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

“And me. How do you do this, the shade just under the leaf ? My God, it’s as if an actual leaf sits there. I can see the sides.”

He chuckled. “’Tis nothing. A trick my teacher taught me.

Only a bit of incising.” When her brows knitted he added,

“Come. Let me show you. ’Tis easier than explaining.” He reached for the palette and offered it to her. “You said you paint, aye?”

“Oh no. I couldn’t.”

“Of course you might.”

He guided the wood over her thumb, ignoring the flicker of heat, and handed her a brush. “Start with the ochre and a bit of the black.” He watched as she mixed the paint, diffidently then with greater assurance.

“That’s right,” he said, “only a touch. Now, I want you to let go and just guide the brush as if the painting were yours and the leaf a mere impediment to your objective.”

“My objective?”

“Aye. You have to keep your objective in mind.”

Cam’s objective was growing unclear, even to her. What she should be doing is asking him al the Van Dyck questions she could think of, as quickly as possible, then buying a one-way “Surprise Me!” ticket straight back to Pittsburgh, assuming she could ever sneak past Peter’s nosy relative. But a part of her just wanted to be with Peter and enjoy the fine night.

She could feel him wil ing her to try her hand at painting.

He had no idea that she’d once fancied herself a painter, nor how long it had been since she’d worked upon a canvas with anything more than halfhearted interest. The smal stil life on her desk didn’t count.

“Where?” she asked. “Where do you want me to paint?”

“There. You shal add a second leaf.”

“What? No! Large or smal ?”

“Your choice. The canvas is yours, milady.” He bowed.

She gazed at the stem he had begun and was surprised to see the new leaf form clearly in her head.

“Layer it on like silk,” he said, “with just as much texture.

This is the underlayer, you see, the part that wil be hidden.”

She drew the brush along the canvas, letting the bristles flip upward. It left a perfect leaf shape on the blue background.

He cocked his head and, after an instant, nodded his approval. She smiled. She’d been damned good at this once.

“Now,” he said, handing her a thicker brush, “the verdigris.”

“Shouldn’t we let it dry?”

“We should,” he said. “But I would not sacrifice this moment of teaching to the perfection of the viscount’s painting. He has an unskil ed eye, and if he does not care for the paint cracking on this glorious leaf in twenty years’

time, he may rot.”

She laughed. The verdigris was thicker than the other colors, like a smal blob of Jel -O on the palette. She pushed it left and right, automatical y feathering in a daub of yel ow.

Peter’s brow went up.

She considered an addition of blue.

“I might try the red madder,” he said.

She looked at the red, but the resultant gray-brown would deaden her green. She flicked the tip through the blue.

She could feel the corner of his mouth rise. “The student rebels.”

“I am no man’s thral ,” she said, and the look that fol owed sent a pleasurable shiver down her back.

“Now for the shadow you admired so fervently,” he said.

“Turn your brush.”

Uncertain, she flipped the sable from left to right. “The other way,” he instructed, then gently slid the brush from her hand and returned it with the wooden point down.

“You use the other end?”

He picked up a clean brush from the shelf, as thick and wide as the one she used for her facial powder. “A brush has many uses. A good artist does not limit himself to just one. Take the point and draw it along the left there, flipping the edge of the verdigris up as you go. Go on. Do not hesitate. Exactly! You see, you have not only exposed a trace of the yel ow below, but created a tiny hil ock of verdigris as wel .”

The suggestion of contour made the image leap from the canvas. “Amazing!”

“Just a trick. There are dozens and dozens. I could teach you al of them if you had time.”

If you had time. The offer warmed her heart, but more than that, it unleashed a longing for artistic connection in her that she’d had no idea existed.

“I wish I did,” she said truthful y. “I cannot stay much longer.”

“Of course. Tonight of al nights. I don’t wonder you have an obligation. But you wil return? Tomorrow,