduced he was odious so he pinned her with a look over the rim of his glass. “In fact,” she said, her eyes widening with shocked realization, “in fact, you—you are a Heathcliff.”

“Who, or what, is Heathcliff?” he demanded. “Heathcliff—why, he’s a bit of a villain in Wuthering Heights, sir,” she supplied as she leaned in close to collect his plate. “It’s a novel.” “The villain, eh?” “Well, he’s a brooding, ill-bred man who moons after a fine lady.” “Is he, now?” he muttered. “Then he makes a fortune but is still obsessed with revenge and ruins everything.”

The door flew open, and she was stunned to the spot by the smolder in Lucian’s eyes. He came to her; he didn’t halt until his knees pressed into her skirts. Her hands fluttered up, but he grabbed the thick fabric at her hips and pulled her flush against him, and her thoughts flew apart. His gaze searched her face so intently, as if he wished to see right into her soul. “Much that I despise,” he said hoarsely, “and all that I desire, meets in you. And it frustrates me beyond reason.”

“I don’t know how to do this right,” he murmured. He took off his hat and tossed it aside. “I don’t know what to make of you. I know I’d rather my skin burned than yours.”

He was aware his gaze was following her swaying skirts like a hungry dog going after a bone, and he didn’t like it. It felt as though she had a part of him on a leash. I don’t know how to do this right. The tops of his ears felt warm when he recalled his heated words earlier. He couldn’t remember the last time he had admitted cluelessness to another person.

She was sweet. Genuinely sweet and unassuming. Spoiled and ignorant, too, but her cheerful disposition was rooted in something deeper; there’d be some whimsy in her even had she been raised in a beggar’s hovel. It was reckless to be this way, in a world such as this; she could be hurt in all sorts of ways. He felt a knot in his stomach as a cold sensation seeped beneath his skin. He hadn’t felt moved to keep a particular woman safe from . . . everything . . . in over ten years. Now the long-buried instinct rattled its cage at the bottom of his soul. Unless he kept it buried, it might swell with the force of a tidal wave and take the ground from under his feet.

“It was a dream,” she said. He was quiet, in the controlled, drawn-out way that made it meaningful. She licked her lips and tasted salt. “A nightmare.” “I must have been bloody to you, then.” His voice was raw. “You were not in it.” A pause. “You were saying my name.” Moaning his name, rather. Kiss me, Lucian.

Whatever his motivation, he had shown great foresight in anticipating her desires. I don’t want to, she thought, I don’t want to like him so.

She wasn’t lovely. That’s why she had such a strong reaction to the word; there was nothing wrong with lovely, but it was not her. Beneath lace and silk, she was a wild and dangerous creature.

I crave him, she thought. She shouldn’t, but it was no use—the passionate part of her desired him exactly for who he was. But while she wanted the heat, would she have the strength to suffer the burn?

He was holding her face again, his thumbs brushing beneath her eyes. “Rest now.” Her eyes closed. She was half-asleep when she felt his lips press softly against her forehead. “What spell have you put on me?” he murmured.

windows behind him, compelling his mind to replay how Harriet had mingled among the miners, laughing, carefree, exerting an electrifying bodily pull on him. They made an uneasy picture, his old life and the new one in the same frame, but for a moment there she had danced on the edges of both worlds as though one could do just that: belong neither fully here nor there but right in between.

Besotted. That’s what it was, then, the trembling hands, the restlessness, the heat in his veins. How could she not affect him? His cold bed was now warm and his usually fractured sleep calm. His solitary hours were filled with her clever, womanly scented presence. He rose in the mornings with an unfamiliar lightness in his chest, and the only thing that had changed about his routine was . . . her.

“I’m not making it any better, am I?” she whispered. His voice was dark and low. “You have made everything better.”

“Welcome back, love.”

She listened to his even breathing, thinking that the only time love had been mentioned between them had been the moment she had vowed to never, ever love him, and how this had not fazed him in the least.

A warm emotion welled from the depths of her and spread and spread until it felt she might burst from it. Her chest ached. Her lungs burned. She was trembling quietly in the dark. I’m in love with him, she thought. Help me, I’m in love with him.

he realized that he couldn’t lose her. Not because it would hurt his political ambitions, but because it would hurt. The thought of a life without her, of having the warmth in his chest ripped from him again, felt like the ground beneath

“I have thought that sometimes, you look at me as though I were something to eat.” A dark emotion was banking in his eyes. “I’ve known hunger,” he said. “And I have never been as starved as I am for you.”

He looked like a thing of darkness with his brooding air and the red glow of the lamp spilling over his shadowed features. “I should like to photograph you,” she said. His mouth pulled into an ironic smile. “A study of a white knight, eh?” “No,” she said, absently. “A portrait of a Scotsman.”

“You are my dark knight,” she said. “My cruel prince. And I’m not nearly as scared of you as you would like me to be.”

“I keep seeing him pointing the pistol at your chest,” she whispered. “I keep feeling how I felt that moment.” He kept seeing it pointed at her head. “We’re alive, love.” “Even so,” she said in a low tone. “I shall now forever live with the knowledge that without you in it, the world would be a strange place, and I should never be at home in it again.” The world would have been empty.

you were willing to take a bullet for me.” “And that troubles you?” he asked in disbelief. “You were the one who said we should all have someone worth taking a bullet for.” Her knuckles were white, her nails restlessly biting into delicate skin. “Yes,” she said. “And I feel immeasurably cherished. I’m also acutely aware that my being indebted to you in such a way has made your hold over me even more powerful.” What of your power over me? he wanted to say. I’m a fool for you!

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, “sorry that I kept you when I didn’t know how to care for you. The truth is, loving you took me by surprise. The way love feels ambushed me. It feels brutal. Like an unstoppable force. It demands to be accommodated, against reason, regardless of all that might have been before, and I had too little practice to master it well. I suppose I thought I could remain who I was, and still begin anew with you, but that was wrong. You did right, asking me to let go of Rutland. But I had lived with rage for so many years I saw it no longer; it was part of me, and had I let it go—well, you might as well have asked me to let go of my heart, or some other vital part, perhaps the legs I stand on.”

“Half agony, half hope.” She blinked. “You . . . read Persuasion?” “I’ve read them all,” he said, his tone faintly amused. “I like North and South best, but either way I’ve learned many fancy words for properly courting a lost love.” She moved closer to him, until the tips of their boots touched and she could breathe him in. “How,” she whispered, “how would you say it in your own words?” His eyes bore into hers. “I miss you,” he said. “Come home.”

At first sight, they were still an unlikely match—opposites in looks, upbringing, and temperament. But on the artist’s color wheel, two opposite colors were considered complementary. Their high contrast caused high impact, and they looked their brightest when placed next to each other.