Sherwood Stow held his paintbrush with unconscious effort as he stared at Lady Nysa Dulgath. The woman stood ten feet away, one hand poised over her stomach and the other at her side, clasping a pair of riding gloves as if she were about to race off on a hunt. She stood divinely straight, chin high and level so the dangling pearl earrings hung in precise balance. Her hair was up, braided, coiled, and wreathed her head like a royal diadem. She wore an exquisite gold silk-brocade dress with billowing sleeves, and around her shoulders a grinning-faced fox stole curled, as if it, too, were delighted to be so near this magnificent woman. While the lady’s gaze was regal in its elevated, distant focus, Sherwood’s only regret was she wasn’t looking at him. She was, in fact, staring over his head at the chandelier that hung at the center of her private study.

The room was small by Castle Dulgath standards. Intimate was how Sherwood thought of it, like a dressing room or a parlor used for courting. Even more so since parlors came staffed with chaperones, and they were the only two present in the study.

“Why don’t you look at me?” Sherwood asked.

“Is that a requirement?” the lady replied, her eyes fixed on the chandelier. Her lips held fast to an indifferent near-smile, the obligatory face of state. Usually he appreciated subjects who could maintain a certain statuesque quality while he painted, but she took the request to an extreme. Nysa wasn’t posing for him; she was hiding.

“Let’s say it’s a request.”

“Request denied.” The words were as sweetly neutral as her lips, neither warm enough to suggest familiarity nor cold enough to imply displeasure.

I can’t even tell if she’s breathing.

Nysa was altogether too stiff. This, of course, was the image she wished to portray, but Sherwood Stow wasn’t interested in painting the soon-to-be Countess of Dulgath. He was after the woman. And while he never spoke the name publicly, in his mind he always thought of her as Nysa — never Lady Dulgath.

The Dulgath line was an edifice, a monument, a dust-covered dynasty of renown. Nysa was a woman in her early twenties — he didn’t know how early, difficult to tell because her body possessed a youthful vigor, but her eyes were ancient. A beautiful and mysterious being of light, but her movements exposed the charade. Too graceful. Sherwood had known many women — ladies, princesses, even queens — but none possessed a fraction of her poise and elegance. Nysa was a spiraling leaf caught by a breeze, and if she landed on the surface of a placid lake she’d leave no ripple.

“Mister Stow, isn’t it usually customary when painting to actually bring the brush to the canvas?” she said to the chandelier. “You’ve stood there for twenty minutes mixing paint and holding that bristled stick aloft, but never once have you employed it.”

“How can you tell while looking at the chandelier?”

“Seeing and looking are unrelated. You, of all people, should know that.”

Sherwood nodded and once more added walnut oil to the thickening umber. His old master, Yardley, was no doubt heaving in his grave. Yardley had always insisted on working with egg tempera, but Sherwood preferred oil. Not only did it enable him to give a translucent depth in his portraits, but its slow drying time granted him the luxury to do . . . well . . . everything.

“Yes, indeed, and since you know that as well, you understand the necessity for my delay and the importance of going slow.”

“Slow doesn’t properly define you, Mister Stow. A bead of honey in winter is slow. It pours, as if with great reluctance, but it does pour. You, Mister Stow, are not a drizzle of honey. You’re a rock.”

“Pity. I do so like honey. Perhaps you could reconsider your assessment?”

“A rock, I say. A vast block of granite, immobile and resolute in your refusal to budge.”

“Am I, now?”

“How else do you account for two months of daily, hour-long sessions? That’s sixty hours. I’ve heard good artists have been known to finish a portrait in a week’s time.”

“True. True.” He tapped his chin with a finger, leaving a bit of paint. “I suppose the only explanation is I’m not a good artist.”

Sherwood corked his bottle of oil and set it back on the easel’s tray along with the stained rags and vials of pigments, some of which were deceptively expensive. Beyond the Sea — or Ultramarine — was the most prized because the stone used to make the dark blue paint had to cross the ocean from the same fabled land whence came the incomparable Montemorcey wine. The paint was worth twenty times its weight in gold. Luckily, few non-artists knew this or his brethren would be routinely beaten and robbed.

“You admit it then?”

“Absolutely, I’m not a good artist.” He used the rag he’d made from his last decent shirt to wipe oil that had dripped from the stem of his brush to his hands. No matter how much care he employed, his hands were magnets for paint and oil. “I’m the best artist.”

She let out an uncharacteristic puff, which was almost a laugh, while one delicate brow rose in skeptical declaration. “You are an arrogant man.”

Finally, a reaction.

“No, I’m confident; there is a difference. Arrogance is an unjustified belief in oneself. Confidence is the simple understanding of one’s abilities. I do not boast about being a great lover — although I very well may be. On that particular subject, I simply am not in a position to accurately judge. I leave that determination to the women I entertain.”

This time both of her brows rose, creating the tiniest crease in her forehead.

“But we were discussing art, and when it comes to that, I am an expert. So you can trust me when I say there isn’t a greater artist than I, and the reason I say that is because there is no finer judge of artistic merit than myself.”

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“Mister Stow, I don’t believe I can trust you about art or anything else. How can I when you refuse to let me look at your work? You’ve denied everyone even a glimpse at your two-month masterpiece.”

“Truth isn’t created on schedules.”

“Truth? Is it truth you are painting? I thought it was me.”

“I am painting you — or at least trying to — but you are causing the delay by your refusal to cooperate.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You hide from me.”

“I —” Her eyes almost shifted. He saw the pupils quiver with the struggle. Biting her lower lip, she gathered herself, and the lock of her gaze redoubled. She lifted her chin, just a smidge, in defiance. “I’m right here.”

“No . . . you’re not. The Countess of Dulgath in all her refined nobility and grand regalia stands before me, but that’s not you — not who you really are. I want to see the person inside. The person you keep hidden from everyone for fear they’ll see —”

She looked at him. Not a glance, not a stare, but a fierce glare of fire. Only a flash, but he saw more in that instant than he’d seen in two months. Powerful. Violent. A tempest corked in a woman’s body and glazed over with the sadness of loss and regret. He’d seen her. The vision rocked him, so much so that Sherwood took a step back.

“We’re done here,” Lady Dulgath declared, breaking the pose and throwing off the fox. “And I see no reason to continue with this foolishness. I only agreed to this portrait because my father wanted the painting. He’s dead, so there’s no need.”

She pivoted on her left heel and strode toward the exit.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Sherwood called after her.

“No — you will not.”

“I’ll be here.”

“I won’t.” She slammed the oak door on her way out, leaving Sherwood alone in the study, listening to the echo of her fading footfalls.

He stared at the door, which had bounced with her thrust, rebounding and hanging agape so that he caught a glimpse of her gold dress as she retreated down the corridor.

Fascinating.

A heartbeat later Sherwood picked up his brush and rag, both of which he’d dropped without realizing, and started to paint. The brush flew with unconscious ease, moving from palette to canvas in a blinding fury. So intense was his concentration that he didn’t notice the young man enter the study until he heard him speak.

“Is there some kind of trouble?”

Sherwood recognized the blue satin doublet even before seeing the goatee and immediately pulled the drape over the front of the painting. He kept the cloth tacked to the top of the canvas’s frame for quick deployment. Covering works in progress to keep gnats, dust, and hair out of the paint wasn’t unusual, but now it served a more important purpose.

“Lord Fawkes. Sorry, I didn’t see you. What did you say?”

“I was asking if there was a problem,” Fawkes said, looking around the study with his trademark mix of bewildered innocence and sinister suspicion. “I heard a loud bang and saw the countess storm out. Is there some way I can be of assistance?”

“Not at all. This was a particularly good session, but it’s over. I’ll just gather my things. We made excellent progress today.”

Fawkes circled around the easel and frowned at the covered portrait. “I hope that isn’t one of the bed linens.”

“My nightshirt, actually, or what’s left of it.”

“What do you wear to bed?”

“Now? Nothing at all. Can’t afford it.”

“Thank Novron it’s nearly summer.” Lord Fawkes picked up Sherwood’s bottle of Ultramarine and tossed it from hand to hand. For him to choose to play with that particular bottle of pigment was too coincidental. Unlike the rest of his ilk, Lord Christopher Fawkes must have been familiar with the art trade. “Why are you still here, Sherwood?”

The artist pointed at the covered painting and smiled. Pointing was easy; the smile was more of a challenge as he watched Fawkes continue to toss the blue bottle.

The lord glanced over his shoulder with a dismissive sniff. “You painted my aunt Mobi’s picture last summer at her villa in Swanwick.”

“Yes, I remember. Beautiful place. Lady Swanwick was most gracious and generous.”

Fawkes nodded. “Yardley painted her portrait as well, two years before, and yet she insisted on one by you, his apprentice.”

“Actually, that happens quite often.”

Fawkes paused in his game of toss to hook a thumb at the covered painting. “Everyone gasped when you unveiled her portrait.”

“I get a lot of that, too.”

“Aunt Mobi sobbed when she saw what you’d done. Ten minutes passed before she could say anything at all. Uncle Karl was certain you’d offended her.”

Sherwood nodded. “The Earl of Swanwick called his guards.”

“I heard they took you by the wrists and started dragging you away when Aunt Mobi found her voice and stopped them. That’s me! she said. That’s how I really am — no one has ever seen me like that before.”

“I get that, too.”

“Did you sleep with her?” He tossed the bottle higher than he had before.

“Excuse me?”

“Is that how you impressed her so? How you got her to be so generous?”

“Did you see the painting?”

Fawkes chuckled. “No. I just heard the tale. Aunt Mobi keeps it locked in her bedchamber, where I’m certain she dreams of the young artist who captured her so exquisitely. I wonder why a woman married to an earl would be so impressed by a penniless artist.”

“Does this story have a point?”

Fawkes smirked. “My point is, that painting — which captured Aunt Mobi so perfectly that she may have betrayed her husband — took five days to create. So once more I ask, why are you still here, Sherwood?”

“Some portraits are more difficult than others.”

“And some women are harder to seduce.”

Sherwood snatched the bottle in mid-toss. “Pigments are not toys.”

“Neither is Lady Dulgath.” Fawkes stared at the bottle in Sherwood’s hand for a moment, then turned away. “I assumed you were merely freeloading off your patron’s goodwill. Possibly lingering because you had no other prospects. Now I believe I’ve been naïve.”

He looked again at the linen-draped painting as if it were a veiled face watching them. “Life as an itinerant artist must be taxing and perilous. I suspect that living in a castle with your own bed and studio is a significant improvement. But you’ve forgotten one thing. She’s noble; you’re not. There are laws against such things.”

“No, there aren’t.” Sherwood placed the bottle of blue pigment on the easel’s tray and stepped between it and Lord Fawkes.

Fawkes glared. “There ought to be.”

“If we are speaking of things that should be, you would have been born a dairy farmer in Kelsey instead of the cousin to King Vincent. Although that would have been a terrible injustice to cows, which I’m certain is what Maribor was thinking when he made you a landless lord.”

Sherwood was exceedingly pleased that Lord Fawkes no longer held his precious bottle of Beyond the Sea. The Maranon lord of no-place-in-particular sucked in a snarl. His shoulders rose like the fur on the back of a dog. Before he could open his mouth to cast some vile insult, Sherwood cut him off. “Why are you still here? The funeral was more than a month ago.”

This had the effect of pouring cold water on a flame. Fawkes blinked three times, then settled into a murderous glare. “In your single-minded efforts to enter Her Ladyship’s bed, it may have escaped your attention that someone is trying to kill her.”

“And what does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m staying to protect her.”

“Really?” Sherwood said with more sarcasm than he intended, but he was more than nettled with the lord. “Perhaps it has escaped your attention that she has a contingent of well-trained guards for that. Or is it your belief that the only thing standing between Lady Dulgath and death is the assassin’s fear of the king’s second cousin?”

This comment did nothing to alleviate Fawkes’s glare, but his gaze did shift to the easel again.

Sherwood knew what the lord was thinking and took another step forward. The painter had no grand illusion of beating Fawkes in a brawl. A law did exist making it illegal to strike a noble, even one disliked by the king. Sherwood’s advance was a bluff, but the artist tried to sell it as best he could by rising to his full height, which was an inch taller than Fawkes, and returning that venomous glare with a firm jaw and ready hands.

Bluff or not, Fawkes chose to merely spit on Sherwood’s shoe before walking out.

He, too, slammed the big door, but this time it stayed shut.