Page 47 of The Hunter

He’d never before considered that they actually might have to… interact with her in the years to come.

“I’m going to give it to her on her birthday,” Jakub ventured, studying his work and pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his small nose.

“It’s a remarkable likeness of her.”

Swiveling his head on his thin neck to study him, the boy’s exaggerated eyes narrowed. “You’re saying that to be kind,” he accused.

“I say nothing to be kind,” Argent informed him stiffly. “If it was a dreadful painting, I’d advise you not to give it to your mother, as it would make a terrible gift.”

A tiny lip quirked upward and the boy motioned him forward. “The nose is off,” he challenged.

Another step brought him closer, and the floor didn’t fall out from beneath him. “I’m sure that can be fixed.”

Nodding, the boy bit his lip and turned back to the canvas. “Do you know what is the most difficult about painting her?”

“No,” Argent answered honestly, and reached for a strip of linen that looked clean enough, thrusting his suit coat up his arm and wrapping it around the knife gash to stem the bleeding while the boy’s notice was absorbed elsewhere. It wasn’t bad enough to need immediate attention. He’d have to stitch it later.

“Mama has dark eyes, like these I painted, but there’s a light… behind them.Insidethem. I can’t—I can’t get it just right. I don’t know how. I have a feeling the trick isn’t in the eyes, themselves, but in the shape around them. In the brow, and the cheek, and…” His little shoulders drooped and he speared him with another solemn glance. “You probably think I’m talking nonsense.”

Argent shook his head and finished the one-handed knot on his makeshift bandage. “No. I know exactly to which light you are referring. I’ve noted it on more than one occasion.”

With a tentative caution, the child peered over his shoulder. “Is that why you kissed her?”

“Partly.” Argent might not know much about children, but he knew better than to describe all of the other reasons he’d kissed the boy’s mother. And why he’d been in her vicinity to begin with.

Shyness gave way to sly temerity. “Are you going to kiss her again?”

“Yes.”

Straightening, Jakub lifted his chin and stuck out a rather concave chest. “Are you going to marry her first?”

Something heavy dropped from the top of Argent’s stomach into its depths. “What in God’s name would make you think that?” Women didn’t marry men like him. Ever.

Jakub wrinkled his button nose. “At school, Rodney Beaton said if a man kisses a woman on the mouth then he has to marry her or the woman is ruined.” Anxiety stole back into his expression as his spectacles made their unruly way back down his nose. “You’re not going to ruin Mama, are you?”

Argent couldn’t bring himself to answer that, couldn’t examine the question too closely, not while his blood still sang with violence and the picture of bespectacled innocence blinked up at him with unsettlingly familiar eyes.

Ruin had many different meanings, all depending upon the perspective of the deciding body. In some circles, standing in the same room with him would be enough to ruin a woman. Imagine if they were privy to what he planned to do to her once he got her alone. Among the whores he’d used, they didn’t seem to be particularly ruined by him. In fact, one or two had been in a snit when he’d opted not to employ them again.

Which made no sense, whatsoever.

But… ruin? After Millie had spent her obligatory night with him, would she consider herself ruined? The oily feeling returned and for the first time in decades, Argent wanted to squirm away from even himself.

Why should it matter?

Looking away, he muttered, “Rodney Beaton sounds like a first-class idiot.”

“That’s mostly what Mama said, but that’s because I asked if you were my father. Do you want to see my treasure?” he asked, brightening.

Argent choked on a swallow, and the chatty little being again assumed any sound that wasn’t a no was automatically an ascent.

Father?The notion would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sobering.

Retrieving the small box he’d been clutching during the tussle with Dorshaw, Jakub motioned for Argent to take a seat in a plush chair and pushed his spectacles back where they belonged.

Argent complied for lack of a better thing to do.

Jakub’s voice turned rapturous. “Look,” he breathed, unlatching the box and pulling it open.