It made her heart and knees tremble.
“I…um…”
“Don’t talk yet,” he said as he urged her along. “Wait until we’re inside.”
She nodded, her mind in a jumble. She had spent the day thinking about him as she painted. She had spent the climb from the water in an excited jumble as she imagined giving him her painting. And now, he had just protected her from a situation that had happened so fast she hadn’t even realized how terrifying it had been.
What did she do with a man like that? What did she say?
“Thank you,” wasn’t enough, but she said it anyway.
“I am furious that I allowed him to linger. I sent Mrs. Hocking to find you and keep you away.”
“I never saw her. I kept myself hidden.”
“Damned bastard. Only came here because he’d heard a rumor about me having Chinese eroticism. The minute he overheard talk in town about you, he was determined to find you. I’d already told him no, but he’s like a barnacle when he wants to stick. It’s my mistake for allowing him to wander around here, but I thought you were with Mrs. Hocking, and he would get bored looking.”
“He knows Prinny.” She started to look back, but he held her close enough that she couldn’t turn.
“I don’t give a damn who he knows. No man treats you like that. As long as I’m alive, you’re safe from bastards like that.”
Safe. The word settled into her bones in a way it hadn’t before. This tiger protected his own and somehow—without even becoming his wife—she had become one of his. As he protected his nephew, his sister-in-law, and all his brother’s tenants.
She felt her shoulders relax as her body melted closer to his. “This painting is wrong,” she said. “I need to make a new one.”
“What?”
“My painting. I drew you as a tiger protecting everything and everyone while your brother stole the respect that was rightfully due to you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your brother. Everyone adores him while you were the one saving the land, protecting his people, caring for what he should have valued. And so I drew you as the tiger, and Peder as the monkey stealing from you.”
He opened the castle door and led her inside, his words filling the great room even though he kept his voice low. “My brother never stole from me. He owns the land. I rent the castle. Peder never took a thing from me.”
Of course, he saw it that way. He loved his brother. But Li-Na knew what it was to do all the work and never be seen for who one was. That was, after all, the life of a servant. But it was also his life, and she honored him for the love he gave.
“As I said, I drew the painting wrong. No one steals from you. You have created a paradise here, and you allow people to live as they will, do as they will, so long as everyone is safe.” She turned to face him. “That is an entirely different painting.”
He shook his head. “You see me as a tiger?”
“You said I must show you what I think of you. So I painted my thoughts, and…” She shrugged. “Now I see they are wrong.”
He looked at her, his hand stroking across her cheek. “A tiger?”
With a monkey brother who stole all the glory. “I have always seen you as such.”
“May I have this painting?”
She hesitated. “It was always for you, but it is wrong.”
“Nevertheless.”
She held it out to him. She would just burn it anyway. The image was no longer correct in her mind. Or at least not right enough. “Please do not sell it.” She couldn’t bear her thoughts to be pointed at in the way Lerwick had.
“I won’t. I promise.”
“I can make you another one. A better—”