He nodded. “Very good. I had intended for you to stay at the manor home, but as I said before, it’s under repair. You’ll need to work here. Do you have everything you need?”
“Yes.” Indeed, she had managed with a great deal less than what was provided in his cluttered office.
“Tell me or Mrs. Hocking if something comes up.”
She straightened then as she had been taught when she was a child. She stood still with her head bowed and hands clasped before her until she was dismissed.
He sighed as he stared at her. “I don’t beat people, Miss Lina. I’m a fair employer and an excellent art dealer. It is my hope that you come to believe in my good intentions and trust that I will do you no harm.”
She said nothing. She didn’t even look up. But in her mind’s eye she saw a fierce tiger watching her while in repose. He was not poised to strike, but only a fool would believe him harmless.
“I have seen your paintings, Miss Lina. I watched you create something bold and fierce. I can hardly reconcile that with what I see before me now. Will you please raise your head and look me in the eye?”
She did so because he commanded it. She lifted her chin, but kept her gaze lowered because to look a tiger in the eye was to challenge him.
“Meet my gaze, please. It makes it easier to see my sincerity.”
He was toying with her—cat to mouse—but she was not powerless. She looked up and met his eyes. What she discovered was that a tiger’s gaze was something more powerful than a normal man’s. Once she met Lord Daniel’s gaze, she stood utterly transfixed.
Her time in the Lyon’s Den had subjected her to all manner of men as they paid their debts or cashed in their chips. Privileged whiners who acted like spoiled dogs. Angry oxen who bullied but were dull witted. Sly monkeys who chittered and thieved. And occasionally, the bored dragons who gambled for sport and went away richer.
This was the first she’d locked eyes with a tiger. She expected to see darkness there and the absolute awareness that he could destroy her at his whim. Instead, she saw his green gold iris and a calm regard. Like a cat lazily stretched in a beam of sunlight. His demeanor was relaxed, and yet his power was undeniable. It was in his size and the muscles that adorned his body. But it was also in the flat awareness of himself as an apex predator. He did not need to preen. He did not beg. And he certainly did not need to bow to a woman. Indeed, he was forcing her to an awareness of her smallness before his greatness. He could order even the disposition of her eyes, and she could not naysay him.
“I am your employer, yes?” he asked.
She answered without thought. “Yes.”
“And if I ordered you to draw a painting for me?”
“I would make black dots on a piece of paper and hand it to you.”
He nodded as if he expected as much. “Black dots?” he said, humor curving his lips. “That is what you would paint for me?”
Like his eyes. Black dots surrounded by striations of grey and white. She would not use color. She could not compete with what nature had given him. But having been caught by them, that is what she would paint.
He sighed without sound. She knew it because his chest expanded as if with a deep breath, and then it deflated without once changing the pull of his eyes.
“Miss Lina—” he began, but she was angry at being trapped by his eyes. Angry that she had lost herself from something so smalls as a pair of eyes. So she spoke without thought, the correction blurting out like a mouse squeaking out defiance.
“Li-Na!”
“What?”
“Li-Na. My name is Li-Na. Two words” She narrowed her eyes. “You show ignorance every time you say it wrong.”
His brows arched. “Lina is not your surname?”
“It is not.”
“Then what is your proper name?”
She swallowed down a bitter retort. Instead, she spoke with brutal honesty though the words scraped her throat. “I have none.”
His head tilted in confusion. “I don’t understand. I thought everyone—even the Chinese—used surnames.”
“I might have had one as a child, but when I was given to the Zhong family, it was taken from me. I was simply Li-Na to them.”
“What do you mean, when you weregivento them?”