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

He took a step. “Miss Stratford?” No answer. He heard music playing in the distance and wondered where the musicians were. It was a plaintive song, and a woman began to sing about how hard she’d try to show a man that he was her only dream. He’d never heard any song that sounded like this. The voice, haunting and low, sent a chil down his back.

The space was open and high, so different than any home in London. It was opulent, but in a spare, un-adorned way. The furniture was square and low, bookcases lined the room and an asymmetrical fireplace presided at the room’s far end.

He approached the closest bookcase, drawn by an array of portraits—or pictures, as he knew they were cal ed here.

There was one of a mother pinning a ribbon on a cherubic child. The child was Campbel Stratford. He would have recognized the red-gold hair anywhere, but the freckles and missing tooth added a young unexpected layer of charm. In the next picture she was an adult in a gal ery of some sort with other people her own age. They held pints of ale and were giving the artist exuberant smiles. The last picture was of her from behind, perched over a railing with a man’s arm around her, looking at Notre Dame on a sunny summer day.

Peter assessed the man—the position of his hand, the strength of his profile. He wore no wig and his light hair had been shaved very close, and though Peter could not see the man’s eyes wel , his affection for Campbel was clear.

This was the last thing he wished to see. He turned, and the work of art on the wal he now faced took his breath away.

It was a woman, half a woman, whose portrait was slashed diagonal y through the center, like the shield on a coat of arms. Above the dividing line, the woman was represented by an oil painting. Below the dividing line, clear cubes of varying sizes, holding pieces of fruit and other household objects, represented the rest of her.

Peter stared, amazed. An orange for a breast, a plum for her mons, an ancient lock on the finger of her left hand and a round metal circle with wavy, folded-in edges emblazoned with the words “Budweiser—King of Beers” for a nipple. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before, but the artist’s purpose was instantly clear, and he smiled. The artist’s mark, in the lower right-hand corner, was the outline of a knife and the letters JKET.

Another bel rang, and he jumped. It rang, stopped, rang, stopped. The noise came from a smal multibuttoned object on a hal way table. After the third ring, he heard a click and Campbel Stratford’s distinctive contralto.

“Jeanne? Jeanne? Are you there? Pick up. Oh, Christ, I’l be there as fast as I can.”

The click sounded again, and the noise stopped. It pained him to be reminded that she’d masked her real voice with an English accent to deceive him.

A book cal ed The Carnegie Museum of Art Collection Highlights sat on the table in front of a couch, and the cover showed a painting of a woman stepping into a tub. Again he was in awe of the loose technique and the highly unconventional color choice. According to the credit, the artist was one “Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas.” Despite what Peter’s teachers had impressed upon him, it seemed breaking the rules hadn’t destroyed the art of painting after al .

Campbel had slipped a piece of paper in to mark a page. He turned to the page and nearly laughed. It was his painting of the Duchess of Portsmouth. She was looking particularly pleased with herself, in red silk, with the sterling and leather appointments of an archer across her lap. But what had made him laugh was the short, blunt mustache Campbel had drawn above her lip.

He was starting to get irritated. The assistant had promised him Campbel would be here. If Campbel didn’t arrive, she’d be sorry. He would chance the moving room again, find a place to sleep and return to the museum at first light. He didn’t know how her master world would react to finding out she had discovered a time tube hole and used it for personal gain, but he suspected it wouldn’t add appreciably to her professional credentials.

Not that he wanted to destroy her career—that is, unless he had to. But the book had to be stopped. He would die before