"Yes." She quickly turned to leave and immediately felt the pressure of his hand on her arm.
"There is the matter of your part of the agreement," he reminded her.
Elyse slowly let out the breath she'd been holding. She'd hoped to escape before he had a chance to remind her. She slowly turned around.
"Very well, and then you will keep the rest of your agreement."
He almost burst out laughing. She looked like the condemned being led to the gallows instead of a beautiful young woman about to be kissed.
He slipped one arm around her waist and pulled her against him. He forced back a smile as he felt her body soften into his. She continued staring past him with that vaguely bored expression. He wanted to wipe that expression from her face, to replace it with something far different, something glimpsed in the midst of a thunderstorm.
He caressed her cheek, then his fingers stole into the softness of her hair, heat spreading everywhere he touched. He sensed the subtle change in her breathing, the struggle for control. With the greatest tenderness, he bent over her, following his fingers with his lips. It was like a game, a delicious, wonderful game. He wanted to prolong it so that when he finally kissed her, as he intended, it would be so much sweeter.
When he'd kissed every place except her soft, full mouth, he hesitated, then smiled. Her eyes were closed, her lips were parted expectantly, her breathing was fast and softly sweet. Without knowing why, his gaze went to the wall behind her, to the array of portraits. He chuckled to himself. And she'd thought they wouldn't be seen. His gaze narrowed on the nameplate—Lord Clayton Barrington.
From the stable master he knew him to be Jerrold's grandfather, the man who'd had the black stallion Domino bred especially for his son. Seated beside Clayton Barrington in a portrait of him as a youth was a young woman with an infant in her arms—Lady Barrington and her son, Alex.
His gaze went to the next picture. It showed a towheaded child of three or four years of age. Then the next, Lord Clayton Barrington again and the blond child, but with a different woman cradling an infant.
He stepped past Elyse, his silver gaze fastened on the family portraits—there were two sons. He'd heard nothing about another child.
Elyse recovered slowly. Her eyes slowly opening. She turned as he stepped past her and stared at St. James who had stepped in front of the paintings on the wall.
"Of all the... "She should have been relieved.
"Who are these people?" he demanded.
"I suppose they're all Barringtons, going back over the years," she coolly replied.
"I can see that." He moved along the wall, reading the nameplate under each painting. He stopped at the one that showed two young boys—one fair-haired, approximately four or five years old, and a dark-haired toddler.
"Alexander Nicholas Barrington and Charles Farragut Barrington. But his gaze fastened on the older boy with sun-bleached hair and soft gray eyes.
"Alexander Nicholas Barrington." Zach repeated the name. Somehow it wasn't right. He said it again, turning it over and over, unable to comprehend why it should seem familiar to him.
"There was an older child. What happened to him?" Zach asked.
"I was told that he died quite young—Nicky." She had no idea where that had come from. It was simply there, the name of a child.
She gasped as St. James seized her in a bruising grip. "What did you say?" Zach demanded. "His name? You said he was called Nicky as a child."
"I don't know... Perhaps something someone said that I remembered." She knew little about the Barrington family, except what her grandmother had told her about Felicia and, of course, Lord Charles.
"Tell me!" he demanded.
"I don't know!"
"Alexander Nicholas Barrington." Like a puzzle with thousands of pieces it slowly came together.
"Nicholas Barrington," he whispered.
"My God." Zach stared at the painting. "Is it possible?"
He turned and stalked from the room, leaving Elyse stunned and shaken. In that one brief instant, when he'd turned to her, there had been something in his gaze. It had seemed she was looking at another man... someone she knew!
It flashed across her mind like lightning, white-hot, blinding, there one instant, gone the next. She raced to the door, but he was gone. Staring into the empty hallway, she slowly opened her fingers. The pendant lay in her palm, still warm from his hand.
Who was he?
