But something about him had certainly changed. It wasn't something Sister Clarence could quite put her finger on-and her inability to identify the difference troubled her. She found herself dreading his arrival in her classroom, and upbraided herself for it, but despite her efforts to exorcise the demon of anger, it still resided within her. In fact, it was growing stronger every day, and as she saw the effect that Jared was starting to have on Luke Roberts, the demon's strength increased. Now, as her class fell silent waiting to see how she would deal with Jared Conway, she struggled with the demon.

She wished to be fair.

She wished to be just.

He knows what I'm thinking. He knows, and even though it doesn't show in his face, he's laughing at me! The demon anger raged inside her, but she held it firmly in control. "Don't bother to sit, Jared," she said as he moved toward his seat. He stopped as her words struck him, but showed no sign of feeling the sting she'd injected into them. "Or you, either," she added as Luke Roberts slouched toward his desk. Though her words were directed at both the boys, her eyes remained on Jared Conway, held by his gaze like-

Like a mouse staring into the eyes of a coiled cobra.

For the first time in all her years of teaching, Sister Clarence had to struggle to keep her voice steady. "Both of you will report to Father Bernard's office at once." She waited, and for one terrible moment had the feeling that Jared Conway was somehow taking her measure. That he was thinking of defying her. Then he turned away and led his friend out of her classroom. But before he released her from the grip of his gaze, Sister Clarence saw the tiniest hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.

The cold knot of anger within her congealed into hatred.

Hatred, and something else.

Something she'd never felt before, at least not in the presence of one of her students.

She felt fear.

For some reason she couldn't quite fathom, Sister Clarence realized she was dreadfully afraid of Jared Conway.

Janet climbed down off the ladder and stepped back to survey her work. When it was finished, the mural would cover most of one wall of the dining room. When she first told Ted her idea of doing the trompe l'oeil, making the long dining room wall opposite the French doors appear to open out onto another, far more formal garden from a time long past, she confessed that she'd almost given up on it before she even started. And it hadn't been simply the vastness of the wall that deterred her. "It's a whole different technique," she'd explained. "You have to know everything about perspective, and lighting, and-"

"And mostly, you have to have the ability to put what you see on the canvas," Ted had interrupted. They'd been in her studio, where she'd shown him the first sketch she made of the imaginary garden from the past. "I might not know much about art," he'd gone on, "but even just in black and white I feel as if I could walk right into that garden."

She eyed the image on the canvas as objectively as she could, and knew he was right-it was good. But still, the task of expanding it to fill the dining room wall seemed all but impossible. What if she couldn't do it?

"The worst that can happen is that you make a mess, and we paint it over. What have you got to lose?"

"Time," she'd reminded him. Just that morning, she'd tried to make a list of everything that needed to be done in the house, but gave up when the job began to look so staggeringly huge that she didn't see how they could ever succeed. But Ted had had an answer for that, too.

"Time is the one thing we're not lacking. Don't forget-there isn't any deadline for opening the hotel. I'd love to be ready by spring, but if it doesn't happen, it's not going to kill us. All the trust says is that I have to be living here. It's my idea to turn it into a business. And there's plenty of money in the accounts to hire people if I need to. So why not give the mural a try?"

He'd taken her hand-something he hadn't done in years-and led her through the house to the cavernous dining room. He had stripped the walls of their peeling wallpaper only the day before. "Maybe it's just the way you did the drawing, but I keep seeing a night scene." His eyes left the wall and scanned the vast, empty room. "And I keep seeing this room done in white-with fresh flowers everywhere-on the tables, on the sideboards, everywhere. I want to make it really romantic, with lots of candles, and tables for two-maybe a few for four, but mostly deuces." His eyes shifted back to the huge blank wall. "And when people look at that wall, they'll see what it must have been like here a century ago, with all those perfect formal gardens no one can afford to keep up anymore. Maybe with a reflecting pool, and moonlight…" He stopped, and looked worried. "Am I biting off more than you can chew?"

Janet shook her head. "If I could do it right, and it were lit right, it could be gorgeous at night. But what about breakfast and lunch?"

"We build a breakfast room," Ted had told her, and for the next hour he led her from room to room, describing the visions in his head. As she listened, Janet, too, began to see the elegant little hotel he wanted to build.

"I don't know if I can do it," he admitted when they were back in the dining room. "But I figure I'll take it one step at a time, and when I come to something I can't do, I'll find someone to help me out. So how about it? What's wrong with you trying to do something wonderful with that wall?"

She started the next day, elaborating on that first sketch she'd made. She worked through the morning, and Ted stopped by now and then to look over her shoulder at the drawings. But he never said anything unless she asked him what he thought. By the end of the morning, she'd finished a drawing that he assured her was a perfect depiction of exactly what he'd had in mind.

And Janet, after studying the drawing as objectively as she possibly could, decided that whether or not Ted was simply humoring her, the drawing was good. Right after lunch, she set to work expanding it onto the huge expanse of the dining room wall.

Within a couple of days-after she'd transformed the wainscoting into a faux-marble balustrade-she realized that Ted was right. She could do it. Slowly, the image took form, and as she worked, new ideas came to her. The painting seemed to take on a life of its own.

Now, even though the mural was still far from complete, the illusion was starting to emerge. She moved from the base of the ladder to the double doors opening from the entry hall, and was trying to gauge the mural's overall effect when she heard Ted come up from the basement, where he'd been working most of the day on the plumbing. For a moment she felt all the automatic responses that had become almost instinctual in her over the years:

The flush of apprehension as she waited to see how much he'd had to drink.

The reflexive shrinking away from the alcohol on his breath, and the roughness of his touch.

The measuring of the anger he always carried with him, which increased in proportion to the number of drinks he'd consumed.

But since that morning six weeks ago when he rid the house of the alcohol he'd bought only the day before, all of that had changed. Slowly, Janet had lowered her guard. Now, as she felt him behind her, she found herself looking forward to his touch rather than dreading it. She snuggled back against his chest, her fingers stroking the thick curly hair on his forearms as he slipped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck with his lips.

"I must smell like a pig," he growled into her ear.

"You smell wonderful," Janet murmured, her whole body responding to the musky odor emanating from his skin.