Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready (books for 20 year olds TXT) 📗

She flattened herself against the wal and immediately regretted the movement, which she saw reflected on wal -

to-wal 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 reprimanded by a teacher.

She tightened the canvas she had wrapped around her and slowed her breathing.

Lely’s clothes were as finely cut as his companion’s, Cam noted with interest, with white silk stockings, low velvet shoes and a gleaming expanse of charcoal breeches adorned with crimson ribbon that showed beneath his long frockcoat. As confused and frightened as she was, Cam couldn’t help but feel a smal thril 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 wel -

oiled and hardworking storm. Al of it, she thought distractedly, her authorial mind turning even as her practical mind was struggling to keep afloat, would paint an exceptional scene in a book.

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

“But wasn’t.”

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

An older man—a servant—with pale eyes, a shock of white hair and a wel -worn smock, opened the hal way door and looked in. Cam held her breath. The man bowed to Sir David but spoke directly to Peter. “Miss Quinn has been moved to the Red Room, sir.”

“Thank you, Stephen.”

The servant bowed and exited.

Sir David cleared his throat. “I mean to do my duty. Tel her to go to this address.” He handed Peter a card. “She knows it. It is a place where I conduct my business affairs.

Desire her to come in a quarter of an hour. My secretary wil explain the situation. You need not be further discommoded.”

Peter placed the card on a nearby table with a snap that made Cam straighten. “The portrait, then, is canceled?”

“Yes,” Sir David said with a rush of relief. He turned as if an exit were imminent, but Peter readjusted his stance, facing the nobleman head-on, which made his companion shrink.

“As I am sure you understand,” Lely said careful y, “I do not charge by the hour. I charge by the commission.”

Cam rol ed her eyes. Shelter, food, water, air, adoration.

Only one thing ranked higher in an artist’s pyramid of needs and that was cold, hard cash.

Sir David straightened his cuff. “Natural y I have no objection to paying you. My wife’s portrait was eighteen six.

I shal offer you half that for Miss Quinn?”

Lely’s lip rose perceptibly, and for an instant Cam wondered if he intended to bloody the man’s nose.

“Keep your money, sir,” he said with manufactured bonhomie. “I shouldn’t be able to live with myself were I to treat a treasured acquaintance so abominably.”

Sir David blinked, wondering with understandable justification if he had just been insulted.

Lely returned the smal card as if he were removing offal.

“You may settle the details of this arrangement with Stephen.” With a bow, he withdrew, fol owed, after an audible harrumph by Sir David.

Cam peeked down the hal and, over Sir David’s head, spotted Lely disappearing into another doorway guarded by a wel -fortified desk. Like painters in her time, painters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries often had a secretary or assistant to negotiate arrangements for a commission, freeing the painter to concentrate on his work.

That desk reminded Cam a patron would have to be very rich or very determined to score face-to-face time with that god among men, the artist. She found herself making a mental note to include this in the Van Dyck bio.

She lifted her phone, got into Favorites and pressed the button for Jeanne. She held the phone to her ear, waiting for the silence to turn to a ring. One beat. Two beats. Three beats. Exasperated, she pul ed the phone down to look at it