“Nothing that early, but before Mrs. Hocking arrives.”
“Yes, my lord.”
He winced. How he hated it when she acted like his servant. When she referred to him as “my lord,” and he saw nothing of her but the top of her bowed head. He could have had her this night. He could be right now in her bed enjoying the sweetness of her body. But he had never been a man who could accept anything less than the full expression of the heart. And in this, she was still hidden away as surely as she had been inside a cage in the Lyon’s Den.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Li-Na had knownit was a risk. No woman without money or title asked a man to marry her. Most women she knew would beg to be Daniel’s mistress. But Mrs. Dove-Lyon was a tireless advocate of women owning their own worth. And in England, that meant she should become a man’s wife, especially if that man had a title and funds.
So she had taken the risk. It would be a big risk for her to give up the life she had in London for the uncertain one she’d have in Cornwall, but she judged him worth the peril.
She’d never imagined that he’d ask for love. Not just the feigning of love in flattery or gifts of her body. Mrs. Hocking had told her tales of the local women who had cozied up to Daniel and offered him every sort of flattery, only to be set firmly aside. No, this man needed a woman to give him something he valued, something she shuddered to admit she was afraid to do.
This man wanted art.
But her paintings were the one thing she held as truly her own. No one touched them but herself. They were her heart, her soul, her deepest feelings pressed onto canvas and destroyed so that no one else could know her. In this way, she protected herself.
If she painted her squiggles, then she could remain impassive before everyone else.
If she sketched a goddess in the sand an hour before it was erased, then no one would know how often she thought of stepping into the sky and never returning.
If she drew the eyes of a tiger as he stalked her, then no one would know that she dreamed of being caught by him.
But now he’d told her his price. He would not marry her unless she saw the truth of him. And so she would have to paint it. Her thoughts given to him. Not destroyed, not hidden, but on paper for all the world to see.
The idea left her feeling exposed in the most hideous way, worse than if she were paraded naked down a London street. After all, every man alive had seen a naked woman. She was no more and no less than another body amid an entire city of bodies. But her thoughts in paint—those were uniquely her own.
And yet, that was his price. So she would do it.
The next morning, she rose early. She had spent the night listening to his steady snores and thinking of what she would paint for him. What she would paintof him.Then while he was still sleeping, she tiptoed past him and headed out to the small strip of sand where she would work. Tucked back against the edge of the beach, she would be hidden from eyes above. And even better, anyone who saw her would assume she was painting the ocean when instead, she was working on something much larger than that.
She was painting a life. His life, to be exact, and it would likely take her all day.
She returned wellafter dark, her stomach rumbling from hunger. Or maybe it was twisting in anxiety. Never before—not since she was a teenage girl desperately in love with the wrong man—had she given one of her paintings to anyone. Not even Mrs. Dove-Lyon who rescued her from slavery.
Until today. Or rather tonight when she would present it to Daniel.
She climbed the long path, her shoulders aching, only to be met at the top by an unfamiliar voice.
“Is that her? Has Venus arisen from the ocean?”
Li-Na shrank back into herself, but it was too late. The unknown man was striding forward, his expression set in a wide grin. He was a large man with piglike eyes on a broad face. She judged him to be a boar—a feral pig with tusks that could easily kill when mad—and he had set his sights on her.
Standing to the side was Daniel, her tiger with a carefully blanked expression, whose body nevertheless seemed to quiver with carefully controlled energy. He was ready to leap, but was as yet holding himself back.
Obviously, this was the man Daniel had wanted her to avoid. How stupid of her to come up the path, naively thinking that dark would be late enough to avoid this man. And he was still advancing on her, his arms outstretched as if he had the right to hug her.
“What a gorgeous lady,” he bellowed. “Bringing gifts, I see. Don’t be shy. Let me see what you have done!”
“Step back, Lerwick,” Daniel growled. “She’s not to be manhandled by you.”
“I see now why you kept quiet about her. Gorgeous and talented, no doubt. They call her the foreign witch.” He waggled his brows. “I swear I am bewitched.”
Daniel stepped forward, placing himself between her and the piggish Lerwick. “Miss Li-Na, may I introduce you to Lord Lerwick? He heard about you from the townspeople and has been waiting all day to meet you.”
Ah. So that explained why he was still here when Daniel obviously had not wanted them to meet. Li-Na dropped into a curtsey though it was awkward given the supplies she carried. “A pleasure to meet you, Lord Lerwick.” She kept her voice smooth, her attitude remote. “If you will excuse me, I have work to do. I am afraid I lost track of time and am behind schedule.”
She meant to duck around behind Daniel to escape into the castle, but Lerwick moved more quickly than she anticipated. The moment she turned, he grabbed her arm. Indeed, he hooked his hand like a tusk to catch her.