“I’m fairly certain Mina could give you scientific answers to your questions.”
“I’m not talking about science. Can’t you see?”
“I’m not sure I can,” he admitted.
Her head canted to the side, and her brow crinkled. “What are you doing in my home?”
Was that wonder in her voice? Likely a figment of his imagination, conjured up by his own desires.
“I thought you weren’t in,” she continued.
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m out. I’m here.” What precisely were they talking about? He gestured toward the receiving table at his side. “I’ve brought a package”—Nota present—“for you . . . your house.”
“Oh?” She stepped toward the package, toward him by default. “What is it?”
As she neared him, his body anticipated a passing contact. He could move aside, out of her way, allow her a straighter line to her goal. But a self-defeating part of him wanted her to have to curve around him so he could breathe her in. Her shoulder passed scarcely an inch wide of him, and he inhaled.
There it was: her scent of lavender and sandalwood, yes, but alsoOlivia, womanly, enigmatic, a scent he could almost taste on his tongue. Except he also detected the distinct reek of London street. Again, the alarm sounded in his head, and it was all he could do to keep his hands at his sides and not reach for her. “Olivia, what has happened to you?”
“I was, um, out for a stroll and was caught in the rain,” she mumbled and avoided his gaze.
She was lying. It had been raining for a solid week, no end in sight. Ladies didn’tstrollin such weather, even ladies as unconventional as Olivia. He’d never seen the cool and collected Lady Olivia Montfort asuncollected as she appeared right now.
“Are you unwell?” he asked again.
Singularly focused on the package, she waved away his concern with a flick of her delicate wrist. She picked up the package and turned it over in her hands a few times. Light, reverent fingertips feathered across its plain surface as if she was savoring and prolonging the moment. His heart lifted on a doomed note of hope.
Her tongue began worrying the tip of her one crooked tooth, and lust, base and unworthy, shot through him. He was ever fluctuating between lust and love with this woman. Both must cease. He couldn’t have the one without the other. Not with Olivia. It didn’t work that way with her.
Her eyes caught his and brightened. “It feels almost insubstantial, it’s so light.”
“A mere trinket. It might fit somewhere in the house,” he said on a nervous rush, his words the green jumble of a young man. Her fever of restless energy had infected him, too.
“Oh?” Her fingers set about working the twine loose.
He needed to be gone from this place before she opened the package. “I shall be on my way. Good day.”
He offered a shallow bow in her direction and stepped toward the door, determined to leave this place, and Olivia, in the past. She didn’t want him in her present.
“Jake,” he heard behind him, “stay.”
He stopped, for her words, for the fervent hitch on which they hung suspended between them. But that didn’t mean he had to watch her like some lovesick wretch. His gaze fixed on the iron detailing of a rather ordinary wall sconce.
Behind him sounded a gasp, followed by another faint, “Oh!”
His body tensed. This was the moment. Like Lot’s damned wife, he couldn’t resist a single, last glance. If it turned him into a pillar of salt, so be it. He must see her face.
It was exactly as he’d envisioned: rapt and ravenous in its exploration of the small painting. Her head popped up and luminous eyes met his. “It’s exquisite.”
Those words and the joyous expression blossoming across her face drew him back into the room, back into her sphere. His resolve to leave her, broken. His mouth began moving, words spilling out of their own accord. “It isn’t the original. That wasn’t for sale.” According to the Dutch government, this Vanmour didn’t have a price, and he hadn’t enough time to find out if that was true.
A canny, speculative gleam entered her eye. “You didn’t just happen across a reproduction ofWhirling Dervishes in Mevlevihane Pera.”
“Kai knew of an artist who could reproduce it. I thought perhaps you might hang it—”
~ ~ ~
Olivia held up one silencing hand, even as the other clutched the painting tight to her chest, to her heart. It was the least insubstantial gift she’d ever received. She pointed to a specific patch of wall, the same patch she’d mentioned weeks ago. “Right there.”
