Flirting With Forever by Gwyn Cready (new books to read TXT) 📕

A warmth came over him as he realized it was the portrait he’d done of her.

“How … ?”

“Mertons,” she said inexplicably.

He damned the man silently. He’d asked Mertons to dispose of it and instead he’d given it to her.

“He wanted me to convince you to go back. I was going to return it. Never quite got around to it.” She gave him a lopsided smile, but the lights of a passing car showed lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there a few minutes earlier.

“What is it?” He laid a tentative hand on her wrist. He knew it was the cal . She’d laughed it off, but something in her had changed.

“Nothing, it’s … I’m sure it’s nothing.” She pushed the rudder into place, turned the wheel and the car sailed into traffic.

“Tel me.”

The beacon turned from yel ow to red. The car slowed and stopped. Cam pul ed a lever until it squealed and touched her lashes with a finger.

“It’s the Van Dyck,” she said. “But it just doesn’t make any sense.”

Peter felt a trace of foreboding. “The painting from Bal ?”

“Yes. My boss just cal ed. He says it’s not a Van Dyck.”

His heart thudded in his chest. “Pul the car off the road. I need to run upstairs.”

He flung open the door and hit the switch for the light. In two strides he was at the desk. But his hopes sank before he even flipped to the back of the sketchbook. The letter from Anthony Van Dyck was gone.

49

“I don’t know what you mean,” Cam said.

He gazed at her in the light of the museum’s entry-way, looking so beautiful and so worried, “I mean, don’t worry.”

He kissed her forehead, which felt as soft as a summer breeze, and slipped the coat off her shoulders. “Go talk to your master. The gala doesn’t start for half an hour. I’m sure you’l be able to work it out.”

“But how … ?”

“Have faith.”

“Faith, huh?”

“And self-confidence, aye?”

She nodded uncertainly, and he kissed her again, pushing her gently on her way. As he watched her climb the long staircase, he thought that though he’d seen more than one queen crowned in glory at the head of a court, he’d never seen anything to match this Cenerentola with her breathtaking fal of flame-kissed curls, soft olive bodice and skirts trailing behind. If she lost a slipper as she rose higher and higher, he would not have batted an eye.

When she disappeared, he turned to the guard. “Where might I find a woman named Anastasia? I need to speak to her. ’Tis a matter of great import.”

50

“This is a disaster, Cam.” Lamont Packard stood at the window, gazing out at the rol ing hil s of Schenley Park, fists stuffed deep in the pockets of his tuxedo.

“But it doesn’t make sense. The painting passed every review, including mine.”

He turned, sighed and lowered himself onto the edge of his desk. “Experts make mistakes al the time. You know what happened to Andromeda Chained to a Rock. ”

She did. The painting owned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, supposedly by Van Dyck, had been attributed to him and then de-attributed so many times she didn’t think anyone believed what the title card read anymore, including the staff.

“But that was different,” she said. “That painting had a very sketchy provenance. Bal bought this one from an earl whose family had forgotten it had been stowed in their cel ar for the last two hundred years. For God’s sake, they stil have the bil of sale for eighteen guineas, eight shil ings from when the first earl bought it from Van Dyck’s agent right after Van Dyck’s death. Can you let me see the letter?”

Bal shrugged, reached across his desk and handed her a fragile sheath of vel um.

Her heart sunk. The writing was in Van Dyck’s hand.

She’d seen it enough times on paintings and letters to recognize his distinctive script anywhere.

“It’s Van Dyck’s.”

Packard nodded. “The paper fits the period as wel .”

She unfolded the note careful y. It appeared to be a page torn out of a diary.

I have made the Decision to close my Studio for a fortnight. Until the Fevre which rages in the city passes, I will take no more commissions. ’Tis a bitter potion, to be Sure, but my Luck this year has been Strong and, with the recent Commissions from His Majesty, I can