by Gwyn Cready
Stephen returned with a salver overflowing with brandy, cheese, and cakes, but the king waved it off. Stephen placed it on the table and, after a word from the king, went to alert the footmen of His Majesty’s momentary return. When Peter and Charles were alone again, the king, evidently sensing the hint of insubordination in his friend, added as he passed, “Deliver her, Peter. One way or another.”
When the king’s footsteps receded into the street, Peter picked up the decanter and hurled it against the wall.
* * *
“No service?” This had been her only potential lifeline. Cam’s eyes began to sting. She was sunk. She’d only meant to buy a book, and now she was cut off from her friends and loved ones forever. Here, she had one friend and no home. When Peter put his paints away, she would have nowhere to go, nothing to eat, no way to earn money. It had begun as an adventure—and had turned into an exhilarating one—but now she wanted to go home, or at least know she could go home when she wanted.
Something flickered at the corner of her eye.
It was a bar! A bar appeared on the phone! Bless you, AT&T! She thrust the phone higher, and the bar disappeared. Didn’t matter, she thought. When there’s one bar, there’s always another. Why, one time she’d scrabbled down three rows and across seven chairs at the local cineplex to find out how Jeanne’s text stream ending with “…so embarrassed, but my partner, whom I’d never met before, said not to worry, he could come in spades” began, only to find Jeanne had been recruited into an impromptu bridge tournament at her great-aunt’s house.
Cam held the phone high. No joy, and no matter how close she got to the windows, the bar just flickered and disappeared. She tried opening the window, but it was stuck. She pressed harder, and it moved a bit. One more push, and the window opened a degree. Then it was simply a matter of pushing it a little harder…
Ta-da!
She shoved the phone as far outside as she could reach, peering at it through the odd, wavy glass. Still nothing. Then suddenly one bar appeared, then two.
* * *
Peter felt rather than saw Stephen behind him, gazing at the burgundy-stained wall, and Peter was in no mood for questions.
“Sir?”
“One more interruption tonight and ’twill be your job.” He strode out, leaving Stephen openmouthed.
He had no intention, of course, of providing Camilla in any form to the king. Even the thought of painting her head on one of his model’s bodies made him angrier than he thought possible, though if push came to shove, he’d have to do it.
She was achingly beautiful, of that there was no debate. And he had seen the fire that ran in those veins. He found himself quite lost in the picture of her, as canty as a jade, lying before him, her breasts shifting with each movement—
He took the stairs two at a time.
She might not be his, but for the next glorious hour it would be as if she were.
She was gone.
“Camilla?”
Silence.
He hurried to the other side of the fireplace. The space was empty.
* * *
“Great,” Cam said. “My hand has two bars’ worth of phone reception, but my mouth is in no-man’s-land.” She pulled the phone in and pushed the window again. It probably hadn’t been opened since the last time Isaac Newton visited.
It creaked and groaned, but at last gave way, enough way for Cam to thread her shoulder out and, with a little more effort, one of her breasts. “Sorry,” she said. “I know I’ve put you through a lot today.”
The window was on the second floor—a tall second floor—and Cam got her first view of the world beyond the studio. Dozens of people in period dress—well, contemporary dress to them, she supposed—filled the street. There were couples laughing, a group of young men shoving and talking, an obviously drunk woman retching, and four or five dogs fighting over a scrap of food—in short, just like a late-night stroll down Craig Street in Pittsburgh.
She held up her phone and with three proud bars showing dialed Jeanne’s cell.
“Holy Christ!” Jeanne screamed. “Where are you?”
“You’re kinda not going to believe this.”
“You freakin’ blew out of here like Dorothy from Kansas. There’s orange Crush everywhere.”
“Calm down. I’m okay. Well, relatively.” Cam thought she heard a noise at the door and looked over her shoulder, but the noise stopped.
“Where are you?” Jeanne repeated.
“Okay, remember how I told you I was looking for a book on Amazon?”
“Omigod! You’re starting this story with book shopping on Amazon!”
“Jeanne, I found a book I needed there. I started to search inside. When I clicked ‘Surprise Me!’—poof! I disappeared.”
“But where are you?”
“In the sixteen hundreds.”
“In the sixteen hundreds where?”
“In the sixteen hundreds of the sixteen hundreds. Sixteen hundred. One-six-oh-oh. The century. You know, Shakespeare, Galileo, the Great London Fire—Oops.” Cam wheeled around to check the candles in the room.
“You’re telling me you’re in a different century.”
“Yes.”
“I ain’t buying it. You’re hiding somewhere. Can you see me on the phone?”
“Jeanne, really. I’m here. It’s London, sometime in the reign of Charles the Second.”
“Send me a picture.”
“I can’t.”
“I know you can. You do it all the time. I even got to share your joy when your Snuggie blanket arrived. Send one.”
“What are you, from Missouri? You could just try to believe me.”
“Two words: pic ture.”
Muttering, Cam clicked on the camera and stretched her arm as far out as she could. “Can you still hear me? I’m taking the picture.”
“Goody,” came the faint reply.
She angled the camera so the armor chest plate and stuffed boar were directly behind her. The sun had dipped below the horizon, but there was still light in the sky.
Click.
“Did you hear that?” She pulled the camera in and sent the text. “It’s coming.”
Whoosh. The picture went.
“Hang on,” Jeanne said, and Cam heard the keyboard clicks. “Got it. Jesus. Are those cutouts for breasts?”
Cam turned to look at the armor breastplate. “Yes.”
“You’re not in the sixteen hundreds. You’re at some lascivious costume ball.”
“Jeanne, it’s like nirvana for a researcher,” Cam said excitedly. “The studio was filled with nude models when I landed. Peter spends half his time hiding the king’s mistresses from one another. Nell Gwyn thinks I have an excellent eye for gowns. And I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out how the old breast-out-of-dress thing happens.”
“Now I know you’re lying.”
“Jeanne.”
“Gimme a break, huh. You’re asking me to believe you’re hanging around with, like, Marie Antoinette.”
“She was a French queen and a hundred years later, but I see your point. Nonetheless how else are you going to explain the orange Crush?”
There was a long pause. “I’ll give you a temporary pass. Very temporary.”
“Thank you. I feel better knowing someone believes this.”
“Peter Lely, huh?”
“Yes, and he’s amazing: You’d think he’d be such a narcissist—I mean, you know how painters are—but he’s really so sweet, like this closet good guy. And he’s cute, with these eyes the color of”—she groped the air, searching for the right words—“Kit Kat bars. And he’s got this sort of Karate Kid/Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon thing going on the way he can just look across the room and make magic happen. And don’t even ask about the way he moves when he paints. Oh my God. Y
ou can tell by the way he runs the place that he can do absolutely anything.”
“Jeez, you must have gotten a ton of stuff on Van Dyck.”
Cam clapped her hand over her mouth. She’d totally forgotten Van Dyck.
“No,” Jeanne said in disbelief. “You are not going to tell me you’ve been in the sixteen hundreds for an hour and didn’t ask anything about Van Dyck.”
“I-I—” Cam wracked her memory. Had she heard anything on Van Dyck? “He might have had a relative who managed a theater.”
“Wow, that’s gonna bust the art biography world wide open. What about dirt? And what are you doing in that getup?”
Cam looked down, confused, then remembered Jeanne had the picture. She clutched the gown tighter.
“Ah…there was an accident.”
“Mustard?”
“Funny. No. A too-many-mistresses-at-once accident. Nell Gwyn, the one I mentioned? She’s one of them—the good one. There was a bit of a kerfuffle with the other one—a real bitch of a duchess. But anyhow, she—Nell, I mean—really admired my dress—long story, but we had to switch.”
“I see. Then the olive gown in your picture is Nell’s?”
Cam thought of Nell’s robin’s-egg blue dressing gown upstairs on the floor near the fire. “Well, no. Not exactly.”
There was a short pause in which she could feel the wheels turning in Jeanne’s head.
“Really?”
Cam yelled, “Wait!” but it was too late. She heard the sound of the phone drop.
Oh, I’m toast.
“Well, well, well,” Jeanne said. “Here I am on page twelve of that lovely exhibition book and what do I see? An olive gown with ruffled sleeves. You’re posing for him!”
“What? No. Me?”
“You’re posing for him, don’t lie.”
“I-I—”
“Tell me,” Jeanne said, “that breast was not exposed.”
Cam bit back a smile. “I, uh, can’t actually.”
Jeanne whooped so loud, Cam had to pull the phone from her ear.
“You didn’t!” she screamed.
“I did! I did!”
“Verbal high five! So how did he get you to do it?”
“What?”
“The breast. What was the secret? Magic? Hypnosis? Some sort of Restoration era date-rape drug?”
Cam considered her answer.
“Oh God,” Jeanne said. “He didn’t actually drug you, did he?”
“Well, no, it wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?”
Cam shifted. “Well, he did offer me a glass of wine.”
“We’re going to have to file charges. I hope you kept the glass.”
Cam laughed. “It was pretty strong wine.”
“The rogue. And then I suppose he made some sort of offhand comment like ‘So how do you want to pose?’ And the next thing you knew you were clawing your gown open. I mean, what’s a girl to do?”
“Wow, it’s like you were there.”
“Cam.”
Cam looked at her bare toes, smiling. “I don’t know. You’d have to meet him. I just wanted to do it.”
“Well, I guess that’s better than ‘He saved me from genital herpes,’ which is how you hooked up with Jacket.”
“I didn’t ‘hook up’ with Peter,” Cam said, “or Jacket, for that matter. My God, I’m practically a journalist. I was just doing, uh, a little first-person research.”
“On Van Dyck.”
Cam felt her ears redden. “Ha-ha. So how do we get me back?”
“Maybe you should ask Peter. He clearly knew how to get you front.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“Thank you. Well, it seems pretty straightforward to me.”
“Really?”
“Sure. I mean, if you got there with ‘Surprise Me!’ why wouldn’t it work going in the other direction?”
“Omigod, Jeanne, you’re amazing! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Mrs. Post?”
Cam jerked back into the room. Mertons was standing at the door with a look of confusion on his face. She swung the phone behind her gown, but had it been too late?
“What are you doing here?” His eyes narrowed. “To whom were you talking?”
“Myself.”
“What are you doing in this room?”
Cam could feel Jeanne squawking into her hip. “I was looking for the privy.”
“Wedged out the window?”
“Sometimes they’re in the oddest places.”
Mertons looked at her as if he were trying to tease out a puzzle. All he needed was a magnifying glass and one of those Sherlock Holmes hats with the earflaps. She prepared for a run.
“There you are.” Peter appeared in the doorway. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“I was looking for the privy.”
Peter bit back a smile. “I hope you’ve satisfied your curiosity here, then.”
“Thank you. Yes.” Men. She gathered her purse and slipped the phone inside in one smooth move. “Would either of you be willing to redirect me?”
Peter coughed. “Certainly.”
“Peter,” Mertons said. “Might I have a word?”
“Aye. Just one. No.”
“But, Peter, there are certain oddities—”
“Mertons, I know we have a shared appointment. But as far as I can tell, the sitter we so anxiously anticipate has not arrived. Am I correct?”
“Well, aye, but—”
Peter took Cam’s arm and began to pull her out of the room. “Then I think you might do well to concentrate on your brushwork. I’m afraid Stephen has commented on your lack of practice. Twelve hours a day, my friend. That’s what makes a painter. Familial connection can only carry you so far.”
Cam frowned. Bald-headed Mertons was related to Peter?
Twenty
As Peter fiddled with the paints, waiting for her return from the privy, he found himself almost nervous. “Good God, man,” he muttered, smiling, “you can’t even hold a brush.”
He heard her steps on the stair and watched as those beautiful blue eyes found him.
“You’re back,” he said.
“Indeed.”
He couldn’t help but remember a time before Ursula, when the measure of a good time had been guiding whatever lady-in-waiting had met his eye that evening to the closest private wall, where he’d loosen her gown, hook her leg over his arm, and plow her until she cried, dry mouthed, for more. Ursula had taught him the value of soft bedding and long-drawn-out afternoons, but looking into Camilla’s eyes now, the thought of those rough walls and incandescent joinings seemed very, very appealing.
Did she see his longing, feel him stripping her with his eyes? He hoped not.
He dropped his gaze. “I do apologize for the king’s intrusion.”
“’Twas nothing. Really.” She darted to the chaise and dropped her bag before returning to his side, a tentative smile on her face. “I take it he requires a lot of attention.”
Peter laughed. “Aye, like an underdisciplined child with the army of Hannibal at his command.”
“Not a promising combination?”
“No. He is a most demanding patron.”
That ringlet still hung loose. His fingers burned as he remembered pulling the pin. She caught him gazing at the tendril and tucked it over her shoulder self-consciously. He wanted her—in every way a man can want a woman. He had been moved at the beginning by her resemblance to Ursula, but now his desire had many sources—her courage, her wit, her wild, untamed spirit. There wasn’t a woman in a hundred who would have inserted herself into Nell’s spot to save him, and there wasn’t a woman in a thousand who would have bared her desires before him the way she had.
He sa
id, “Shall we rest a bit before I begin painting again?”
“Yes. That would be good.”
“Perhaps something warm to eat or a—”
“Is this yours?”
She had stopped in front of an unfinished canvas. It was of little Jane, the daughter of Viscount Harrison. The day had been warm, and the girl, no more than ten, had found the long period of enforced stillness difficult. He had said he would allow her to move the rest of her body if she would keep her hand still. She agreed readily, and he placed a peach in it. Jane’s image, therefore, was barely started, though the hand and especially the thick impasto of fruit and its green-brown leaf represented a nearly finished passage.
“Aye. I do not normally start on the hand”—he flushed again, thinking of how the movement of Camilla’s hand had drawn his eye earlier—“but it helped the girl sit still.”
“And me. How do you do this, the shade just under the leaf? My God, it’s as if an actual leaf sits there. I can see the sides.”
He chuckled. “’Tis nothing. A trick my teacher taught me. Only a bit of incising.” When her forehead creased, he added, “Come. Let me show you. ’Tis easier than explaining.” He reached for the palette and offered it to her. “You said you paint, aye?”
“Oh no. I couldn’t.”
“Of course you might.”
He guided the wood over her thumb, ignoring the flicker of heat, and handed her a brush. “Start with the ocher and a bit of the black.” He watched as she mixed the paint, diffidently then with greater assurance.
“That’s right,” he said, “only a touch. Now, I want you to let go and just guide the brush as if the painting were yours and the leaf a mere impediment to your objective.”
“My objective?”
“Aye. You have to keep your objective in mind.”
* * *
Cam’s objective was growing unclear, even to her. What she should be doing is asking him all the Van Dyck questions she could think of, as quickly as possible, then buying a one-way “Surprise Me!” ticket straight back to Pittsburgh, assuming she could ever sneak past Peter’s nosy relative. But a part of her just wanted to be with Peter and enjoy the fine night.