Page 37 of A Portrait of Love

“That is who I used to be.” He smiled grimly. “Back when I was young and innocent and foolishly optimistic. I wish for a portrait of who I am now.”

“You mean now that you are old, debauched, and bitterly pessimistic?”

He laughed. “Exactly.”

She opened her mouth, and then closed it. And then opened it again. “I understand your appearance is different,” she said hesitantly, flushing under his sardonic gaze. “But surely you are the same person?”

“Are you the same person as you were back then at what—fourteen? Fifteen?”

“I was fifteen,” she said, spurned that he did not remember.

“Are you the same as your fifteen-year-old self?”

Against her will, she gave the question some consideration. Was she? She almost laughed out loud. In one way she was: she was still infatuated with the man across from her. She flushed with shame and anger.

When she looked up it was to find him watching her, his expression intent. How long had she waited for him to look at her like that—as if he wanted to consume her? Or at least to consume what she was thinking, if not her person.

Honey shrugged. “In essentials I am the same. In experience, well, of course that is different. I am older, I have more experience in the world, I—”

“Have you been painting all this time? Did you ever go away to school?”

She should have been annoyed by his interruption, but she was too flattered by his interest. “I did not go to school.”

“Ah, yes, I recall you had a governess—a dragon of a woman who breathed fire at me.”

“That was Miss Keeble.”

“She accompanied us on our little jaunts.”

So, he did remember.

“So, the redoubtable Miss Keeble was your teacher, then?”

“For a while.” Honey hesitated, wondering how much of herself to share. “But she left—and so did the one after her. Our household was rather unconventional and most of them did not care for the schedule my father kept. By the time the third one left I was seventeen and spending more time on my painting.”

“So you never left home?”

Something about his question made her bristle. “For several years I worked at an Academy for Young Ladies.”

“You were a schoolteacher?” He eyebrows shot up, the left one almost as high as the right.

“What, don’t you believe I’m qualified to teach art?”

He gave a derisive snort. “Don’t be foolish—what a bloody waste of talent.”

She flushed at both his language, his dismissal of her life as a waste, and his backhanded compliment. “For your information, my lord, I enjoyed teaching. It gave me a chance to hone my methods but left me with ample time to take commissions.”

The sun disappeared behind a white fluffy cloud and he dropped down beside her, moving with the fluid grace she remembered from all those years ago.

Her body tingled on her right side and she inched to the left.

He picked up her bag and set it on the bench between them. “There, a barrier for your safety, darling.”

Honoria flushed at the endearment and his mocking tone. Of course she didn’t feel safe—nor was she his darling. She wouldn’t have felt safe with a two-foot-thick wall between them. Simon Fairchild was the most dangerous man she’d ever met. Not that she thought he would hurt her—at least not physically. But in every other way? Yes, absolutely.

He was like a narrow trail over a treacherous mountain pass or a night with no moon: dangerous.

Honey swallowed for the umpteenth time, the noise an audible gurgle deep in her throat. She could not help it; his proximity made her frightened, giddy, and anxious.