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

Cam could feel Jeanne squawking into her hip. “I was looking for the privy.”

“Wedged out the window?”

“Sometimes they’re in the oddest places.”

Mertons looked at her as if he were trying to tease out a puzzle. Al he needed was a magnifying glass and one of those Sherlock Holmes hats with the earflaps. She prepared for a run.

“There you are.” Peter appeared in the doorway. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I was looking for the privy.”

Peter bit back a smile. “I hope you’ve satisfied your curiosity here, then.”

“Thank you. Yes.” Men. She gathered her purse and slipped the phone in her pocket in one smooth move.

“Would either of you be wil ing to redirect me?”

Peter coughed. “Certainly.”

“Peter,” Mertons said. “Might I have a word?”

“Aye. Just one. No.”

“But, Peter, there are certain oddities—”

“Mertons, I know we have a shared appointment. But as far as I can tel , the sitter we so anxiously anticipate has not arrived. Am I correct?”

“Wel , aye, but—”

Peter took Cam’s arm and began to pul her out of the room. “Then I think you might do wel to concentrate on your room. “Then I think you might do wel to concentrate on your brushwork. I’m afraid Stephen has commented on your lack of practice. Twelve hours a day, my friend. That’s what makes a painter. Familial connection can only carry you so far.”

Cam frowned. Bald-headed Mertons was related to Peter?

20

As Peter fiddled with the paints, waiting for her return from the privy, he found himself almost nervous. “Good God, man,” he muttered, smiling, “you can’t even hold a brush.”

He heard her footfal on the stair and watched as those beautiful blue eyes found him.

“You’re back,” he said.

“Indeed.”

He couldn’t help but remember a time before Ursula, when the measure of a good time had been guiding whatever lady-in-waiting had met his eye that evening to the closest private wal , where he would loosen her gown, hook her leg over his arm and plow her until she cried, dry mouthed, for more. Ursula had taught him the value of soft bedding and long-drawn-out afternoons, but looking into Camil a’s eyes now, the thought of those rough wal s and incandescent joinings seemed very, very appealing.

Did she see his longing, feel him stripping her with his eyes? He hoped not.

He dropped his gaze. “I do apologize for the king’s intrusion.”

“’Twas nothing. Real y.” She darted to the chaise and dropped her bag before returning to his side, a tentative smile on her face. “I take it he requires a lot of attention.”

Peter laughed. “Aye, like an underdisciplined child with the army of Hannibal at his command.”

“Not a promising combination?”

“No. He is a most demanding patron.”

That ringlet stil hung loose. His fingers burned as he remembered pul ing the pin. She caught him gazing at the tendril and tucked it over her shoulder self-consciously. He wanted her—in every way a man can want a woman. He had been moved at the beginning by her resemblance to Ursula, but now his desire had many sources—her courage, her wit, her wild, untamed spirit. There wasn’t a woman in a hundred who would have inserted herself into Nel ’s spot to save him, and there wasn’t a woman in a thousand who would have bared her desires before him the way she had.

He said, “Shal we rest a bit before I begin painting again?”

“Yes. That would be good.”

“Perhaps something warm to eat or a—”

“Is this yours?”

She had stopped in front of an unfinished canvas. It was of little Jane, the daughter of Viscount Harrison. The day had been warm, and the girl, no more than ten, had found the long period of enforced stil ness difficult. He had said he would al ow her to move the rest of her body if she would keep her hand stil . She agreed readily, and he placed a peach in it. Jane’s image, therefore, was barely started, though the hand and especial y the thick impasto of fruit and its green-brown leaf represented a nearly finished passage.

“Aye. I do not normal y start on the hand”—he flushed again, thinking of how the movement of Camil a’s hand had drawn his eye earlier—“but