Page 17 of Flirting with Forever

Whatever reply Cam was forming stuck in her throat like a broken wine cork. “Doing me?” Then it struck her. Painting. The woman meant painting! “Yes.”

“Are you standing in for Nell? If so, you won’t need a dress.”

Cam was definitely not standing in for Nell, then. “No. I’m on my own. And in a dress. Definitely.”

“And how did Peter tell you to look? Like a goddess? A shepherdess? A lady? A whore?”

“Er, not that last. A lady, I think.”

Kate turned to the woman with the kitten. “Mary, find something in the trunk. Several new ones came in last week. Something dark, I think, to set off that hair.”

Cam’s hair, of which she was rather vain, was long, curly, and as bright as copper pennies.

“Peter keeps dresses on hand?” she asked.

“You never know how he’ll want us to look. And many ladies prefer a new gown when they pose. It’s one of the reasons they come here. Peter encourages women to become something new when they sit for him. He calls it ‘putting on a second skin.’”

Cam remembered Peter’s particular penchant for skin. She hoped the gowns had bodices. She searched for an explanation for her appearance here. She remembered having dreams where she became aware she was dreaming, but that realization usually made her wake up. This felt nothing like a dream, nor was her obvious awareness of the incongruity having any impact on her wakefulness.

The phone booped. The sound of a text. She made a show of peeking inside her bag, as if to root for rouge or cheek lard or whatever they called it here.

“Is the puppy asleep?”

Cam halted for an instant, then found the phone and made a show of patting it gently while still keeping it out of sight. “Good little boy,” she said in a baby voice. “Yep,” she added to Kate, “sleeping.” The text was from Jeanne. “Where did u go?!!!!” Cam flung her hand back like she’d been burned.

Kate’s brows knitted.

“He nips.”

“Typical man.”

Jeanne didn’t know where Cam was. A bad sign. A very bad sign. Cam felt a band of fear begin to tighten around her chest. She needed to move, to act, to do something. She jumped to her feet. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Outside?” Kate eyed the drop cloth.

“Bathroom—er, privy?”

Kate pointed to the closet/hallway Cam had just left. “To the right. Down the hall. Left at the statue of Mercury. First door on the right. Ring the bell when you finish.”

Cam fled, jogging through the maze of hallways and past Mercury, who not only towered over a grand staircase leading down to an entry hall but was unquestionably a Bernini, which nearly caused her to trip.

A Bernini. Jeez. Lely was wealthy. There was no doubt of that. She whipped out her phone and hustled into the first door on the right. Then she froze. She wasn’t in a privy. She was in a small alcove adjoining a much larger room in which two men’s voices could be heard. One was Lely’s.

“Sir David,” Lely said with impatience, “’tis not a matter of an unfinished portrait. ’Tis a matter of a woman seated in my waiting room who desires to be painted.”

Lely spoke in a low, courtly voice, and Cam decided the undercurrent she’d heard there was Teutonic—a preciseness that gave his words quiet resonance.

She flattened herself against the wall and immediately regretted the movement, which she saw reflected on wall-to-wall mirrors across the room. But the mirrors also gave her a view of the men’s backs. The men didn’t move, however, except for Sir David, who shifted under Lely’s obvious displeasure like a child being reprimanded by a teacher. She tightened the canvas around her and slowed her breathing.

Lely’s clothes were as finely cut as his companion’s, with white silk stockings, low velvet shoes, and gleaming charcoal breeks adorned with crimson ribbon that showed beneath his long frock coat. As confused and frightened as she was, Cam couldn’t help but feel a small thrill at seeing a painter like Lely in the flesh. Too often when studying long-dead painters, students were left feeling a distance that didn’t occur with more contemporary artists. Yet here he was—a handsome, living, breathing, and obviously irritated man.

Beyond the double doors, she could also hear the sounds of industry—voices engaged in conversation, the random movement of feet, the squeak of a chair on wooden floor, the sounds of cloth being torn. Lely’s studio was a hive of activity, and this room was the quiet eye of a well-oiled and hardworking storm. All of it, she thought distractedly, her authorial mind turning even as her practical mind was struggling to keep afloat, would create an exceptional scene in a book.

“My relationship with Miss Quinn is at an end,” Sir David said, “and Miss Quinn has been informed of that fact. This appointment should have been canceled weeks ago—”

“But wasn’t.”

Sir David shifted. “Aye, I apologize for that. My secretary has been ill and—”