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That was what her wolf sensed. This woman had slept with Charles. A
Taking another deep breath, A
His muscles softened against her forehead, and his lips came down to brush the top of her head. She opened her eyes and met the fae’s gaze.
“Mine,” she said firmly.
The fae gave her a slow smile. “I see that.” She looked at Charles. “You understand the impulse,” the fae told him. “I couldn’t resist testing her. I’ve heard so much about the puppy who caught the old dog in her trap.”
“Careful,” warned Charles. “That strays perilously close to a lie.”
The fae raised an eyebrow in offense.
“You don’t want me,” he told her. “Don’t be a dog in the manger.”
She turned up her nose and started painting again, all but turning her back to them. “Aesop. I’m trying for Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, and you bring up that dry old Greek.”
“I suppose if Dana is occupied, we can give her the Marrok’s gift tomorrow,” said Charles without making a move to leave.
The fae sighed. “You know what I like best about you-and hate the most-is that you never have known how to play properly. I am the jilted older woman whose onetime flirt has found a younger, prettier woman. You are supposed to be embarrassed that your new love knows about us.” She looked at A
A
Dana laughed. “You might just do, after all. I was afraid he’d found someone who would always give him his own way, and that would be dreadfully bad for him. Just look what being mated to that whiny fashion plate has done to his father.” The fae started to put out a hand, but then gave it a rueful look. “I would shake your hand, but I’d get paint all over you. I am known here as Dana Shea and you must be Charles’s mate, A
“I’m not the only one,” Dana continued, “who has been curious about the woman who managed to tame our old wolf. So be prepared for a lot of rudeness from the women”-her voice took on a serious warning note as she looked at Charles-“and flirting from the men.”
“You’ve heard something?” Charles asked her.
Dana shook her head. “No. But I know men, and I know wolves. None of them are dominant enough to face you directly-but they’ll see her as a weakness. When your father chose to stay home, he gave them an opportunity for challenge. You are not an Alpha-and they’ll resent having to listen to you.” She took up a turpentine-soaked rag and cleaned her hands. “Now I’ll quit lecturing you, and you can come around here and take a look at what I’ve done instead.”
THREE
BRAVE woman, thought A
A
The colors were wrong, brighter-but there was something familiar in the curve of the woman’s cheek and the shape of her shoulder.
“It looks like it was painted by one of the old Dutch masters,” A
“Vermeer,” Charles agreed. “But I’ve never seen this one.”
The fae sighed and moved to a table. She began cleaning her brushes with quick, almost fevered movements.
“No one has, not since it perished in a fire a couple of centuries ago. And no one ever will because that painting isn’t it.” She looked at A
And it was then A
Uncomfortable under that strange gaze, A
Dana made a sharp gesture with her hand. “You aren’t looking at it.”
True enough. A
Dana’s shoulders drooped and she turned to Charles. “No. You see? When he finished the original, he dragged a peasant in from the streets-and even that uneducated fool could see it. Vermeer’s students, the ones who were there the day the painter finished it, called it that, what the peasant told the Master: She Looks at Love. Vermeer himself titled it Woman with Yellow Flower or something prosaic, as he preferred.”
A
“I don’t know a lot about paintings,” A
Dana shook her head and gave A
“Dragons are like that,” Charles said obscurely.
Did he know a dragon? A
“Dragons can’t create either?”
He shrugged. “So my da says. Mostly he only says things he knows to be true.”
She smiled, and it was as if the sun came out. “To be like dragons is not such a bad thing. I’ve only seen the one-out exploring, he said, I think. We didn’t have much of a conversation, but he was… like the Vermeer. A work of art.”
He tilted his head. “Exactly.”
Dana tilted her head the same way and looked at Charles, really looked at him. “You are the killing arm of the Marrok. Rude. Dangerous.”
“True, enough,” Charles said.
A
“I was drawn to that in you,” Dana told him. “I would have said that I knew you quite well. But I never knew you could also be kind.” She put her hands on his shoulders and, with a grin at A