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

it and jammed it into the lock. An instant later, the door opened onto the empty but exquisite room, decorated in shades of turquoise and brown in the style of the Turks, with lacework brass lamps, minaret centerpieces and tufted, tasseled ottomans in royal blue instead of the usual chairs. It had been the only room of his home accessible through the studio, laid out by the architect to extend like an arm from the town house next door, where he and Ursula had lived, in order to facilitate the dinners he’d been expected to provide his patrons. Its contents, from the rubbed teak table inlaid with bits of mirror and lapis to the solid silver, hand-chased drawer pul s, had been chosen by her. Peter had shuttered the town house after her death, and though Stephen had insisted in keeping this room tidy and inhabited, Peter himself never entered it and even now felt the deadening stab of sorrow that overtook him whenever he saw such a reminder.

But his heart lifted as the duchess gasped. Even she appreciated the sheer delight of Ursula’s decoration.

Stephen’s furtive glance toward the sideboard, however, the only possible place for Nel to hide, and his resultant look of concern worried Peter.

“Where is she?” he whispered fiercely.

“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 which suggested Nel 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 Nel , however, this Venus had her robin’s-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 fal 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 bel y, letting it trail over her shoulders exactly as Nel ’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 pul 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 forceful y 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 wel as Louise, Duchess of Portsmouth.”

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

Al eyes turned to the duchess. Her reaction would spel success or doom. Lord knew, every person in the room was pul ing for the countess’s affirmation. Peter hadn’t felt such religious fervor since the night Charles bet the entire phalanx of Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia’s ladies-in-waiting that they wouldn’t run naked