“I was able to find his townhouse on the astral plane just before dawn,” said Zhang. “Lord Fine destroyed your cousin’s painting.”
“Destroyed?”Sebastian repeated.
“Turpentine.” Zhang sighed. “We think he figured out it was from you.”
“Oh no.” Sebastian winced. “Poor Barcelona.” He’d loved that painting, his second favorite of Isabel’s.
“Still want to help him?” Zhang said ruefully.
Sebastian sighed. What a needless loss of Isabel’s beautiful art, but was it really a surprise Lord Fine had destroyed the painting? Lord Fine had been yet one more victim of Sebastian’s history and had every reason to think of Sebastian as dangerous. “We can’t leave Lord Fine unprotected. Blanshard could still connect Fine to everything that happened in New York. And a maid for an English aristocrat was murdered—you said her employer, Lord Thornton, is in Kensington, where Lord Fine also lives. Too many innocents have already died.”
Jade frowned. “I tried to call Lord Fine this morning, but he wasn’t available.”
“Lord Fine is safe right now and hasn’t left his house, at least,” said Zhang. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the him through the astral plane.”
“I suppose I’ll call again later.” Jade sighed. “And here your cousin has left, and all her paintings have been returned to Spain.”
Sebastian bit his lip, then said, “Not all of them.” He ignored the near-painful tightening of his own throat as he gestured under the bed. “I kept the one of San Juan.”
Because it pulls me out of the blood terrors. Because it’s the only thing that helps.
He swallowed. “I have the protection of my tattoo,” he said, striving to keep his voice casual. “We can give the last painting to Lord Fine.”
Zhang started to crane his neck, but Sebastian quickly said, “I can look because I have Isa’s art in my magic, but no other paranormals should look at it. It will take you awhile to come back to your senses. It would have kept you from ever finding me, if you didn’t already know where I lived.”
The wall above his table was so unsettlingly bare without the painting, as blank as his walls had been when he was a prisoner with Baron Zeppler. No brilliant colors and happy memories to trigger the blood terrors into remembering he was free. Sebastian forced an easy tone of voice. “The painting will help protect Lord Fine. Maybe he will tolerate the Caribbean more than the Mediterranean.”
“That’s kind of you,” Jade said, her gaze searching his face as if she sensed he was hiding something. “After all, he could have listened to me last night and not done something so barbaric as destroy art.”
Sebastian shrugged lightly. If Lord Fine destroyed the painting of San Juan too—permanently leaving Sebastian no way out of his blood terrors—
Well, he had no one to blame but himself, and the villainous past that had nearly ensnared Lord Fine. The blood terrors couldn’t kill Sebastian; he would survive.
“Lord Fine could be in danger,” he said, as if his throat wasn’t tight. “He needs the painting more.”
Chapter Five
Wesley didn’t rise from bed again until 10am, when he put his dressing gown over his pajamas and went back to the morning room. No one had made a fire in the grate, and the room was unpleasantly chilled.
Ned was late bringing in breakfast. When the table was finally set, Wesley picked up his china cup, sipped, then set it straight back down. “The tea is cold.”
“Is it, my lord?” Ned said, not looking at him.
“Yes it is,” Wesley said, with an edge. “The tea is cold and the toast is burnt and the fire unbanked and I don’t have my newspaper.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, my lord. Perhaps we’re all a bit distracted on account of little Elsie being so upset.”
Wesley was not actually tolerating this sass from his footman, was he? “It was just a painting,” he said sharply. “Nothing but oil and pigment on canvas. So what if it’s gone? Why would my house rally around Miss Elsie’s oversentimentality?”
Ned raised his chin. “She’s still crying, my lord.”
Oh hell. He’d made his cook’s eleven-year-old daughter cry.Well done, Wesley.
“I’ll buy a new painting for the basement,” he said, instead of firing the man, which he should have done on the spot.
Ned finally glanced at him out of the side of his eyes. “Will it be of Barcelona, sir?”
“I’ll buy ten paintings of anywhere you lot bloody want if you’ll take this inedible tripe away and bring me a proper cup of tea.”
