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She was anything but.
He could tell she felt his eyes upon her. Her cheeks washed with pink.
“You were your brother’s spy.” He propped his cane, sat on the settle, and gestured to the empty cushion. “Sit.”
She joined him, folding her hands on her lap. Capable-looking hands, the knuckles little divots at the bases of the sturdy fingers. Capable. Christ. They were more than capable. She had twice the talent of Turner, yet she’d been confined to imitation and aspired to a career in cakes.
A dark laugh loosed from his throat, and she tensed, as she had in the coach. She anticipated a violent outburst. He sobered at once.
To hear her talk, rough-spoken Jack Reeve was a hero. That implied she’d endured even worse treatment from Mr. Mucklow, or Mr. Nelson, or one or several of the additional father surrogates who’d lurked in her ellipsis.
She was looking at him now without blinking, a wary line between her brows.
“This situation has its ironies,” he said. “Kate Holroyd might initiate you into her Sisterhood. If you pledged to paint original work.”
“I pledge never to paint again.” She stared fixedly at the window. The sun had moved, and its beams had ceased to carry the colors of the panes into the room. “I hate painting, in fact.”
“Because your brother ruined it for you. That’s a crime in itself.” What compositions might she have created if the right mentors had nurtured her artistic vision?
He sighed. “I doubt you’d hate painting if you’d studied with the Sisterhood.”
“I could never have studied with them.” She didn’t shift her eyes. “I am a sister. I’ve been Jack’s sister since the day I was born. That alone would have barred me from the Academy Schools.”
“Your surnames obscure the relation. No one need ever have known.”
“I should have hidden who I am, then? From everyone, forever? I’d have substituted one kind of fakery for another.” Now she laughed, a harsh sound.
She pushed into the far corner of the settle and faced him. “I’m sorry for my lies. I do wish I hadn’t lied to you. Or really, I wish I hadn’t any cause to lie in the first place.” She sighed—or scoffed—the expulsion of air seemed both fretful and sardonic. “I could wish so many things. It’s a pointless exercise.”
“It doesn’t change the past, but that doesn’t make it pointless.” He shifted, knees slanting toward her. “Acts of imagination can help us change the future.”
“The future.” She echoed him in a hollow voice. He could guess what she imagined. The gray walls of Pentonville.
The pause stretched. She seemed to nerve herself for speech.
“I haven’t the right to ask you for anything,” she began.
“You haven’t the right,” he agreed, and gritted his teeth. She was a liar and a fraud. For Christ’s sake, she’d stood at his side and let him explain Berney’s techniques to her, let him describe her own bloody brushstrokes. She’d let him introduce her to that old Italian bloke, Botticelli. He’d never felt such a thoroughgoing fool.
Part of him wanted to rail. Part of him wanted to pull her into his arms. Their mouths had fit together like they’d been fashioned for each other.
Perhaps he was double the fool, but he couldn’t believe it was false, the emotion in her eyes after they kissed, his sense of their bond.
“Ask,” he said hoarsely. “Ask for what you want.”
She released her breath. “I’d be grateful if you permitted Fritz to stay here.”
“God above,” he muttered. The favor she begged wasn’t for herself but for her pestilential little monkey.
A bit of the bleakness left her face. “Mr. Kuznetsov will take care of him.”
“He won’t,” Alan responded before he could think. “Fritz stays with you. Nina.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I’m not turning you in to the police.”
Her gaze flicked to his, and her throat moved but no words came out.
“I’m going to see your brother arrested, him and him alone.”
Their gazes clung. Her eyes were widening, irises smokey dark.
