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

reject his invitation. Your liberty would be restored in a matter of hours, but I do not think you’d care for your state when he is done. He is a king, and I make no apologies, but if you wish my protection, you must stay here.”

11

“If you wish my protection …” Despite a growing fear about her presence here, Cam thought there was something wildly romantic about the phrase, especial y accompanied by the earnestness in those warm brandy eyes. She leaned against the door, tingling as Peter locked it, and it was with a smal smile she pul ed the phone from her clutch and checked the display for a signal.

Nothing.

Of course, she reminded herself as she journeyed closer to the wal most likely to be adjacent to the models’ room, tingling had rarely been a harbinger of good decision making. Jacket hadn’t offered her protection before he’d dragged her to the ladies’ room that night—in fact, she’d barely gotten him to use protection, if she remembered correctly—but he had whispered to her that the seriously sexy real-estate developer eliciting her opinions of postmodern art and buying her fifteen-dol ar martinis that evening was rumored to have started the most virulent strain of genital herpes this side of the Atlantic, which, when you think about it, was about as close to protection as one was likely to get in the modern art world.

She remembered with a smile how the brandy in Peter’s eyes had stirred at her acquiescence.

“Thank you,” he’d said gruffly. “I wil repay your trust.”

And as much as she’d like to meet the king who had not only known Van Dyck but actual y posed for him, she was wil ing—for a bit, at least—to put her faith in Lely.

“Ah, Peter,” she said. “You are a curious man.”

“Curious?” said a voice behind her. “Upon my word, if you two aren’t fucking by Friday, I’l be a baboon’s berth mate.”

Cam spun around and nearly dropped the phone. A slim woman in a robin’s-egg blue dressing gown emerged from a neighboring room. She held a shepherd’s hook in one hand.

“Then I hope you’ve got a double hammock,” Cam said, slipping the phone back into her bag. “I am not one to be mastered by impulses.” She checked to see if her pants were on fire.

The woman eyed her as long as she politely could, then added, “I’m Nel , by the way.” She set the hook against the wal .

“I’m Campbel Stratford. Er, Eugenie Stratford. Eugenie Campbel Stratford Post.”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“Cal me Cam.”

“Very nice to make your acquaintance, Cam.” She took Cam’s hand and smiled, sprouting dimples.

She had bright pink polish on her fingernails and a personality that fil ed the room.

“Aren’t you supposed to be locked away?” Cam asked.

“Aye. ’Tis standard procedure when Squintabel a arrives.

But I suspect poor Stephen thought I was in the dining room and locked that. I finished my eel pie there a quarter hour ago.”

“Squintabel a?”

“The Duchess of Portsmouth. Bit of a cockeye, you know. I believe there may be hunchback blood in the family.”

Cam heard the patter of running feet and furiously whispered orders. She examined Nel ’s ankles. No wreaths of leaves, but there was that shepherd’s crook… . “Are you to be a royal supporter as wel ?”

Nel laughed. “Only if cockstands are the object in question. I am the king’s other mistress.”

Cam felt the smack of surprise. This was Nel Gwyn, the spirited young actress with whom Charles dal ied for almost a decade and who was the mother of at least a couple of his il egitimate children. And while Nel ’s hair was more of an auburn than the copper of Cam’s, there were enough streaks of red to explain Charles’s attraction. Nell Gwyn and the king! The bubble of authorial excitement nearly made her clap.

Cam said, “So no posing as the Danish coat of arms for you, then, eh?”

“No. I am the Madonna.” Nel gestured toward the opposite end of the room. There, next to a cushioned opposite end of the room. There, next to a cushioned chaise, sat a nearly finished painting of Nel , utterly nude, lying on the same chaise, accompanied by a smal cherub.

“Madonna,” Cam repeated, “the mother of Jesus?”

“Madonna or Venus. I forget which. Charles changes his mind so often.”

Apart from the questionable portrayal, the work was stunning. As Cam approached the canvas, the flush