“Mac, what is it? Is it the pain?” She knew he hadn’t quite finished healing, no matter how robust he pretended to be.
Mac didn’t answer, his gaze fixed on the painting. Isabella glanced at it in curiosity, but she could see nothing wrong with it. It was a Mac Mackenzie painting, muted browns and blacks highlighted with brilliant tones of red and yellow. Isabella sat a bit primly, her coppery curls piled high on her head, one ringlet drooping down her cheek. A little smile hovered about her mouth, and her eyes sparkled with good humor. The painting wasn’t finished, but already it glowed with life.
“It’s lovely,” she said. “What is the matter? Do you not like it?”
Mac turned to her, a strange look in his eyes. “Not like it? It’s bloody wonderful. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Isabella made her voice light. “What, even more than the erotic pictures?”
“Those were different. This . . .” Mac pointed at the painting with the handle of his brush. “This is beauty.”
“I’m pleased that your high opinion of yourself has returned.”
Mac dropped the brush and caught her shoulders, never mind that he smeared yellow paint on her black gabardine. He studied her intently, the strange look still in his eyes.
“My love, Ian told me right after your father died that I needed to bare my soul to you. Well, here it is, the good and the bad of it.” He pointed to the portrait. “That’s my soul right there, crying out for you.”
Isabella looked at it again. The woman who was herself through and through smiled out at Mac.
“I don’t understand. It’s just a picture of me.”
“Just a picture.” Mac laughed, but tears wet his eyes. “It is just a picture. Of you. Painted by me, with love in every stroke.” He drew a breath. “That’s what I didn’t understand before. This is why my talent went away and now has come bursting back.”
He looked so joyous that Isabella wanted to kiss him, but she still didn’t understand. “Explain?”
“I can’t, love. I always thought my ability came from astonishing luck, or a drunken stupor, or lust for you. When I painted the erotic pictures, I assumed they came out well because I wanted you so much.”
She shot him a sly look. “But you discovered you didn’t want me so much?”
“No, I want you all the damn time.” His fingers went to the nape of her neck, caressing, warming, loosening her.
“You were explaining.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t the lack of drink that took away my ability, love; it was my own bitterness. I know that now. Once I sobered up I couldn’t shut out my anger at you for leaving me, and at myself for causing it. I buried my love, because it hurt me too damn much to feel it. And my paintings were awful. When I decided to let myself love you—just love you, what you are, no matter what you thought of me, it came flooding back.” Mac drew another shaking breath. “I think I can paint anything now.”
Isabella’s heart squeezed with sudden happiness, but she said, “There’s a flaw in your reasoning.”
“Can’t be. It’s what I feel.”
She shook her head. “You painted beautifully before you ever met me. I’ve seen your paintings from that time. They are excellent. Don’t pretend they’re not.”
“I think then I was in love with life itself. I was young, out from under my father’s fist, finally free of him. I could do anything I pleased. But then I met you, and my world came crashing down.”
Isabella wished she could fix this moment in time, with Mac’s body hard against hers, his eyes filled with naked emotion.
“Why did we make ourselves so unhappy?” she asked, half to herself.
“You were an innocent, and I was a debauched rake. I think it was inevitable that it wouldn’t work.”
Isabella slid her hands across his bare shoulders. His skin was warm and firm, muscles solid beneath it. “You make yourself out to be such a bad man, but you’re not. You took care of me from the night you met me, and you’ve never stopped. You take care of everyone you love.”
Mac looked affronted. “I am a debauched rake, my darling. I’ve spent years cultivating my disreputable reputation. Remember how I taught you to take whiskey neat and sit on my lap and kiss me in front of my friends?” He deflated, the humor leaving him. “I wanted to make you bad like me, because I knew I’d never be good enough for you.”
“You were always good enough for me,” Isabella said, her heart in every word.
“Sweetheart, you wound me. A rake has his pride.” Mac slid her hands from him and held them in his. “I’m busy baring my soul to you, Isabella. Let me continue.”
“If you wish.”
Mac took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and sank to his knees. The movement hurt him, she could tell from the way his grip tightened on her hands.
“Look at me.” Mac spread his arms, still holding her hands so that their arms moved out to the sides together. “What do you see?”
Her blood heated. “A very handsome man I happen to be married to.”
“A wasted man. I am nothing. I can make pictures come out of my hands when I’m not feeling sorry for myself. That is all there is, what you see here at your feet.”
“No . . .”
Mac’s voice went hard. “All there is, Isabella. Everything else—the joker, the wild bohemian, even the debauched rake—is what I’ve pasted on to keep the world from overrunning me. But it’s all fake. I use that façade to keep you from seeing and despising me.”
She smiled. “If I believed that, I never would have married you.”
“I didn’t give you much bloody choice, did I? You were right to leave me, because I took what you gave me and threw it carelessly away. And now here I am, charging in and telling you that you’ll take me back, whether you like it or not.”
Mac released her, letting his hands fall to his sides. His eyes held undisguised fear and love, and a pain she’d never seen before. “But this time, it is your choice,” he said. “If you don’t want me back, I’ll go. I’ll take care of you as I did before, without obligation, without you having to bother with me and my obsession for you.”
Obsession. Isabella had seen the paintings in Payne’s hideaway in the rookery in Marylebone, the pictures of herself that had made her ill to look upon. They were destroyed now, but they’d been painted from obsession.