Duchess of Sin by Laurel McKee Page B

losing them to war and rebellion.
    “Oh, Anna,” she whispered. Her beautiful, sweet, wild,vulnerable girl. She was safe now, but how long would that last?
    Katherine’s own mother told her that the hardest thing in life was letting one’s children fly free. Letting them make their
     own mistakes. But she had not said just how very many mistakes children could make!
    Katherine smoothed her blond curls, mercifully only lightly streaked with silver. She pinched her white, still-smooth cheeks
     to add a hint of color and straightened the fur-trimmed bodice of her blue gown.
    “I am not quite ready to give up and sit knitting by the fireside just yet,” she said resolutely. Widow’s caps could wait
     until Anna and Caroline were settled. And Caroline would never be settled without a bit of polish, including drawing skills.
     She spun around and marched toward the library, swinging open the door.
    The lamps in the large room had not yet been lit. Only the pink-gold setting sun lit the dark paneled walls and towering shelves
     of books and the brown velvet chairs and settees. Though the house actually belonged to Eliza, Katherine had hung her own
     husband’s portrait over the fireplace. Lord Killinan smiled down at her, happily ensconced forever with his beloved hunting
     dogs at his feet and Killinan Castle in the background.
    He
could not feel the chill in the air. The fire had died in the grate, and a tea tray sat cooling on one of the marble-topped
     tables. Katherine rubbed at her arms in the silk sleeves, glancing around for the drawing teacher.
    He was half-hidden in the shadows as he stood before one of the shelves, his head tilted to examine the volumes. He seemed
     quite unaware of her presence, which gave her a stunned moment to study him.
    Monsieur Nicolas Courtois was not exactly what she had expected. All Caroline’s other teachers were fussy older men in black
     coats and old-fashioned wigs. Katherine’s own art teacher when she was a girl had also been older, a temperamental Italian
     who had megrims over her paltry watercolor efforts.
    Monsieur Courtois had come very highly recommended. Her friends had raved over him, and their daughters had gone into raptures
     when his name was mentioned. Now she suspected his skills with charcoal pencils, paint, and canvas had little to do with that
     enthusiasm. Monsieur Courtois was, not to put too fine a point on it, sublimely handsome. A chalky beam of sunlight fell over
     him, turning his pale hair to shimmering gold. He was tall and elegantly lean in a stylish but not ostentatious dark green
     coat and ivory cravat. His profile looked like a classical cameo, perfect and pure.
    He reached out his hand and slowly, caressingly traced the spine of a book. A smudge of paint on his fingers was the only
     flaw in his handsome persona. He touched the leather cover with an intense concentration that made Katherine imagine how he
     might touch a woman’s skin.…
    She caught at the back of a chair, suddenly so dizzy she was sure she would fall. The man seemed like a dream, a vision, caught
     there in the light of that perfect moment. He was not a real man at all. He could not be, for no real man had ever made her
     feel like that. She was always impervious to such nonsense, even when she was a girl. She had never giggled over men like
     her friends.
    You are just overly tired,
she told herself sternly. Yet she could not look away from him.
    She clutched tighter to the chair, and as she swayed, herskirt rustled. He spun around at the sound, his shoulders tensing and his beautiful hands tightening into fists. No, he was
     not a dream. He was quite real, and facing her directly, he was even more handsome. His face could have been taken directly
     from a Hellenistic statue, its proportions and angles were so perfect, yet his skin was a light, sun-kissed gold.
    A statue brought to heated, glowing life.
Young
life, she saw with a pang. He had none of the lines and scars of