“You’re teasing me. I don’t find that very nice under the circumstances, but then why should that surprise me?”

He sighed. “I swear I’m not. You know him well enough. It’s Jonathan Hale who wants to get his hands on that painting so much that he’s hired me to find it. Now I’ve found it. It’s in your possession. I’m sure he’ll be contacting your father about it just as soon as I tell him.”

“Why would you tell him, when it will be a benefit to my father? You did realize that, didn’t you?”

“If you would stop being suspicious of my motives long enough to think about what I’ve told you today, you’d have an answer to that. Have you never done anything that you bitterly regret now?”

“Aside from meeting you?”

He blushed, but continued relentlessly, “Didn’t you tell me how you despised your father for moving you to London and regretted how you treated him for it?”

“You compare childish pouting to what you did to me?” she demanded incredulously.

“No, I am merely reminding you that none of us are perfect. We cannot always do as we aspire to; we too often act on emotions that shouldn’t be released. I wasn’t used to being controlled by emotions, Rissa. Good God, I was even under the foolish belief that I didn’t have any, since so many years had passed without anything provoking mine. Then I met you and I suddenly had too many emotions stirring all at once.”

The golden heat was entering his eyes again. She began to panic. She’d managed to remain unaffected by his closeness this long, or at least to give that impression, but she didn’t think she could withstand again being devoured by those seductive eyes of his.

“You’ve finished. Please go.”

“Rissa, I love you. If you’re never going to believe anything I say to you again, at least believe that.”

She left instead, ran up the stairs to hide behind a locked door where she could cry in peace. She wished he hadn’t come. She wished those last words of his weren’t going to haunt her, but she knew they would.

Chapter 26

Chapter 26

LARISSA DIDN’T GO DOWN TO DINNER THAT NIGHT. Her family was returning to London in the morning, which allowed her to use the excuse of packing to avoid a last night of socializing. A kindness on her part, that she not inflict her rotten mood on the Applebees.

How could she have been so unlucky, to have come downstairs today at the precise moment that Vincent was being led across the hall? And so foolish not to have taken the cowardly route as had been her first impulse, instead of giving him a chance to speak to her.