Page 28 of Flirting with Forever

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.”