Chapter 33

"I believe Nina said so," he returned evenly.

"But you don’t?" She was staring up at the face of a breathtakingly beautiful creature who could have come straight out of a Titian painting.

"Your hair is darker, and your eyes are grey, not blue."

But the shape of her mouth, the small pointed chin, and the hourglass shape of her slender figure inside a gentian-blue gown that could only have been fashioned by the finest haute couture looked like Charley.

"How old is she here?" she asked with a reverent murmur.

"Forty-nine," he replied, dragging another gasp from Charley’s shocked lips because she looked barely eighteen. "My grandfather commissioned the painting as a gift for her fiftieth birthday." He claimed that her beauty was the only thing about her that kept them together. She claimed they stayed together because she allowed it, despite the countless affairs he enjoyed during their long marriage.

"She loved him, you mean."

"I like to think so, though I don’t believe he deserved such