Chapter 22
Honoria stared at the canvas, paintbrush in hand. Three torturous days had passed since Lash left. And in an effort to center her inner being, she’d tried to paint. She’d mixed all sorts of colors but none of them seemed right. It was no use. Her heart hurt. So did her eyes. Indeed her most awful work yet. She had painted a dark blue, almost black, circle over the entire canvas. It resembled nothing but a void—a dark, empty spiral.
“There is a painting of a face and chest where my stag used to be.”
Her gaze flicked to Callum, who leaned against the doorway, his posture relaxed, which instantly annoyed her.
“I didn’t want a reminder of Lash or your treachery in my gallery.” Looking at that painting was like looking into the sun—painful, impossible, and blinding.
Callum sighed but dropped the subject. “What is it you paint exactly, lass? When you paint the eyes and such?”
“I paint my moods.” Not untrue—she painted with her soul, but she’d not explain that to her brother. He would never understand.
“Your moods? So we have a room—”
“A gallery.”
“—filled with your moods?”
That he sounded somewhat horrified by the notion as if this was the exact sort of thing in a woman he wished to avoid, pleased Honoria.
“You are certainly colorful, lass, I’ll give you that.”
“We are all colorful, Callum, we merely express it differently.”
He motioned to her current creation. “What does that express?”
“My utter nothing of a life.”
“Och, come now, lass, it cannot be that bad.”
Honoria scoffed. “Then why don’t you slip your big beastly feet into my boots and find out?”
“I imagine that would be quite uncomfortable.”
“Aye, that is how I feel, constantly, with nine brothers shadowing my every move.”
“Not every move,” he denied.
Honoria whirled on him. “You suffocate Isla and me with your distrust.” She held up her hand when he would have replied. “And don’t tell me you don’t distrust us. We are not allowed to travel to Edinburgh with you, no matter how much you know we wish to go, we are not allowed to leave the grounds, and we are not allowed to choose our own suitors.”
“First of all, Honoria, we don’t trust theworldwith your care. It is not that we don’t trust you. And that man you call suitor is a traveler. A gypsy.”
“Stop calling him a gypsy, he’s a Rom.”
Callum sighed. “You and Isla have the damndest taste in men. If she is not pining after some servant or another, you are attaching yourself to a dangerous fellow, a wanderer, whether you call him a Rom or gypsy.”
“He saved my life.”
“He put your life in danger in the first place.”
Och! It was no use arguing the point with her brother or reminding him that she’d been the one who brought Lash into the castle—a convenient fact they refused to acknowledge.
“Why can’t you pick a more suitable man, lass?”
Lash was suitable—hewasgood enough for her. But Callum wouldn’t hear that, so she tried to reason another way.
“And how was I supposed to do that? Perhaps if you allowed us to accompany you into town, we would have met tedious gentlemen who you found entirely acceptable. But you all have refused time and time again. How am I supposed to live, Callum, if you don’t allow me to spread my wings? You are impossible!”
