Page 67 of Her Beast

Why do you care? Do you think thatyoumight be able to offer her the same bargain and save her from a loveless marriage?a snide voice—not Sukey’s—mocked.

He didn’t think any such thing. He was just curious.

Insanely curious.

When he reached his office, he sat and stared at the second lever on the glossy black box on his desk, pondering what he was about to do: pry into her life just a little bit more.

What can it matter after everything else you’ve pried into?

He ignored the taunting and toggled the second lever.

The door to his study opened barely a minute later and Butkins hovered on the threshold. “You need me, sir?”

“Get me Joe Bacon. Tell him there is something I want him to look into—immediately.”

Chapter 14

In the days that followed, Malcolm joined Julia for dinner every day and breakfast most days.

And every evening they played cribbage, the occasional game of chess, and talked about everything from the recent police strike to the Springwell Pit disaster—where eight coal miners had fallen to their death—to the meteorite that had struck ground near Banbury.

Some nights they spent several hours talking, but—after that first breakfast—they never spoke about themselves or why Julia was there.

Julia couldn’t help feeling that neither of them wanted to disturb the fragile, and enjoyable, peace that grew between them as the first week passed in a blur.

For her part, Julia found him more fascinating with each hour that passed. She knew, instinctively, that personal questions would only make him close up tight, like an oyster that guarded its pearl.

But as he became less formal and more comfortable in her presence, he also dropped tantalizing tidbits of information about himself and his life. Indeed, by the seventh night they were conversing with the relaxed ease of friends.

You’re dreaming, Julia. A clever, driven man like Malcolm Barton doesn’t make friends with chits who are scarcely out of the schoolroom.

Then why is he spending all this time with me?

Boredom. Pity. A sense of obligation as he is the one who abducted you. Take your pick. Any or all those things or a dozen more reasons you can’t know.

Julia refused to allow the hectoring voice to dim her pleasure in what was becoming not just a tolerable stay, but a delightful one.

What kind of idiot revels in the company of her captor?

“My kind!” she snapped, and then hastily looked around to assure that nobody was near enough to hear her talking to herself.

Fortunately, she was alone, working on a painting from one of the sketches she’d made a few days earlier—a sketch she didn’t want anyone else to see.

Indeed, the whole reason she was painting in her sitting room—as opposed to her favorite location in the greenhouse—was because her subject was Malcolm Barton.

Although she’d made the sketch from memory rather than a proper sitting it was actually quite good.

In general Julia liked working with both charcoal and watercolors, but she found painting to be more challenging. And since she had ample time on her hands, she’d decided to tackle the portrait—her most ambitious work to date—with watercolors.

She set down her brush and studied today’s progress, well-pleased with what she saw. In the sketch Malcolm was seated almost in profile, his undamaged side to the viewer. It had been tricky, but she’d also managed to show a hint of his mask. Julia believed the duality was important to an accurate portrait of the man.

She met the pale blue gaze that looked out at her—the shade had been difficult to capture, but she’d done it!—and shivered at how much it looked like his. Yes, she wasverypleased with her work so far.

But it was time she put away her secret project because Kemp would be arriving soon to dress her for dinner.

Indeed, she’d barely turned the portrait toward the easel when there was a knock on her door.

She frowned; that was unusual, Kemp usually just entered.

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