Flirting with Forever

by Gwyn Cready

  “I don’t know! Oh, Lord, I don’t know.”

  Charles, who had witnessed this exchange, gave Peter a warning glance. Peter in turn gave Stephen a glare that suggested Nell had better be found and rehidden if Stephen were to have the slightest hope of keeping his position. Stephen hurried off.

  “Here,” the duchess demanded. “Open this one.”

  It was the door to his studio.

  “Let me ensure there is no sharp glass or metal lying about. This is a room used for—”

  “Open it! Open it now!”

  Peter bent reluctantly and opened the door.

  The duchess barged by him. “There she is!”

  Peter’s heart dropped into his shoe.

  “My dear, I can explain—Oh!” the king exclaimed. “Oh dear.”

  Peter drew up behind the duchess and looked past her heavily powdered wig. There, on the chaise, laid out like Venus herself, was Peter’s visitor, Mrs. Post, or whatever her true name was, reading a broadsheet. Unlike Nell, however, this Venus had her robins-egg blue dressing gown knotted demurely at the waist, though the fabric yawned enough to give everyone in the room a glorious view of a pink calf, a flawless knee, and the most remarkable sliver of thigh.

  He didn’t know how or why she’d done it, but wanted to fall on his knees and thank her for the deception.

  The woman lowered her broadsheet, gazing at the spectacle before her. She’d undone her hair, Peter noted with a tickle in his belly, letting it trail over her shoulders exactly as Nell’s hair was in the portrait, even though her hair was not quite a match. For an instant, Peter imagined the weight of that liquid fire in his hands and wondered what it would be like to pull the hairpins free himself…

  “Good afternoon,” the king said warmly, and Peter woke from his daydream. “This must be the Spanish countess Peter mentioned,” the king added to the duchess.

  The Spanish countess? Good Lord, thought Peter, who had forgotten this important detail, I’m ruined. “Er, I beg your pardon. Your Majesty, may I introduce…” He gave his savior a panicked look.

  “I am Countess de Iñigo Montoya,” she said in an eager but far-from-convincing accent, “widow of Antonio Banderas.”

  Peter held his breath.

  “An honor.” Charles’s eyes trailed slowly over Mrs. Post’s leg.

  Peter inserted himself between the two, being struck most forcefully by the reason he did not wish Charles and his guest to meet. “Countess, may I introduce His Royal Majesty, Charles, the King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as Her Grace the Duchess of Portsmouth.”

  Mrs. Post rose, a breathtaking column of blue, and dropped a handsome curtsy.

  All eyes turned to the duchess. Her reaction would spell success or doom. Every person in the room was pulling for the countess’s affirmation. Peter hadn’t felt such religious fervor since the night Charles bet the entire phalanx of his wife’s ladies-in-waiting that they wouldn’t run naked through the maze at Hampton Court.

  The duchess’s odd cockeye worked the room like a beacon on a stormy night. “But…”

  Stephen reappeared from nowhere and set Nell’s portrait on the easel with the charm of a mountebank. Despite what was to Peter an obvious difference in their frames—the painted Nell had the slimness of an adolescent while Mrs. Post’s body suggested a more nuanced and, to Peter, far more interesting maturity—the dressing gown hid much and hair color provided the only visible distinction. Both heads could reasonably be described as red, though Mrs. Post’s was slightly lighter, with eye-catching streaks of pumpkin, amber, and even a sunny marigold.

  Without conscious intent, Peter’s mind began to calculate the mix of pigments such a heady confection would require. Red madder and yellow ocher were the obvious choices, but white lead, raw umber, and even verdigris would have their place. His hands began to tingle at the prospect—that is, were he to have further prospects of any sort, for if the duchess didn’t swallow the tale, Peter would be sketching Whitehall Palace for coppers in the street.

  The duchess thrust out a trembling lip. She was not so dull as to be entirely swayed by this ruse. Nonetheless she could hardly accuse Peter or the king of setting up such a verisimilitude with no more than a moment’s notice, especially when that moment had been spent entirely under her observation.

  Peter said a prayer to Saint Luke, the patron saint of painters.

  The duchess’s eyes narrowed, and she threw a shoulder back in challenge. “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 wallop of the last word. He’d heard Carlo, a bargeman on the river, call 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 called the worst name a woman could be called? He cleared his throat and raised his eyes meaningfully, but he might as well 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 paper.

  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 on the part of Mrs. Post—“your language surprises me, Your Grace.”

  The king clapped his hands, filled 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 shall 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, all humor gone.

  The duchess curtsied meekly and then turned to the king. “Please take me home,” she said with a pout. “I have a headache.”

  Thirteen

  When the door closed, Cam collapsed on the chaise in relief. A Spanish countess?! Jeez, what next? A Sri Lankan snake charmer? Her accent was bad enough. Anything beyond that obviously required more than her occasional Masterpiece Theatre watching would provide. Thank God for Natalie and her Latin temper. Cam hadn’t understood anything else, but that coño had been as clear as a bell.

  Nell poked her head out of the adjoining room. “All clear?”

  “Ugh.”

  “You smoked ’er!”

  “I don’t think she was entirely persuaded. Though I suspect the newspaper across the snout will 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 dispelling into the street. 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 Nell, 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 carefully 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.” Nell 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 as Ursula,” Nell 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 again. “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’ve 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 Nell Gwyn, pandered her dignity in order to mollify a king one mustache twirl shy of being 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?” Nell gave her a mischievous smile. “’Twill be far easier for Peter to get you out of that one.”

  Fourteen

  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. All 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 officially done for the day,” Peter said as he brushed by. “Tell Stephen to cancel the Danish general. If the author arrives, my compliments, and he—and you—may cordially 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 Nell’s sitting?”

  “Move the appointment to Friday,” he called. “I shall 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 allowed himself a contented smile. “They can only spark to fire.”

  Mertons blinked. “My cousin?”

  Fifteen

  Nell 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 practically pressed to a window, after all. “I agree. They did a beautiful job.”

  “Where do you shop?”

  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,” Nell called 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 really was something quite charming about him—when he wasn’t being an ass.

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

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

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

  “Well, 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?” Nell 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 really 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 coolly. “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 hall.

  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 small smile, “smacking the duchess was perhaps a touch more spirited than I would have wished.”

  “She called me a—”

  “Countess. I remember. She was quite definitive.”

  “That wasn’t the word she used.”

  “Aye, well, we’re lucky the king has an appreciation for the absurd.”

  “Oh, he’s a regular Mark Twain.”

  “Who?”

  “Er, my sister Shania’s son. A right comic lad, that one.”

  His gaze flicked briefly to her now bare shoulder. Even with careful monitoring, the luxurious weight of the dressing gown’s fabric was making it hard to stay covered.

  “I apologize,” he said. “You were kind to allow Nell to borrow your dress, but you do not have to spend the wait in a dressing gown. I’m sure you must be cold. May I offer you…” He looked around the room. In addition to the shield, spear, and clubs, there were a set of angel wings, a large stuffed boar, a h
arp, a drum, a ship’s wheel, a cradle, several large swans made of wool, and an armor chest plate that had holes for breasts cut out of it. “…my frock coat?” He slipped off the jacket and held it open to her.

  She gazed at the coat, glossy and green, and then at the finely cut shoulders and arms now outlined under his bleached linen shirt, and in a small voice said, “Thank you.”

  Peter was not quite barrel-chested, though he was broader than most, and when he slipped the well-tailored wool over her shoulders, she felt like a small animal hibernating in a cave. She could smell the barest hint of vanilla, as if he’d scrubbed paint off his hands with scented soap. She looked at his nails. Fingernails were the windows into a man’s soul, and so often the windows were something you had to run by with your eyes averted, but Peter’s were clean, pink, and well tended.

  He reached for a cuff, unbuttoned it, and began to roll up his sleeve. “Would you like to sit?” He paced to a stool, grabbing a pencil and a large tablet on the way, and took a seat.

  This left Cam with the only other seat in the room, an armchair on a pallet. She slipped into the seat, placed her bag on her lap, and gazed down at him. If she moved slowly, she might be able to withdraw the phone unnoticed and at least check the bars.

  He opened the tablet, found a clean page, and pressed the binding flat. His forearms, now uncovered, were muscular and long, swept with russet hairs that caught the last rays of sun, and his hand moved over the page with a practiced ease.

  “I do not see you as Athena.” His eyes stayed on the easy line running from his pencil.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I shall paint you that way if you wish, of course, pray do not misunderstand. But…” The line stretched long then reversed itself and returned.

  “But?”

  “But you are familiar with the phrase ‘to paint the lily’?”

  She knew “gild the lily,” but not “paint.” “No.”

  “The lily is on my heraldic arms, so it is a phrase dear to me.” His pencil work changed to shorter, faster strokes. “‘To gild refined gold,’” he began, “‘to paint the lily, / To throw a perfume on the violet, / To smooth the ice, or add another hue / Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light, / To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, / is wasteful, and ridiculous excess.’ Shakespeare,” he added, smiling. “King John. I should prefer to paint you without artifice. As unadorned as possible.”