Page 61 of Forgery, Love, and Other Lies
“It’s about the Rubens you have for sale.”
“Oh.” He’d quite forgotten about that little intrigue in the intervening hours. “Yes, um, I’m exhausted, actually.” And he couldn’t take advantage of the dowager’s son. “Come back this afternoon, and we can talk then.” By that time, he’d have a plan made up, a justification for why he couldn’t sell the nonexistent painting to the man.
“I’m busy this afternoon. I cannot come back.” He stepped closer, his arms folded behind his back.
“Then tomorrow. I am in no place to discuss business matters at the moment. I have had an eventful twenty-four hours and am in need of rest. You understand.” He yawned and nodded. “I bid you good day, and I look forward to our conversation. Later.” He turned.
The swift snap of footsteps on the ground behind him warned him, but his body and brain were too sluggish to do much about it. He turned in just enough time to see the baron raise a heavy-looking marble statue above his head and crash it down onto Zander’s temple.
Zander stumbled, and the man hit him again.
“Hell,” Zander hissed, clutching his skull. The ground rose up quickly to meet his falling body, and he had but one thought.Felled by a baron wielding a statue of a man, cock out for all the world to see. The statue, not the baron.
He couldn’t taste defeat like that. He struck out his leg with every bit of force in his body, despite the blinding pain in his head, despite the blood flooding his vision, and he heard theooffollowed by the thud of a body hitting the ground, a statue breaking.
Hoped that damned cock had broken off.
He dragged himself toward the door, but the world blanked around him, and before he could touch it, grasp its handle, darkness swallowed him whole, an oil painting gone up in flames, singed black around the edges first… then nothing.
* * *
When Zander woke, the world swayed around him, and his head felt like it had been bludgeoned with a heavy object.
Ah. Wait… memory flooded back. It had been. Well, at least he had a reasonable explanation for the pain, but what about the swaying?
He peeked open one eye and slammed it closed once more, lifting a hand to his head where his fingers met not soft hair but the crust of tangled blood.
“Hell,” he hissed.
“Not Hell, Lord Lysander. Kent. Nearing one of my estates.”
Zander pushed himself upright and forced himself awake, forced his eyes wide open. “Lord Balantine. Was this truly necessary? The Rubens could have waited.” He kept his tone light, though every muscle in him raged to fly across the coach and show this man the fury of his fists. In time. In time, he would break that man’s nose in at least five different places.
The man sat on the opposite side of the coach, and he leaned into the shadows, his long, lanky frame folding out from them at uncomfortable angles until he pulled his heels in and leaned forward into the dusty sunlight streaming into the space between them.
“I don’t want the Rubens,” Balantine said, “I want you.”
“I am sorry, old chap, but I’m not for sale. Can’t say I blame you, though.” He swept his hand the length of his body and gave the cocky grin that curled the ladies’ toes. “I’m exceptional.”
Balantine flushed but kept his forward leaning position without flinching. “I want your skill.”
“Skill? Don’t have any of those. Who told you I had skill? Liar, they are. Fed you a right bouncer. I’m a worthless fourth son.”
The corner of Balantine’s thin lips quivered upward. “You’re the most skilled forger I’ve ever seen.”
What in Hell?
Zander quirked a smile, gave a laugh, tried to puzzle it out. “I can’t paint my way out of a fully lit, unlocked house.”
“That made no sense.”
“See.” Zander held his palms up flat, empty. “I don’t even have a talent for verbal communication.”
“You can prattle all day, but it doesn’t make false what my mother told me when you left her home yesterday.”
Dread pooled low in Zander’s stomach and increased the pounding at his temples.No, no, no.
“‘There goes,’ dear Mama said, ‘that talented forger I told you about.’” Balantine sneered. “My mother is a useless stream of nonstop gibberish, but she is no liar. And you are caught. I’ll alert the authorities of your activities. Unless you help me.”
