Flirting With Forever (12 page)

The duchess’s eyes narrowed, and she threw a shoulder back in chal enge. “
Vamos a ver si entiende esto, coño,
”

she said to Mrs. Post.

Peter gasped, as did the king. Peter’s Spanish was poor, to say the least, but there was no mistaking the wal op of the last word. He’d heard Carlo, a bargeman on the river, cal a sailor that once, and Carlo had taken a pole across the cheek in answer to it.

His gaze cut to Mrs. Post. How does one signal to another that the other has just been cal ed the worst name a woman could be cal ed? He cleared his throat and raised his eyes meaningful y, but he might as wel have been waving English signal flags at a Chinese prow. There was no mum show equivalent for the insult that had just been hurled, and if there were, no gentleman would employ it.

Mrs. Post chewed her lip as she attempted to decipher this sentence. Spots of red appeared on her cheeks. Her eyes darted from one face to another. She twisted the broadsheet in her hands and coughed. It was more than Peter could bear.

He held up a hand. “I am putting an end to this. I must confess—”

The rest died in his throat. Mrs. Post lunged forward and smacked the duchess across the nose with the broadsheet.

The duchess squawked in surprise, and for an instant Peter’s heart stopped. No one spoke. No one moved.

Peter could hear a dog braying in the street outside. He wondered if he’d be joining the brute there soon.

The king threw back his head and laughed.

“I must confess”—Peter stepped in front of the duchess to block what looked like the start of a second assault from Mrs. Post—“your language surprises me, Your Grace.”

The king clapped his hands, fil ed with the sort of delight he displayed at the Windsor wrestling matches. “You have been routed, my dear. You have made an attempt, and you have been routed. Make peace with the countess. I shal not have a war started over this.”

But the duchess’s fury was not so easily doused. Her face contracted, and Peter could see another outburst coming.

“Make peace, I said,” Charles repeated sharply, al humor gone.

The duchess curtsied meekly, then turned to the king.

“Please take me home,” she said with a peevish pout. “I have a headache.”

When the door closed, Cam col apsed on the chaise in relief. A Spanish countess?! Jeez, what next? A Sri Lankan snake charmer? Her Renée Zel weger was bad enough.

Anything beyond that obviously required more than her three-DVDs-a-month Netflix account was providing. Thank God for Natalie and her Latin temper. Cam hadn’t understood anything else, but that
coño
had been as clear as a bel .

Nel poked her head out of the adjoining room. “Al clear?”

“Ugh.”

“You smoked ’er!”

“I don’t think she was entirely persuaded. Though I suspect the newspaper across the snout wil keep her from trying that a second time. At least, it always did with my dog.”

Cam could hear the sounds of the royal entourage dispel ing into the distance. Sex, betrayal, the capricious powers of a king. It was a tale that would fit with ease into any book, and she wondered if she could reasonably refashion it for hers on Van Dyck.

The door cracked. Peter stuck his head in, looked from Cam to Nel , who was doing little twirls in Cam’s gown, gave Cam a hurried but grateful smile and closed the door again.

Cam eyed her bag, tucked careful y under the chaise.

There was no way she was going to be checking the phone with company around.

“You are not the first to pursue him, you know.” Nel grabbed a handful of the gray silk, admiring the drape.

“I am not pursuing him.”

“Many before Ursula and many after.”

Typical artist, Cam thought, though with a pang. He probably keeps a little black quarto somewhere.

“But none so much like Ursula,” Nel said. “Your hair is just like hers. Has Peter unpinned it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If you haven’t posed for Peter, I recommend it heartily.”

She dimpled. “There’s something about the way he looks at you when you’re lying there, swimming in silk. There’s simply no word for it.”

“Ogling?”

“What? Oh no. Not Peter. Peter would no more be moved by a pip than a sailor by water. He’s like a medico, he is. No, it’s what you see when he’s looking at your face.

You just feel so … so …”

Panty free? she thought fliply, but wondered if the real answer was scared.

“Exalted.”

“Exalted, eh?” Cam worked the image around in her head like a piece of mental bubble gum, but when it came to painters she had seen too many women abandon their common sense and then their clothes to find this pronouncement credible. Bewitched, perhaps. Exalted?

Unlikely. “I don’t suppose you ever posed for Van Dyck …

?”

“Davey Van Dyck, the theater manager at the Drury Lane?”

“Never mind.” This was getting her nowhere. She’d irritated a minor painter, crossed wits with Nel Gwyn, pandered her dignity in order to mol ify a king one mustache twirl shy of a Central Casting lech and smacked a duchess. Unless she was planning to write the Restoration version of
Fawlty Towers,
she’d done nothing that would take her closer to sexing up the Van Dyck biography.

Cam sighed and stood. “I guess we ought to exchange gowns.”

“Are you sure?” Nel gave her a mischievous smile. “

’Twil be far easier for Peter to get you out of that one.”

Peter waited until the king’s carriage disappeared into Bow Street, then turned and took the stairs two at a time, those stray ringlets of cinnamon and marigold playing a prominent role in his thoughts. He didn’t give a farthing about what he had scheduled or what Mertons would say.

Al he wanted was to return to that spirited flame-haired visitor who had saved his skin and find out more.

Mertons stood, Cossack–like, at the top of the landing.

“Peter—”

“I am official y done for the day,” Peter said as he brushed by. “Tel Stephen to cancel the Danish general. If the author arrives, my compliments, and he—and you—

may cordial y hang fire until the morn—Oh, Stephen, there you are. Do you hear?”

Stephen, who was deeply relieved to be keeping his position and had twisted poor Moseby’s ear until tears ran down the lad’s face, said, “Aye, sir. What about Nel ’s sitting?”

“Move the appointment to Friday,” he cal ed. “I shal finish the painting then.”

“ ’Tis an interesting thing,” Stephen said, watching Peter’s disappearing form, “the impact of color.”

Mertons frowned. “Pardon?”

“Hair. Some men favor moonbeams and corn silk.

Mincemeat on the table and pudding between the ears, that’s their thought, though for my own part I haven’t found them to be cooks of any great sort. I myself prefer a brown-haired lass. They may not be the beauty of the room, but one can have a reasonable conversation with them. Ten years can seem ten lifetimes without that. But men like your cousin …” He shook his head and al owed himself a contented smile. “They can only spark to fire.”

Mertons blinked. “My cousin?”

Nel squealed behind the changing screen. “Oh, my Lord!

Look at the peacock feathers in this lining! It’s stunning!”

Cam was swinging the phone wildly in the air. If she could get three bars in the Carnegie’s lead-lined basement, why couldn’t she raise at least one bar in the seventeenth century? She was practical y pressed to a window, after al .

“I agree. They did a beautiful job.”

“Where do you go?”

Oops.

“You wouldn’t know it. It’s … it’s … in Bremen.”

“I never thought the Germans would come up with peacock feathers and silk. They’re more in the burlap-and-ironed-creases line, if you know what I mean.”

A knock sounded at the door.

“Come,” Nel cal ed without checking, and Cam yanked her dressing gown closed.

Peter stepped in, more diffident than he’d been earlier, and bowed. Cam thought she saw a flush on his cheeks.

There real y was something quite charming about him—

when he wasn’t being an ass.

Nel peeked over the screen. “Has the dragon departed?”

Peter smiled. “With Saint George at her side. Nel , about today’s sitting—”

She popped from behind the screen stil wearing Cam’s dress. “Peter, no more today. I’m tired of posing. Lend me one of your men. I want to have this dress sketched out for my dressmaker.”

“Wel , I suppose we can manage something for you. Ask Stephen to pass the word for Francis. He has a crack hand at that sort of thing.” He fiddled absently with a large green-stoned ring on his finger.

“Um …” Cam drew the dressing gown more tightly around her.

“You don’t mind, do you, Mrs. Post?” Nel said. “I know you mentioned something about posing earlier. Perhaps you can take my session.” She gave Cam a wink and sashayed out.

“Posing? You are interested in posing yourself ?” Peter’s brows rose. “I understood you to want a consultation on a landscape.”

Now it was Cam’s turn for flushing. “I-I—” She hadn’t real y thought much about it when she’d said it, and she certainly hadn’t thought she’d be here long enough for it to matter. What she wanted was a chance to return to the models’ room.

“Did I? No, ’twas a portrait of me I wished to discuss. I was imagining myself as Athena.”

At this his eyebrows nearly jumped off his head, though he quickly concealed his surprise. “Indeed?”

She had no intention of posing as Athena or anyone else, but the look on his face was enough to remind her why she’d never brought up the subject of posing to Jacket. She didn’t fit the mold of a classical beauty, and the inspiration she could provide from a creative standpoint was limited.

“Aye,” she said cool y. “I believe I saw a shield and sword in the adjoining room. Might we conduct our conference there as I try them out?”

“If you wish.”

She snatched her bag from under the chaise, and he led her wordlessly into the hal .

The models’ room was abandoned now, undoubtedly cleared during the duchess incident. When they entered, Peter paused. “Before we go on, I should like to thank you for your help. It was a daring action. Very spirited. I am most grateful. Though,” he added with a smal smile,

“smacking the duchess was perhaps a touch more spirited than I could have wished.”

“She cal ed me a—”

“Countess. I remember she was quite definitive.’”

“That wasn’t the word she used.”