Page 11 of The Courtship Trap
He did not move, lingering in the doorway with an uncomfortable expression on his handsome face, his square jaw tight with tension.
“Should Lady Wood join us?”
Harriet quelled a frown at the request for a chaperon, choosing instead to smile despite the thoughts crowding her mind.
“I thought perhaps you would prefer a measure of privacy. To put your question to me?”
Sebastian rolled his broad shoulders, the motion drawing Harriet’s gaze to his lean form, the powerful thighs encased in his buckskins.
Her fingers itched to reach out and touch him as she once had, to trace the changes the years had wrought upon his frame, to press her lips to his. But she remained still, her feigned smile as unmoving as she was.
“I am here to put a request to you.”
She waited for him to continue, alarmed by the clamoring of her foolish heart. All the signs indicated that this had nothing to do with their long-ago connection, yet she yearned for him to seize her, to declare himself.
“I sent you a painting some years ago.”
And just like that, all her hopes came crashing down, deafening her with their roar of I-told-you-sos. At last, she accepted the truth. This was not a second chance at the past. Nay, this was merely a momentary encounter before they each resumed the paths they traveled now.
“I hoped I might prevail upon you to return it to me.”
She drew a slow breath, staring at him.
The painting.
The one that had arrived after the death of her elderly husband, as if to taunt her with what might have been.
Gradually, though, it had become something else—a relic of her past, a meaningful solace when she had needed it most.
Just like Sebastian’s letter.
The one she kept folded in the journal beside her bed.
The one he had written when he had gifted her the unsigned Italian masterpiece.
The one she had read a thousand times in the dark of night.
But she refused to choke on the lump rising in her throat.
If she were a good person …
But she was not.
She was merely a work in progress, trying to become a good person while battling her baser instincts—the ever-present urge to protect her own selfish interests.
What he asked was too much, too high a price, even as she sought her road to redemption.
So she reached a decision—to lie.
It was what she knew.
There was no doubt her Mentor would take her to task for it. They would debate the morality of her actions until he argued her into a corner, but at this moment, she had no desire to reveal the truth. She would put off that quarrel for another day.
The painting was hers, she reasoned. Sebastian had gifted it to her. It was her last remaining connection to the girl she had once been, and the thought of giving it up was more than she could bear.
So she pasted on a brilliant smile, even as her stomach clenched with the bitter knowledge that any last hope of reconciliation was shattered beyond repair. If Sebastian sought the painting back?—
“That whimsical phantasy? I rid myself of it years ago, darling.”
