Then he was before her, threading his fingers through hers, leading her away from the doorway, back into the foyer, and down the darkened, secluded hallway. Not a word spoken. A man on a mission. To claim her, and she couldn’t help but wonder if their coupling would be as perfunctory as what she’d experienced in her marriage. Now that he had thoroughly seduced her, would he see no further need of making her mad with desire?

Up the stairs they went. When they reached the top, however, he pulled her in a direction they’d never before traveled.

“Where are we going?”

“I want to share something with you.”

She almost quipped that he could share it with her right then and there, against the wall, and she’d not find fault with him, but didn’t want their encounters to revolve only around the bedding. “The relaxation room?”

He chuckled low. “Not tonight.”

Another corridor, another set of stairs, then another, narrower with more creaks and moans. He opened a door. “Wait here.”

She stepped into the doorway while he went farther into the room with a solitary window, faint moonlight or streetlamps spilling in to reveal what appeared to be a rather cluttered attic. The hiss of a match strike, the flaring of a flame, the lighting of a lamp, and her suspicions were confirmed, but the clutter, dear God, the clutter was magnificent.

Cautiously she walked to an easel where the canvas revealed the profile of a woman—her but not her—her hair pinned up, her shoulders seemingly bared. Everything about the painting was muted, muted by sorrow, blurred so it was impossible to be certain he had used her as the model and yet it could be no one else. She was surprised no tears rained down the cheek. “The night we went to the cemetery.”

“Yes.”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, not certain she’d ever known him to look so tense, as though he were awaiting her judgment and feared her pronouncement would lead him to the gallows. “You did this?”

A single nod.

Her gaze circled the room. “All of these?”

“Yes.”

She wandered over to the wall where a dozen portraits hung and one, the one nearest to the door, snagged her attention. It revealed only eyes and a heart-shaped chin, again all muted. It could have represented anyone and while it was not revealed, she imaged a mask hiding what had not been painted.

Another portrayed a woman with the look of a warrior about her, holding a cue stick, the portrait beginning with the upper swells of her breasts. “I see you don’t bother with clothing.”

“I never had much luck with that. The lines of the human form come more naturally to me.”