Flirting With Forever (15 page)

“The blue,” he said. “It wil not suit.”

She almost laughed. If he intended to strip her of the dressing gown, it would take more than a simple declaratory sentence.

“I don’t know what you mean.” She refil ed her glass and stretched out on the chaise. “It’s stunning.”

“It brings out your eyes,” he said, raising the tray of the easel a few inches, “which
are
stunning. But in this portrait your hair wil predominate. We need a paprika or an olive. If you do not mind, find something pleasing in the wardrobe.

There’s a mirror. Make certain it puts flames to your curls.”

Cam was flattered he had chosen to pay homage to her hair. She knew exactly the colors that set off the lustrous red-blond best, and she made her way to the choices.

“Mr. Lely? Are you there?”

A thin, quavering voice rose on the stairs. A woman. Not Miss Kate.

Lely’s eyes narrowed. Rubbing his hands on a clean rag, he stepped to the top. “Aye?” Immediately he clapped a hand to his forehead. “Dear heavens. My poor Miss Quinn.

Has someone not attended to you?” He hurried down the stairs to the smal landing.

Miss Quinn of Sir David and the canceled portrait. Oh dear, Cam thought, this is going to be awkward. Had Miss Quinn not been sent to Sir David’s place of business for the brush-off from his secretary?

Cam had been the recipient of more than one undeservedly harsh brush-off in her time—what woman of thirty-four hadn’t?—and while none had been quite so lung-chil ingly crushing as finding Jacket and the ring designer settling their creative differences in her bed, both the breakup phone message left with her admin and the guy who’d arrived at their six-month anniversary dinner with a box of Kleenex for her and a minister to referee the breakup ranked high on a list of experiences she wished never to repeat. Her heart went out to Miss Quinn, but she had to admit it amused her to imagine the squirming Lely would have to do.

“Miss Quinn,” she heard him say, “I am most sorry. Did Stephen—my clerk—not explain to you about the portrait?”

Stephen, Cam thought, had only been instructed to provide her with the address.

“No,” Miss Quinn said. “I have been waiting since you moved me.”

“Come. Step up to the landing, where we shal be a little more private.”

“Why?” Her voice quavered. “What have you to tel me?”

He cleared his throat and said in a tone Cam had to strain to hear, “I understand you and Sir David have ended your acquaintance?”

“Aye.”

Cam heard the hitch in the woman’s voice. Lely would soon have tears on his hands.

“And the painting was to be a final gift to you of some sort?”

“Aye. I am not a bitter woman, Mr. Lely, but I would like to leave this friendship with something.”

“I see. Wel , I’m afraid I must inform you of a change in plans.”

Oh, Peter, don’t …

“Sir David made it clear to me today—”

Cam wanted to yel “Fire!” or “Man overboard!” or “Justin Timberlake!” or something—anything—so that Peter would not finish the sentence.

“—that he cannot part with such a value, that he wants you to pose, and that he begs that you wil consider sending it to him when it is complete.”

“He did?” The woman’s voice fil ed with joy.

Cam col apsed against the wardrobe, amazed.
Jake
Ryan lives
.

“He did,” Peter said, “though he did not want to impose by asking you himself.”

“Oh. No, I understand. His wife—” The woman caught herself. “His circumstances make it difficult.”

“Ah.”

“But how can he … ? Mr. Lely, where would he put it?”

“You ask an important question. Have you heard of a private gal ery?”

“No.”

“Sometimes it is no more than a secret panel upon which a painting sits behind a false front. Sometimes it is an entirely hidden room. The king himself has one.”

“He does?”

“Aye, to mark the friendships whose remembrance would bring the queen pain.”

“And Sir David has such a thing?”

“If he is the recipient of such great joy, he said, he would build one. Now, make arrangements with Stephen downstairs. I apologize for abandoning you. The events of this afternoon seem to have gotten away from us. You wil return tomorrow, though, aye? It wil take five or six sittings.”

“Five sittings?”

Miss Quinn’s words were fil ed with concern, and Cam heard the sound of a purse snapping open.

“I suppose I can secure a room for the week at my laundress’s house,” she said uncertainly.

“Oh, Miss Quinn! How can you forgive me? I have forgotten the most important part of the message. Sir David left an envelope for you, a token of his affection. I cannot be certain, and you wil pardon my coarseness, but he gave me to believe it contained money.”

“Money?”
Miss Quinn was crying now.

“Aye, and no little amount. Desire Stephen to fetch it for you. Tel him that if he does not remember where we put it, he is to come to me and I wil remind him. Do you have that? If he does not remember, he is to come to me.”

“I have it. Thank you, Mr. Lely.”

“It is nothing, nothing at al . I am glad of it. I would hate to see a friendship end on an unhappy note.”

He started up the stairs, and Cam flung herself at the wardrobe, trying to digest the discovery of such surprising generosity in a man she had taken for an egocentric painter. She stole a glance at his profile as he rounded the top of the stairs, and wondered what other of her assumptions might be incorrect.

“Who was it?” she asked casual y.

“What? Oh. The cook. Something about tomorrow’s menu and a leg of lamb. I told her I cannot concern myself in such matters. I do wonder sometimes at the wont of initiative in the servant ranks. Did you find a gown?”

Cam had not found anything. With reluctance, she pul ed her eyes away from Peter, opened the wardrobe door and gasped. Another treasure trove of dresses. This man liked to dress women. Which, of course, probably meant the corol ary was true as wel .

A dozen gowns hung here, each of thick, raw silk and each in a color more bril iant than the last—ruby, emerald, sapphire, aquamarine, topaz, amethyst. But Cam had no eyes for jewel tones. She pul ed out a burnished olive green that picked up the gold of her skin and the cinnamon-blonde streaks in her hair.

“There are undergowns there as wel ,” he said.

In the drawers below, laid out like the petals of a pressed ivory rose, were linen and muslin shifts, as intricately detailed as wedding gowns, with fal s of ruffles and lace and beading.

“Choose something ethereal,” he said. “I like the Flemish lace. ’Tis the one with the lilies.”

She dug until she found it. A beautiful pattern of interlocked flowers ran around the skirt and throughout the lace at the sleeves.

She stole a look at Peter, who was busy laying different colors of velvet on the chaise, pul ed the undergrown out and let it drop.

Ethereal, eh?

The fabric was as thin as gossamer, and the front of the undergown lacked any means of closure. There were no hooks, no ribbons, no fasteners, only a narrow V that yawned almost to the waist, like a floor-length dress shirt with al the buttons removed.

Nonetheless, Cam found herself longing to put it on, to feel the cool weave glide across her skin and hear the glissando of muslin under silk.

She heard a knock at the stairs and then Peter’s deep

“Aye?”

Stephen announced himself, and Peter beckoned him to the landing.

“I am to see you about the matter of an envelope?”

Stephen said, perplexed. “Apparently I have forgotten where we put it.”

Cam grinned.

He added, “It pertains to Miss—”

“I know to whom it pertains,” Peter said gruffly. “Take twenty crowns out of petty cash, place them in a pouch and see that they are delivered.”

Stephen, who clearly didn’t need a brick heaved at him to take a hint, said, “To the person in question?”

“Aye.”

“Five sittings
and
twenty guineas?”

The look Peter gave him must have ended the discussion for Cam heard only the quietly muttered “We’l al be in a sponging house by Whitsuntide” as Stephen returned to the floor below.

She turned her mind to the matter of changing.

The fireplace rose to the ceiling in the center of the space, and since it stood between her and Peter, it screened her from both the stairs and his side of the room.

The fire was open on both sides, but the opening rose to no more than knee height. Nonetheless, it was mildly unnerving to imagine herself naked, as she’d certainly be, if only for a moment, standing in the middle of Peter’s studio.

Peter appeared to have no sense of the upheaval, for he remained busy with the adjustment of the chaise. She took a deep breath, snuggled as close to the hearth as the heat of the fire would al ow and let the robin’s-egg blue gown drop.

Peter had heard her gasp as she opened the wardrobe. It pleased him immensely that she was so delighted. The dressing gowns, prepared for him by a seamstress near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, were entrancing to women. He’d rarely had a sitter who did not marvel over the workmanship.

He wondered if she’d choose the lily-embroidered one as he’d recommended. For a moment he was taken back to that house, his father’s house in Soest, with the heraldic lily over the door. It was the name Peter had chosen when he cast his lot with the English. How he had missed his parents when he’d come here. It seemed his whole life, except for one short period, had been about missing one person or another.

Another knock sounded. “Sir?”

Dammit. “What is it, Tom?”

“The palette, sir. As you requested. May I come up?”

“Leave it on the landing. I’l fetch it in a moment.”

Peter could see the pale blue of her gown through the lens of fire. Then he saw it fal . Her calves were slender, and each movement stirred a part of his mind that he had thought was unstirrable.

You old fool
. He had painted many women, possessed even more. The notion of the calf of a woman he hardly knew sparking his desire was beyond imagining. Her shadow stretched across the wal like some Stygian shade.

He could see the easy fal of her breasts as she lifted the gown over her head. He would have given many ducats to see the muslin slide down those shoulders. He could imagine the rosy nipples catching the thin fabric and the inviting triangle of curls below.

He put a hand on the railing and caught his breath. Idiot.

She was a client, and what’s more, she was newly engaged. Nonetheless, he hurried down to the palette, scooped it up and returned, two steps at a time, in order to not miss her as she emerged from the shadows.

She came out like a new queen—regal, uncertain, rising to the weight of the occasion. The color of the gown made her hair spangle and flash as if she wore a crown of candles, and his heart soared to see the glimpses of lilies.

They crept around her neck and fol owed that long, glorious line southward into the val ey between her breasts. He wondered if her skin gave off the same lily-of-the-val ey scent as her hair had when he’d been sketching her.

He loved the look of women in dishabil e, as they cal ed it, certainly loved the look of this woman in it. It was fresh, natural and bewitchingly erotic without a whisper of impropriety.

“Are you ready?” he said.

Her fingers worked the edge of a sleeve nervously. “I feel like a bride on her wedding night.”

“Oh dear. Whatever minor confidence I’d had in approaching this painting has now official y taken its leave.”

They both laughed.

Despite an education that included seven long years under the fastidious eye of the monks at Saint Étienne, Stephen felt his mouth, stil in possession of that last morsel of ham and bread, fal open.

Peter’s cousin, who had long since pushed his plate away and awaited a piece of the cook’s fine gooseberry pie, cocked his head. “Was that
laughter
?”

Stephen swal owed and let out a satisfied smile. “We must let the cook know to keep the kitchen fire lit. I do believe it’s going to be a long evening.”

Without a way to get to her phone, Cam was stuck. No alternate next move presented itself. She could run, but to what end? She had arrived after an earthshaking mouse click, and now she felt like a mouse caught in a trap, in a painter’s studio that had closed for business three hundred years before she was born. There were no rules for the situation in which she found herself. At some point, Lely would either return her purse or leave the room. Until then she would soak up some color. After al , it wasn’t every day a historical biographer landed in the same century as her subject, and with a man who succeeded him as royal portraitist and presumably knew him.