By My Choice...: A Valentine's Day Story (Valentine's Day Stories) Read Online Free PDF Page B

rooms used for public functions in the normal course of days. This chamber was something more intimate, more relaxed and visibly more lived in. It was a place to work unobserved and undisturbed, a place to relax and, if not outright remove himself, distance himself from the official side of court life. The room also held the clear stamp of the man before her in every piece of furniture, every clean shape, every bold fabric. He was not a stranger to her, even if she would not have called him a friend either.  
    Though, entering, it was not the man who drew her attention, or at least not the reality of him. It was the painting. Larger than life it hung over the desk, the first impression any visitor would receive upon entering the room and the only part the occupant, seated behind the desk, rarely ever saw from his official position. The composition of the painting was typical for the time, it was the subjects that were arresting. A boy of around eleven, in the frills and lace of the early seventeenth century, his hand firmly wrapped around the pudgy fist of a toddler. The younger child might have modelled for cherubim in cathedrals everywhere, eyes forget-me-not blue, huge in their simple trust of the world, and golden locks to frame a fine-boned face. But it was the older who had captured her attention, the young face already showing the shadow of the man he would become. The dark locks were without powder, the green eyes screamed a challenge to the world, the unshakable confidence in his power to gain all, to win all, in every line, in every inch. It would have been arrogant without compare if not for the smile, warmth and humour, a promise of grace in victory. She could see him take the world and she could see the world loving it. She doubted even enemies would have been able to resist that smile.  
      The man moving towards her, rising from his position at the desk below the image, had the same dark hair, the same green eyes, the same smile. But whilst she fell in love with that child a little, the man she distrusted with all her heart. Few managed to grow to adulthood, definitely did not rise to the level of a Vampire Lord, without learning the ruthlessness that could leave the weaker broken under their feet. Jen did not intend to be one of those bodies on the ground.
    She bowed as etiquette dictated, and met his gaze with a raised eyebrow, a challenge of her own. It was impossible not to let her eyes flicker between painting and man, to search out the commonalities and the differences.  
    “A vanity.”
    He said it with a half-smile, self-depreciation in his tone, even a hint of embarrassment underlying the words. She expected him to lower his eyes bashfully, stroke his hand in an absentminded fashion over his head, just to make the farce complete. For it was nothing but a farce, absolute codswallop.  
    “Vanity would not be the word I would have chosen. How about love?” Her gaze flickered back to the painting, then returned to the man. “Who are they? Your brothers?”  
    Jen answered the challenge she was not sure he was aware he had set her. It might simply have been habit on his part, though it had been a test of a kind without doubt. An appreciative smile stretched the wide mouth, with lips just a shade less full than the child’s, a shade less bowed.  
    “My sons, now long dead.” She heard the wistful memory, the yearning and the acceptance in that sentence but he left her no space to react to it before he continued. “You have no idea how many people fail to look close enough.”
    She could have made a comment on the difference in the shape of the mouth, the ears — but she was honest enough to tell him what had alerted her long before she had looked at the image in more detail.
    “You are not that kind of man.”
    “Vain?” The amusement was now plain in his tone. It had a sharp edge. A more cautious personality type would have been careful not to cut herself on that edge.
    “Oh, no doubt you