Page 48 of The Hunter
Argent frowned. “It’s—paint.” Lord, he hoped it was paint; the alternative would have made even him a bit squeamish.
“Not justanypaint,” the boy insisted, his features taking on the kind of reverence only seen in a religious icon. “This particular shade of crimson is produced from the plucked wings of the cochineal beetle in South America. It’s the truest red. The most beautiful and costly. I’ve only ever used it for the roses in Mama’s painting. At first, I felt sad for the beetles because their wings were taken from them, and they could no longer fly. But then, I thought, if I was a cochineal beetle and someone asked me to give them my wings for such a color, I’d do it. Gladly.”
Obviously the boy had never been locked up. Never been trapped behind walls of iron and stone looking at the sky and actively hating the birds that could come and go at will. “Were I granted the ability of flight, I wouldn’t give it up for anything in this world.”
For some reason, Argent didn’t have such a hard time meeting the dark blue gaze of the child in front of him, not even when the boy studied him in that stoic way of his.
“You think that way because you’re not an artist.”
“Fair enough.” But they often painted the walls with the exact same shade of red.
“But, I believe, we can think differently and still be friends, can we not?”
Argent shrugged. “I don’t see why not. My mind seems to work a great deal differently than almost all of my allies. Doesn’t stop us from attaining our goals.”
Jakub latched his treasure and put it away. “I like you, Mr. Argent,” he announced. “I like that you don’t lie to me because I’m not yet a man. You can go on kissing my mother if you want, so long as you don’t ruin her.”
Christopher stopped just short of informing the child that he didn’t require his permission. All traces of fear and tears had disappeared in their short but diverting conversation. Young Jakub was passionate about his art, and discussing it with someone had distracted him from his ordeal with Dorshaw. Argent didn’t want the distraught boy back, wouldn’t begin to know how to calm him down until his mother arrived. Tears were decidedly a woman’s purview.
Also, a memory two decades gone tugged at the inky darkness of his past, threatening to surface from the cold void where it was locked away. A boy’s fierce vigilance over his mother. An instinctual responsibility that fell on thin, young shoulders in the absence of a grown man to protect and shelter this pitiful family of two.
This acceptance. This… permission. It was rare, and it came from a place of respect not easily won and trust not freely given.
Argent nodded at the boy. “I—”
“Jakub!” The frantic call accompanied by the sound of running feet set both of them on alert.“Jakub.”
“Mama?” the boy called, sounding infinitely younger.
Millie exploded into the room in a flash of color and sobs. The boy was wrenched off his feet and pulled against a bosom heaving with panic and strain. “Jakub, my son, my boy,moja slodka pi?kna syn.” She simultaneously dissolved into hysterics and her native language.
Relieved of his need to be brave, the child clung to his mother with both arms and legs and released tears of fear into her neck. They stayed like that for a long moment, weeping. Clinging. Long enough for Inspector McTavish and a man just as heavily made up as Millie to file into the small room.
Argent had to take the entire moment to recover from the shock of seeing her again. Almost like he’d forgotten in the moments they’d spent apart just how dynamically beautiful she was up close. That beauty struck him like a physical blow.
The newcomer’s eyebrows, already drawn comically high and darker than his silver hair, crawled dangerously close to his receding hairline as he inspected the scene. His impeccable black evening suit and gloves as white as an angel’s hide were strained at every possible seam. “I say!” he boomed in a voice more suited to the stage. “Is the lad cut? There’s a spot of blood on the carpets.”
Argent hid his wounded arm behind his back.
With a sound of distress, Millie sank to her knees with her son, setting him down and running her hands over his hair and his face. “God, Jakub, are you bleeding? Did he hurt you?” She ripped open his tiny jacket and searched for injury.
Jakub made a grunt of protest and wriggled out of her grasping fingers, the stress of an all-male audience overriding his need for maternal care. “I’m all right, Mama.” He sniffed, composing himself. “He didn’t touch me… He was after you.”
“Myheavens,” the elder man exclaimed.
It took Argent a moment, but he recognized the man as the dramatic master of ceremonies from when he’d seen the play.
“I’m absolutely agog, how did you survive?”
Jakub pointed to where Argent held vigil by a mannequin laden with shawls. “Mr. Argent told the man to get the fuck out.”
McTavish covered his snort of laughter behind a fit of coughs.
“Jakub!” Millie gasped.
“What?”
Her multitude of ringlets caught the lantern light and gleamed as dark as the eyes that darted up to stare at Argent as though only just realizing he was in the room.
