Her body turned slightly, but her eyes stayed fixed on the painting. Alasdair couldn’t tell what she saw beyond the brushstrokes, but it was a longing he recognized. Like watching the hills back in Scotland.
Was she?—?
He dared not voice the question.
All he knew was that watching her made the gallery feel like home, and the ball like a distant burden. The dance of suitors and whispered alliances could wait. They wanted husbands; he wanted nothing to do with it.
Then, she turned to him, and the question spilled from his lips before he could stop it?—
Chapter Three
“Bonnie, is she nae?” The soft voice drifted from the shadows, breaking Elizabeth’s reverie.
She froze.
The hidden gallery had been still and quiet like a cathedral without the crowd, and it had become her sanctuary from Lady Grisham and the suffocating ballroom.
She hadn’t meant to enter the gallery; she only wanted to escape the noise and pressure. But once inside, the paintings drew her in, shifting from shock to curiosity, and then to something deeper:longing.
She had tried to dismiss the feeling, yet it lingered. The ballroom had been heavy, tight, but here, amid the molten colors and vivid passion, she felt something she had never dared to admit out loud.
These paintings were alive, filled with yearning and desire, far from the stiff portraits of powdered nobles she’d been raised to respect. Here, the women reached, seduced, and claimed their pleasures without apology.
Yet her peace had been broken by that masculine voice. A deep, velvety, riveting masculine voice, like a bow passing over cello strings.
Elizabeth turned to see a figure in the dimly lit corridor.
The man leaned against the arched entrance of the inner gallery, half cloaked in shadow. He was impossibly tall—easily over six feet—tall as her brother-in-law, the Duke of Oakmere.
For a fleeting moment, Elizabeth’s mind stuttered, conjuring images of Highland granite. Solid, unyielding, and pure muscle.
Then, he offered a sardonic smile, as if kindness was a stranger to him. His russet hair was tousled and wild, falling freely over his forehead and ears.
“I beg your pardon,” Elizabeth breathed, mortified not only at being caught admiring a scandalous painting, but also by her breathlessness and rising blush.
She imagined her cheeks glowing crimson, even in the semi-darkness.
“Didnae mean to startle ye, my lady,” he said, his voice blunt and without false politeness. “I willnae tell a soul if ye’re hidin’ out here.”
Hiding. Escaping.
He understood exactly what she was doing.
Elizabeth straightened, slipping into the posture Lady Grisham insisted upon. Yet this time, she did it for herself.
She smoothed her skirt carefully, clutching whatever dignity she could summon.
“I am not hiding, my lord. I was merely, uh, appreciating the art in this gallery,” she responded.
“Were ye, really?” he asked, looking amused with one brow lifted, as if daring her to say otherwise.
What else did he think she was there for?
Oh.Oh.
“Cannae say I ken of many English lasses bold enough to appreciate this sort of art, as ye call it. Most of the matrons outside would swoon dead away.”
Elizabeth folded her arms across her chest. “They likely do not understand art,” she huffed. “They underestimate aesthetics.”