Grace pursed her lips and looked away from him. “I refuse to argue about it with you.”
He held in a chuckle. “As you wish. Tell me why you aren’t ready to hire employees?”
“I … ah… I came here to be alone.”
As if anyone could truly be alone in the normally very noisy bayou.
“That surprises me. You’re a very intelligent and capable woman. Why would you want to isolate yourself?”
Her desire for solitude was understandable for someone buried in fear and rage. For himself, Luc had experienced entirely too much solitude in the past nine decades.
Yet, I don’t seek out companionship, not even with the other spirits who occupy the ether. More often, he’d tried to scare people away. Why hadn’t he tried to frighten Grace but kept returning to her?
As fearful as she was, scaring her off should be easy. He hadn’t tried and kept coming back because she was interesting, nothing more.
“I had a very active social life back in Boston,” she said, her tone flat and mechanical. “I ran my own business.”
“Unusual for a woman,” he remarked.
“True, I had a partner. A man I thought I loved enough to marry. We were engaged, then he betrayed me.”
Rage and sorrow crossed her face in a single blink.
“He was a fool.” The involuntary vehemence in his own voice made Luc pause.
He meant it.
Her lips lifted in a small grin. “That is kind of you to say, and it may be true. However, foolish or not, Eustace was a very skilled liar, cheat, and criminal.”
Liars, cheats, and criminals were no strangers to Luc. Depending on who was asked, he’d been all three at one time or another. He was also familiar with the devastation a woman suffered when she believed she was betrayed. That sort of betrayal was the primary reason for his curse.
“How did you discover this? If you loved him, you must have trusted him,” he said.
“I figured it out the day I was arrested for fraud. A fraud he committed.”
Luc blinked.Arrested?
He’d been arrested once, and for a crime another had committed. Even in memory, the helpless feeling of being trapped was hard toescape. “Were you guilty?” He shouldn’t have asked, and his gut shouted that he knew better, anyway.
Grace shook her head, scattering her auburn locks over her shoulders. “Of course not.”
“I beg pardon,” Luc said. “I mean no offense.”
She studied his face. “I’d spent years getting an education in archaeology. Then more years building a reputation as a superior and excellent appraiser of antiques. I earned the money to establish my business by giving appraisals. Honest appraisals. Sometimes, clients were not happy to learn their treasured antique was worthless, or worse a fake.”
“Yet you never lied? Never fudged the truth?” He cocked his head to one side.
Why was he so genuinely interested in this woman and what she had to say? She’d snared his curiosity like the vines that choked the live oaks.
“Not purposely. That’s how the fraud charges came about. My fiancé, my partner, brought in a number of questionable articles that a client wanted appraised for resale. I was to provide proof of provenance and value to both seller and buyer. The seller would have lost the sale had the purchaser seen my honest appraisal.”
“What happened?” Luc hung on her every word.
“The honorable Eustace Van Alder, the man I thought I loved,” The words were as quiet as the lap of water on the shore when the bayou was still.
So soft was her voice, Luc, with his hyper-hearing almost did not hear her.
“Eustace delivered the appraisals, but my facts and figures had been doctored. The changes made the items appear much more valuable than they really were.”
