Seduction

"This is my gift to you."

The countess stood with her hands behind her back, watching Annan expectantly.

Annan picked up the Oil Painting with delight. It was probably best classified as a landscape.

The only two gifts he had received in this world were both paintings. Like memories, paintings held moments of beauty or pain.

"Thank you, Lady Maria. I love it."

"Then don't refuse me when I ask you for something later," the countess said with girlish mischief.

Annan soon received Lady Maria’s request. After leaving the flowers, grass, and river behind and returning to the Castle, he asked a maid to put the painting in the Carriage.

"Annan, I'd like you to play my husband..."

Annan looked up at the countess in surprise. "Lady Maria, isn't that a little disrespectful...?"

Count Morgan's ghost might still be drifting above the Castle.

The countess gave him a girlish pout. "What are you thinking? I mean I want you to pose with me as my husband for a portrait."

Amid Annan's emotional ups and downs, posing as Count Morgan for a portrait suddenly seemed acceptable.

"Would that be appropriate?"

"My husband would be glad to know someone was keeping me company after he left..."

"All right."

Annan still had something important to ask the countess, so he agreed. Surely the countess wouldn't be like Mentor Irelanze too.

Inside, the Castle still showed traces of its past. Chisel marks remained sharp on the stone walls, and the narrow windows looked like peepholes. Even by day, the Castle's corridors and rooms needed a Candle lit.

If war broke out again, Count Morgan's Manor would serve as a ready-made fortress.

As they walked down a quiet corridor carpeted in soft down, Annan admired the oil paintings and the maps and armor on display.