“So you don’t think you’re strong enough to stand up to him?”
Fergus had asked her the same question. “I’m not,” she admitted, and blew her nose.
To her chagrin, her father laughed. “Cara, you’ve established a reputation as an artist in a world that disdained you as an amateur and even worse, a woman. If you can do that, handling a mere laird should be easy.”
She sniffed. “He isn’t mere at all.”
“No, he’s not. Neither are you.”
“And what if we have children? What about my painting then?”
“You don’t want children?”
“Yes, I do. But can I be a mother and an artist?”
Papa’s smile was fond. “I believe you can be anything you want, Marina. So did your dear mother. If Fergus is willing to work with you, why can’t you have the things other women have, and still be an artist as so many other women can’t be?”
She began to tear at her handkerchief and spoke in a rush. “It’s more than that. It’s the practicalities. My life and work are in Florence. My patrons are in Florence, or traveling through it. And what happens to you? You don’t want to spend the rest of your life in Scotland. You and I have had such a partnership.”
He sighed and sent her a sheepish glance. “No, I don’t want to live in Scotland, although if I have grandchildren here, I’ll visit you often. This wet, gray country is too cold for my old bones. I want to go back to Italy.”
For an instant, she’d started to hope that perhaps she overestimated the barriers to a new life with Fergus. Her father’s answer, however expected, hurled her back into despair. “There you are, then.”
“There you are not, my girl,” he said. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, Marina, that I grow tired of this endless traveling. Bad roads. Bad food. Bad inns. Short-sighted coachmen who can’t see bridges in front of their noses. Breaking my leg is the last stick.”
“The last straw,” she said absently, as she regarded him in shock. “I’m so sorry, Papa. I thought you enjoyed the travel.”
He shrugged. “I did at first, but I’m a dozen years older than I was when we started out together, and the excitement has gone. I want to go back to Florence and find a nice comfortable widow to marry. Nobody will ever replace your mamma in my heart, but this is a lonely life, tesoro. I’d like the chance to stay in one place for a while.”
Marina stumbled to her feet, guilt joining the mix of unpleasant emotions already tormenting her. “I’ve been so selfish.”
He shrugged again. “You’re my daughter, and I love y
ou, but to the ignorant, even a great artist like you is a fragile woman first. You needed a man to chaperone you and protect your good name. You’ve won so many battles, cara, but that weight of propriety, you couldn’t vanquish. Now, if you marry Fergus…”
“You can go back to having a life of your own.”
His lips turned down. “Don’t you dare think of marrying him, if you’re only doing it so that I can give up all this moving around.”
She shook her head. “Not even for you, Papa. But I wish you’d said something earlier. We could have paid a companion to travel with me, some woman to lend me respectability.”
“Tcha,” he said again. “Some pudding-faced spinster? At least Ugolino Lucchetti added dash to your progress.”
She managed a shaky smile. “He did at that.”
“So you’ll marry Fergus?”
She went back to ripping at her damp handkerchief. “My work is back in Florence. I paint Italian scenes for the English gentlemen who visit the city on their grand tour. You know that’s my bread and butter, not exotic ducal commissions that come out of the blue.”
Her father’s smile was bemused. “If your paintings here are as good as you say, I’ll wager you can paint anything you want anywhere you like and people will buy it. And at this time, Scottish scenes please the popular taste. If you’re worried about your Florentine connections, I can continue to act as your agent there. If I know about anything after all these years, it’s selling art.”
“You make it all sound so easy,” she said, as she’d said to Fergus.
Her father shrugged. “If this is what you want, you can make it come to pass. You have to decide that, Marina. Nobody else.”
“I always imagined when I chose art, love wouldn’t be part of my future.”
“But now you’re in love.”