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“Lady Slight.”

He bowed politely, and Harriet fought the urge to screech in frustration at the formal address. Were they to behave as polite strangers, then?

Clearly, she had been correct not to get her hopes up.

“Please, come in. Have a seat,” she finally offered, moistening her dry lips as she gestured toward a matching armchair.

He did not move, lingering in the doorway with an uncomfortable expression on his handsome face, his square jaw tight with tension.

“Should Lady Wood join us?”

Harriet suppressed a frown at the request for a chaperone, choosing instead to smile despite the thoughts crowding her mind.

“I thought perhaps you would prefer some privacy. To put your question to me?”

Sebastian rolled his broad shoulders, the motion prompting Harriet’s gaze to travel over his lean, commanding figure, the same tall frame she had once known so well, now rendered still more formidable by the passage of years and the Tuscan sun.

Her chest tightened at the sight of him, an old and deeply buried tenderness stirring like the first breath of spring through a long-shuttered room. She pressed it firmly down, holding herself still, her feigned smile as composed as she could manage.

“I am here to put a request to you.”

She waited for him to continue, alarmed by the clamoring of her foolish heart. All the signs indicated that this had nothing to do with their long-ago connection, yet she longed for him to speak plainly, to declare himself as he once had with such fervent certainty.

“I sent you a painting some years ago.”

And just like that, all her hopes came crashing down, deafening her with their roar of I-told-you-sos. At last, she accepted the truth. This was not a second chance at the past. Nay, this was merely a momentary encounter before they each resumed the paths they traveled now.

“I hoped I might prevail upon you to return it to me.”

She drew a slow breath, staring at him.

The painting.

The one that had arrived after the death of her elderly husband, as if to taunt her with what might have been.

Gradually, though, it had become something else. A relic of her past, and a meaningful solace when she had needed it most.

Just like Sebastian’s letter.

The one she kept folded in the journal beside her bed.

The one he had written when he had gifted her the unsigned Italian masterpiece.

The one she had read a thousand times in the dark of night.

But she refused to choke on the lump rising in her throat.

If she were a good person …

But she was not.

She was merely a work in progress, trying to become a good person while battling her baser instincts, the ever-present urge to protect her own selfish interests.

What he asked was too much, too high a price, even as she sought her road to redemption.

So she reached a decision … to lie.

It was what she knew.