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Not that they’d remained with the family for long. Over the next few months Sebastian had been forced to sell everything that wasn’t nailed down. The only thing he’d kept was for Maria—their mother’s necklace, which she never took off. He’d kept nothing for himself. In part because there’d been only one thing he’d wanted from his childhood and, nearly twenty years later, he’d finally got it.
‘It was hardest on Maria,’ he finally said, his voice gravelly as if roughened by tension. ‘She was only eight when it happened. Having to leave her friends, her school...it was difficult.’
Sia felt an empathy with his sister. She herself had been seven when her entire life had changed. But she couldn’t help wondering...
‘And what about you?’ she asked.
‘Is that your question for today?’
‘No,’ she replied, oddly frustrated with the constraints on their conversation.
She felt his eyes on hers for a moment before he turned to take a sip from his glass—a red, she noted, while she had white wine. She watched as his throat undulated as he swallowed a mouthful of the rich alcohol, strangely hypnotised by the movement. She’d known that, until Benjamin had arrived with Sebastian’s invitation, she’d been hiding. Even now she felt a blush threaten to rise on her cheeks at the memory of Sebastian in his room, at his presence even now.
The evening’s gentle breeze soothed her heated skin and she looked out across a skyline of London she’d never seen in person before. Above the table was a crisscross lattice with clematis winding through it. Large old-fashioned light bulbs gave off a gentle glow and the large terracotta pots of shrubs and sweet herbs worked to make her forget that she was in the heart of one of the world’s busiest cities.
‘Why Henri?’ he asked, pulling her back to the present.
Sia thought about not answering, just like he had, but she needed him on side for when she did ask her question.
‘Henri is short for Henrietta—my middle name. My father used to call me Henri when I
lived with them.’
‘What happened for you not to be living with your parents?’ he asked, the light of curiosity shining bright in the blue depths of his eyes.
‘You mean you didn’t have someone behind the scenes run up a file on me?’
He shrugged. ‘Where’s the fun in that? We have fourteen days in which you are determined to thoroughly investigate me. Perhaps I could do the same.’
Something she chose to ignore arced between them—a kind of energy, or electricity even—but it faded into the background as the realisation that he might not know who she was began to dawn on her.
‘You really don’t know?’ she asked out loud. The narrowing of his eyes was the only response he gave, clearly not enjoying being in the dark. ‘My father was John Keating.’
The narrowed eyes turned into a deep frown and Sia began to suspect that when Sebastian was quiet he was at his most dangerous.
‘As in...’
‘The most famous art forger in Europe? The man whose estimated profits were beyond ten million pounds? The man who was shopped to the police by his wife? That John Keating. Yes,’ she replied, nodding. ‘You see, I’m quite used to being in the company of infamy.’
As she said the words intended to bruise his ego a double-edged sword opened up a wound she’d thought had healed a while ago. Despite that, she pushed on. ‘After my father’s quite public arrest and the shocking scandal of my mother’s betrayal, my Aunt Eleanor took me in. She is the opposite of her sister, Michaela. Conservative, steady job, never married—though I think taking care of me managed to scare away the few suitors who might have managed to get past her strong inclination towards disdain. But she took me in when she had very little money and no real obligation,’ Sia concluded, still firm in the belief that she owed her aunt a great debt.
‘She was your family, of course there was obligation,’ Sebastian said, as if such a thing was as true to him as the sky was blue. But, for Sia, she wasn’t so sure, because if it were true then her relationship with her mother might have been different.
‘She put me in a good school and she gave me the boundaries that had been missing from my life with John and Michaela.’
‘Where is your mother now?’
‘Probably passed out in the bed of a married man.’
From the uncharacteristic look of shock on Sebastian’s face, she could tell that her response had surprised him. But Sia had spent years compartmentalising her feelings about both her mother and her father, and it had been years since she’d actually seen her mother in person.
‘Of all the careers you could have gone into, why art evaluation?’
‘It’s in my blood,’ she answered immediately, as if there had never been any other option.
As Sebastian began to draw the information she had revealed together, painting his own picture of what it must have been like to try and pursue a career in a world where her name was not only infamous but linked to a man who had made it his life’s work to deceive people like her future bosses... Not only was he incredibly impressed, he was also angry.
Angry because it wasn’t supposed to have been Sia who had valued the painting. No, it should have been Sean Johnson, a man who had done enough to deserve whatever punishment Bonnaire’s would lay upon Sia. Sebastian couldn’t help but rub his jaw. Once again, the acrid taste of guilt on his tongue blotted out the heavy Bordeaux. He’d really messed things up for Sia Keating and presently he couldn’t quite see a way for him to make it up to her without losing everything that he’d worked towards.
