At last, he was getting somewhere. “The paintings? There was more than one of—”
“The residence.”
A disgruntled snort wanted release. He suppressed it.Patience. “Spare, sumptuous. Rich woods of cream, red, and brown. Somehow it was more than the sum of its parts.”
She nodded, slowly, as if confirming something to herself. “You mentioned a set of paintings?”
“Yes, the subject was very like your sketches.”
“Is it such an unusual subject?”
“Not at all. But what’s unusual about these paintings is that they were stolen a year later.”
Her shoulder gave a little shrug. “Art isn’t like English land. It can be bought, sold, traded, and transported,” she said, tossing the words he’d spoken in the Duke’s study back at him. “It can be stolen, too.”
“But you’re a lover of art. Doesn’t it bother you that someone would take it from its rightful owner?”
“Who truly owns art? Or has the right to?” she asked, her passion for the subject evident in her voice, her eyes, her entire demeanor. “What matters is that it’s appreciated and loved. Besides, it’s rare for art to stay in one set of hands for any length of time. Consider how many paintings from the Continent landed in England after the wars with Napoleon. It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Who knows where the Japanese paintings ended up. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Indeed,” she replied, unbothered, indifferent.
The point was this:shewas exactly who knew. But did sheknow?
His gut told himno, but he couldn’t pursue the matter further right now or she might sense that he was fishing for information. He slouched back against the front door and waited for her to make the next move, but she seemed incredibly interested in the gray veins twisting through the white marble floor at her feet.
The tip of her tongue began absently worrying her crooked tooth, and he caught himself gazing at her mouth, captivated. He had to get her talking if only so her distracting tongue would be otherwise engaged and he could stop leering at her like a perverse wretch. “In your opinion, what would be the best type of art for a room like this one?”
“In a perfect world?”
He nodded. She was giving him something, even if it was a crumb. He could live on crumbs from her table.
For now.
Eventually, he would have the whole cake.
“A work by a Flemish artist called Vanmour. His paintings of the Ottoman court caused a bit of a commotion a century ago.” Her lips curled into a secret smile. “Particularly his painting of the dervishes. And in a perfect world that painting would be right”—She looked up at the skylight and advanced to a specific point along the wall before tapping it with her forefinger—“here in the crook of the staircase.”
Encouraged by her sudden openness, he continued along this improvised path. “Your eye would see possibility in every wall of this house.”
“Not every wall needs to be filled. There is beauty in negative space, too, my lord,” she called out as she left the room, the click-clack of her boot heels echoing through the empty house. He liked the waymy lordsounded on her lips. It almost felt like an intimacy.
He followed her into what would be the front drawing room as she made her way toward its bow window. A sudden craving unfurled within him to see her spread her arms wide and take a spin, again offering a flash of slender ankles and a flash of her true self. There was apparently no end to his reactions, desires, and cravings around this woman.
A part of him—a part he would rather deny—longed to know more of her beneath the façade, more of her beyond the information she could provide him.
But it couldn’t be. He had a use for her. Just as she did for him, he reminded himself. In his experience, women didn’t take well to being used, and he couldn’t risk telling her the secret of Mina’s birth. He didn’t know enough about her relationship to the thief and the paintings. Mina deserved better than exposure to unknown risk.
“And this room, my lady?” he asked. “What pieces would you use to fill its walls?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder, a subtle smile playing about her lips. “I’d paint the walls crimson and hangLas Meninasby Velázquez. I’ve never seen it in person, but I’ve heard it’s quite magnificent.”
Graceful as a swallow in the sky, she turned in an efficient, swift swivel to face him, cheeks flushed and eyes brimming with excitement. Lady Olivia had thoroughly warmed to her subject, embodying the air of youth, bright and fresh. He couldn’t look away.
“It does seem strange, doesn’t it?”
“What’s that?” he asked, his voice a frayed rasp in his chest.
