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

room that bore a vague, otherworldly resemblance to the scul ery in Peter’s town house, holding open the door of something that looked like a large, lit wardrobe in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. He stared at Peter in amazement.

“Who are you?”

A Londoner, Peter thought, from the vicinity of Borough Market. So the Irish part of her story was a lie as wel . “I’m here for Miss Stratford.”

The man’s eyes flicked from Peter’s breeks to his hair to the name on his pocket. “Are you here for the radiators?”

Peter considered saying “Aye.” It would certainly be expedient, so long as it didn’t entail actual y transacting with the “radiator,” whatever that might be. But there was something in the man’s demeanor that made him refuse.

“No.”

The man waited for an explanation of his presence. But Peter had learned long ago that the person who provides the least amount of information in a situation like this usual y has the advantage.

Peter inclined his head toward the easel he saw in the next-door room, the room from which the woman’s voice had come. “Are you a painter?”

The man swung in the direction Peter was looking. “I am.”

“May I look?”

Surprised, the man shrugged. “Sure.”

The woman had disappeared, Peter noted as he made his way into the room. The painting was perfectly square, already a discordant note for someone who was used to a more classic ratio of height to width, and the space had been slashed diagonal y through the center with a line of brown to separate one working area from another. Below the line, the canvas was blank, though smal notes of yel ow paper printed with phrases such as “steamed buns—hips,”

“Rhubarb/barbed wire?” and “meat grinder” hung there.

Above the line, though, the man had laid in the rough groundwork of a classic and sensual nude. The woman was exotic and angular, like a crane on a Chinese vase, with her hair cut short like a boy’s. She was reclined, not unlike his Nel or Rubens’s Angelica, and gazed directly at her painter. Peter felt a knot in his stomach loosen, and he realized he’d been afraid the woman on the canvas would be Campbel Stratford.

“The scale of light in your painting is amazingly wel conceived,” Peter said. “As is the composition, at least those parts I can see. I did not expect it.”

The painter’s brows rose. “You didn’t?”

“No.” Nor had he. The techniques were not far from what he employed himself. His eyes flickered to the un-made bed, and he felt a pang of uneasiness. “Were you guild trained?”

The painter looked at him askance. “Goldsmiths,” he said careful y. “University of London.”

“Ah. I am not aware of Goldsmiths. What is the purpose of the notes?” Peter pointed to the squares of yel ow paper.

“Just some ideas for the reaping.”

“Reaping?”

“I translate the part of the figure below the line into everyday objects, which I then enclose in clear acrylic.

Look, nothing personal, bloke, but who the hel are you?”

Peter did not need to ask the same question of his host.

The moment the man said he enclosed everyday objects, Peter realized with a start this was the same painter who had created the odd amalgam of traditional and naïve in the portrait that hung in the other room. It stung him that the man had earned not only a place in Campbel Stratford’s bed, but the place of honor in her drawing room as wel .

Nor did Peter need to answer, for a thunderous rush of water sounded from an adjoining room and the painter cal ed, “Yoy! Heads up. We have company.”

The door rattled open, and a woman knotting a towel around her chest cried, “Jesus, is it—Oh!”

It was the woman in the painting. There was no question in Peter’s mind.

“Hel o,” she said disinterestedly, then added to the painter, “Jacket, where’s the wine?”

When he pointed toward the kitchen, she strode out, and Peter caught the discreet brush she gave the man’s hand as she passed. Peter’s gaze returned to the bed, and he felt a sickening wave of anger mixed il ogical y with sorrow, sorrow for Campbel Stratford.

“Jacket?” Peter forced the cold ire under control.

“I’m Jacket Sprague,” the man said, and he was clearly just about to add, “And you are?” when Peter beat him to the punch: “I’m Peter Lely.”

Jacket’s gaze went to the name