Highland Dragon (The Treasure of Paragon #6) - Genevieve Jack Page 0,11

a reflection of gold in the shape of a silhouette, as if a woman in a gold lamé dress had slipped from the hall a half second before she’d turned her head and the gold flash was all that was left in her wake.

“Laurel?” she whispered. Perhaps the oread was up here cleaning. Avery followed the light past the other bedrooms and down an adjacent hallway. This was a direction she didn’t normally go in the house. Mistwood was an absolutely massive manor. There were many areas she hadn’t yet explored, and she felt a tingle of curiosity as she padded down the empty hall.

An open door revealed a bedroom with furniture draped in white sheets. Hmm, this wing must not be used often. A red Persian carpet runner covered the length of the hall, which was bordered in dark wood wainscoting. Framed portraits hung between brass sconces that filled the space with a warm ochre glow. Curious, she approached the first portrait.

From his lofty advantage, a middle-aged man in a powdered wig stared down at her with pursed lips from over a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His mouth drew a cruel line, matched only by the coldness in his eyes. She had no idea who he was, but he looked like an asshole.

“Damn. Pull the bayonet out of your ass.” She moved on to the next portrait. This one was of a portly woman with feathers in her hair, pink cheeks, and a fan in her hands. Her Mona Lisa smile made Avery feel like she was keeping a secret. “Ooh la la. How did you know Nathaniel?” She giggled under her breath.

She had to pass another bedroom to reach the next portrait—this one clearly of Nathaniel, although his hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail and he was dressed in a neckcloth and tailcoat. She chuckled. Clarissa needed to see this tomorrow. And if she’d already seen it, Avery wanted to be there to needle her about it. So weird. It was much easier to forget about the age difference when her mate didn’t look like Paul Revere.

She sidestepped to the next picture. Everything stopped. Even her breath halted in her lungs. Cerulean eyes stared down at her from over a straight-edged nose and full lips in a perfectly symmetrical face with a strong chin. Long, auburn hair collected around his shoulders, the color somewhere between light brown and red. It contrasted sharply with the plaid that cut across the formal-looking coat he wore. Clearly he was Scottish. If the facial features weren’t a dead giveaway, the kilt was. The portrait cut off at the hip, but she could make out the top of the kilt, a sword belt and sporran.

“Who are you?” she asked the painting in breathless wonder. Her finger hovered over the canvas, and she tried to curb her desperate urge to touch. She could stare at that face all day. What was it about him she found so interesting? The mouth, she decided. The corner of his lips turned up impishly like he was up to no good, and the twinkle in his eye seemed to share the mouth’s general disdain for authority. It was at odds, that twinkle and quirk, with the formality of the uniform. This was a man who was true to himself. This was a man who made his own rules.

She would like to meet this man.

“You found Xavier.”

Avery leaped back and spun to find Nathaniel in the hall in a pair of black silk pajamas. She placed a hand on her pounding heart. “You scared me! I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No. I was having trouble sleeping. Again.”

“Again. Right.” They’d run into each other before in the middle of the night. It seemed they both suffered from insomnia. “I’ve never been in this part of the house.”

“I don’t normally room people down here. It’s such a long walk from the central part of the manor. Plus it sometimes gets cold in the winter months.”

She casually pointed at the painting. “Did you say this was Xavier? Your brother?”

He nodded slowly. “I commissioned it in 1745, the last time I saw him in person.”

She looked at him and then back at the painting. “I thought you all went your separate ways when you arrived here in 1698?”

“We did. But Xavier sought me out that year. He needed my help with something. Something only I could do.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It was. Xavier and I traveled together for almost a year before I