The Golden Leopard Read Online Free PDF Page A

with the polite, disinterested smile she reserved for clients who were unlikely to buy anything. “So it was you I glimpsed in the exhibition room. I had imagined so, but what with the crush, I could not be sure of it. You were certainly the last person I was expecting to see.”
    “Glimpsed?” He chuckled. “Confess it, princess. You stared as if I’d begun to sprout two horns and a tail.”
    “Did I? How rude of me.” She moved a few steps closer so that he would not imagine she feared to approach him. “My mind must have been elsewhere at the time, but I do apologize for not making you welcome. It is always delightful to come upon a former acquaintance, especially in the summer. London is so thin of company this time of year. Remind me, will you? How long has it been since last we met?”
    “Precisely six years, two months, eighteen days, twenty-three hours and—” he drew out his pocket watch and flicked it open—“seven minutes.”
    “Rubbish!” She had a misbegotten urge to laugh. “You are making that up.”
    “Probably. It felt much longer than that. But I do remember most explicitly the time we spent together. I remember, in splendid detail, what we did together.”
    “Then your memory is far more vivid than mine, sir.” She was pleased to have said that with commendable nonchalance, given the mental images he had conjured with a few simple words.
    What we did.
    “Cat got your tongue, princess? Or have you decided to pretend that we were never lovers?”
    Ice gathered at her spine. A blessing. It held her erect and kept her cold. “Lovers? Well, I suppose so, although I have always thought that to be a ridiculous euphemism. But I have never been one to refine upon the past, and I certainly do not mean to revisit it. Were you hoping otherwise?”
    He lifted his hands in a gesture of mock protest. “Not I. Hope is for those who will not seize what they want. Should I still desire you, Jessie, I would do whatever it required to have you.”
    “Short of force, I trust?”
    For the first time, one of her arrows struck home. His eyes narrowed, and his arms dropped to his sides. “That would be out of the question. As you very well know.”
    “Yes.” What she most hated about Duran was the ease with which he could wring honesty from her. “I’m sorry. It was a mean-spirited thing to say.”
    “Indeed. But you have every right to wish me to the devil. I expect you are doing so at this very moment.” He cast her a benevolent smile. “It may console you to learn that your wish will be granted within a year. As a matter of fact, I could peg out at any time.”
    Had he picked up some deadly sickness in India? The very thought of it sent her heart plummeting. He might be a vast nuisance at close range, but a world without Duran somewhere in it would be oddly colorless.
    He looked healthy enough. If anything, he was more tautly muscled than the man who used to sweep her up in his arms. But she sensed a different sort of strength in him now, as if he’d been tempered on an anvil.
    “If you are ill,” she said with studied calm, “I am sorry to hear it. Is that why you have returned to England?”
    “You are concerned for my health? How very kind. But I’m perfectly well, save that my life is no longer my own.” He made a sharp gesture as if dismissing the subject and slouched back against the door. “For the time being, my intentions are entirely honorable. The only proposition I have for you at the moment concerns a matter of business.”
    Business? Unaccountably insulted, she twisted the strings of her reticule between her fingers. “I already have more clients than I can possibly manage. But I’m sure that if you explain your requirements to Mr. Christie, he will refer you to someone who can be of assistance.”
    “I have, and he did. That’s why I followed you upstairs. Christie has informed me that you are acquainted with every important collector of antiquities in England. By his