by Gwyn Cready
Peter clasped his hands behind his back and surveyed her. However despicable Peter found the effort, Stephen had executed his job well. She had Ursula’s shapely hips and earthy, round breasts as well as the damn-you-to-hell face Ursula wore when she was crossed. His only question now was, was this interloper a woman freely interested in him or had Stephen purchased her interest in the back lanes of Covent Garden? He was surprised and a bit ashamed to find himself pruriently eager to know the answer.
“What’s your name?”
“Mrs. Eugenie Post.”
“Your real name.”
She seemed to falter. Had she thought him blind to the game?
“None of your business.”
He exhaled. There was something irritatingly entrancing about a woman who refused to bend.
“But you are a widow?”
“I am.”
Then not a whore? He narrowed his eyes. The dress was beautiful—especially with her coloring—but dresses could be bought. There was a regality to her posture, however, that could not be pretense. She was an intelligent, well-bred woman.
“Did you speak in such a manner to your husband?”
She picked a speck of lint from her sleeve. “When he deserved it.”
He had circled behind her, and the woman turned to hold his gaze.
“I should speak to any man or gentleman so,” she added with a significant look, “should he deserve it.”
He dropped his gaze, abashed. He had been inexcusably rude in the waiting room.
“I beg your pardon. I was abrupt.”
She pursed her lips. His defenses were crumbling.
“You understand I am in no mood to be played upon,” he said.
“I have no intention of playing, I assure you.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “Whence are your people?”
She blinked. “My people? I’m German and Welsh, if that’s what you mean.”
He’d been right. The accent, the eyes, the skin. “German, is it? Where?”
“North. Bremen, I believe.”
He nodded. He knew Bremen.
“It is not,” he said after a long pause, “that you do not tempt me. If I am honest, you do. But I am simply not capable of such a thing now.”
“Of a commission?” She looked at him, confused.
“I treated you like a scrub, and for that I apologize, but I cannot…” Oh, why had Stephen chosen such a moment to push this?
“‘Cannot’? Cannot what?”
He searched for words and discovered he was not as certain about what he could and couldn’t do as he’d thought. “I-I—”
His answer was cut short by the sound of a large group of people trooping up the stairs. “The royal entourage!” someone wailed.
Stephen reappeared in the doorway. “The Duchess of Portsmouth is with him.”
“Bloody Christ!” Peter paled. If the king were to be embarrassed in front of his lover, he’d be furious, and the last thing Peter needed now was a furious king. “What about Nell?”
“Locked away.”
“And the painting?”
“I’ll send someone to remove it.”
“Hurry!”
“Peter…?” Stephen tossed a worried expression in Mrs. Post’s direction.
“Aye, I know.”
“What?” she demanded.
“Put Charles and the duchess in the Gold Room,” he said to Stephen. “I’ll attend to them shortly.”
Stephen disappeared, and Peter shut the door and leaned against it. “I must insist you stay here. Do not exit this room.”
“What? No. I should like to meet the king—I mean, if it’s possible. I should like to very much, in fact.”
“I can’t allow it.”
“You have redeemed yourself, Mr. Lely, but you are not my keeper. I refuse to be held against my will.”
She started for the door, and he angled his bulk in front of her. The blue flames returned to her eyes, and while Peter wished for time to find out what else might fan them, time was a luxury he didn’t have.
“The king has more power than you can imagine,” he said flatly, “and a disturbing predilection for redheads. I see you smile, milady, but I assure you, ’tis not a matter for lightheartedness. I have seen women seized who have been foolish enough to catch his eye and then 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.”
Eleven
“If you wish my protection…” Despite a growing fear about her presence here, Cam thought there was something wildly romantic about the phrase, especially accompanied by the earnestness in those brandy-colored eyes. She leaned against the door, tingling as Peter locked it, and it was with a small smile she pulled the phone from her clutch and checked the display for a signal.
Nothing.
She moved toward the wall closest to the models’ room, reminding herself as she did so that 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-dollar 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’ll repay your trust.”
And as much as she’d like to meet the king who had not only known Van Dyck but actually posed for him, she was willing—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’ll 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.
“I hope you’ve got a comfortable hammock, then,” 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 Nell, by the way.” She set the hook against the wall.
“I’m Campbell Stratford. Er, Eugenie Stratford. Eugenie Campbell Stratford Post.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Call 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 filled the room.
“Aren’t you supposed to be locked away?” Cam asked.
“Aye. ’Tis standard procedure when Squintabella 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.”
“Squintabella?”
“The Duchess of Portsmouth. Bit of a cockeye, you know. I believe there may be hunchback blood in the family as well.”
In the hall, Cam heard running feet and furiously whispered orders. She examined Nell’s ankles. No wreaths of leaves, but there was that shepherd’s crook… “Are you to be a royal supporter as well?”
Nell laughed. “Only if cockstands are the object in question. I’m the king’s other mistress.”
Cam felt the smack of surprise. This was Nell Gwyn, the spirited you
ng actress with whom Charles dallied for almost a decade and who was the mother of at least a couple of his illegitimate children. And while Nell’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.” Nell gestured toward the opposite end of the room. There, next to a cushioned chaise, sat a nearly finished painting of Nell, utterly nude, lying on the same chaise, accompanied by a small cherub.
“Madonna,” Cam repeated, “the mother of Jesus?”
“Madonna or Venus. I forget which. Charles changed his mind so often.”
The painting was stunning. As Cam approached the canvas, the flush of Nell’s skin gleamed in warm light, the pillows on which she lay looked as if they would rise like clouds into the sky, and the pale blue dressing gown, the very one she now wore, draped off her shoulders, exposing pale breasts, a curving waist, and a long, slender leg bent at the knee. Her head was reclined against the pillows, angled slightly as if she were sharing a sly secret with the viewer, and sensuous waves of red-brown hair trailed across her shoulders and onto the white silk. Cam could almost see the individual strands, feel the lush fabric, smell the perfume on her skin. Cam saw what Peter saw, and for a long moment she wondered what it would be like to be thus observed. She also wondered if Peter was in love with Nell.
“It’s beautiful,” Cam said truthfully. It was also mildly shocking. It wasn’t that artists hadn’t been painting women nude in this century. They had from time immemorial. What made it shocking was that women of the court—she could hardly say upstanding women as she knew Nell had been a prostitute as well as an actress prior to going to bed with the king—did not pose without clothes. It was one thing for a woman of the street or the artist’s wife to pose for him. It was quite another for a woman who expected to maintain a place of honor and position to do it. This was the same quality that had made Peter’s paintings of the women with a breast exposed so intriguing.
Nell dimpled again. “Peter knows how to make a woman look beautiful.”
Cam stepped back to admire the whole.
The only part unfinished was Nell’s face. It looked as if he had started over at least once and possibly twice. Her eyes, nose, and mouth were no more than ciphers.
A key scratched in the lock, and a young man wearing a leather apron stepped in. “Pardon me, m’um—oh, good afternoon, Miss Gwyn,” he added, his pocked face lighting up.
“Good afternoon, Moseby.”
“Regrets, ladies, but it’ll be my hide if I don’t get this painting stowed. The duchess is in high dudgeon. She wants to know when Mr. Lely will begin her portrait.”
“Advise her not to choose a three-quarter view,” Nell said. “The hump may show.”
Cam stepped out of Moseby’s way as he unfastened the canvas. “I’m getting the impression,” Cam said to Nell, “you’re not an admirer of the duchess.”
“She makes things damned uncomfortable for Peter. She’s figured out Charles likes to have portraits painted of his lovers—and for some reason she thinks that because she’s Catholic she should be the only one. She’s taken to dropping in unannounced to see what she can sniff out—like one of them Frenchy truffle pigs, upon my word. Charles just assumes Peter will keep the royal lovers separated and his affairs discreet, and he has a mighty temper, which is why Peter has to go through this ridiculous Merry Andrew show whenever she shows up.”
Cam shuddered. Her family had been divided into the lions and the lambs. Anastasia, who took after their father, practically grew fangs and a stinger when she was mad. Cam, like her brother and mother, approached the world with unwavering calm, and she had had to work hard all her life not to be crushed in the onslaught. She hated the tyranny of temper.
“That doesn’t seem exactly fair.”
Nell laughed. “Fair doesn’t come into it. Charles is like a lava flow. It isn’t that he assumes everyone will get out of his way—he just happens to destroy the ones who don’t.”
“He wouldn’t destroy Peter, surely.” Cam didn’t know much about Lely’s later years. Was it possible he’d lost the favor of the king?
“I heard he nearly chucked him once. There was a misunderstanding over one of Peter’s whores. The king wanted her. Peter refused. Said he needed her for a painting he was completing that night and suggested one of the other girls might be more in the way of the king’s liking. It was a reasonable suggestion, and the king is known for giving his bedmates expensive gifts, so I’m certain any of them would have been happy to take her place. Charles was in one of his Falstaff moods, grinning and playing the host, so he didn’t want to be seen losing his temper. He agreed to choose another and laughed as if the whole thing had been a joke, but the footman who was there told me Charles didn’t see Peter for a year after that, and half the court stayed away as well out of fear of inviting the king’s displeasure.”
“Oh dear. Poor Peter.”
Nell grabbed a plum from a bowl of fruit, wiped it on her gown, and sighed. “I’ve painted Charles to be a positive Old Nick, I know, but he’s a rattlin’ good cove when it comes to fun, and I do think you’d like him if you met him, but I guess Peter has other ideas.” She gave Cam a curious smile and bit into the purple flesh. “Has anyone happened to mention you’re practically the twin of his lover?”
Cam started. “Charles’s?”
“Peter’s. That is, before old Pauly got his arms around her.”
The young man stole a look at Cam, then hoisted the painting free and hurried to the door. “Sorry for the intrusion.” As he bounded into the hall, Nell said, “You’ll want to make sure—”
A murderous scream exploded in the air.
“—she’s not in the hall. Oh no! Poor Peter!”
“That’s Nell in that painting!” a Frenchwoman cried. “Nell!”
Then men’s voices—Peter’s and what Cam assumed to be the king’s—joined in with urgent reassurances. The woman on the canvas, Peter explained, was the mistress of a Spanish count. She wasn’t Nell. Couldn’t possibly be Nell. Why, the hair was all wrong, as anyone could see. Nell’s was much darker. But the duchess would have none of it.
“She’s here, and I’ll find her. That irritating little beetch!”
The last words sent a bolt of fury through Cam. Of the dozens of painters in the art book on Amazon, she’d managed to find the only one with the Restoration equivalent of Anastasia as a client. There was only one way to deal with people like that. She grabbed Nell’s arm and dragged her toward the storage room. “Hide.”
Twelve
Peter’s heart sank as he hurried after the duchess. Around him, apprentices were running like rats before a flood, the king was alternately arguing and soothing, Stephen was quietly locking doors as if the horse hadn’t already jumped the stile, and even Mertons was rushing about trying to reassure Peter’s bewildered patrons, but all Peter could think about was that if Charles lost his temper over this, as he rightfully ought, Peter would never get his paper signed. And that paper must be signed. He owed it to Ursula.
“Your Grace, please,” Peter implored.
“I will not hear it,” the duchess snapped. “You conspire with heem.”
Peter was a Dutchman, but he loved the English and had long ago acquired the disdain they nursed for their reckless, power-hungry French neighbors across the sea.
“Never, Your Grace, never,” Peter said. “Why, I should rather consign my soul to the fires of hell than lie to you. You are welcome to look anywhere you please.”
She paused. “I am?”
Peter looked at Stephen, who gave him a small nod. Peter dropped a deep, courtly bow in acquiescence and hoped Stephen was surer about this than he had be
en about the painting. If Nell was found anywhere in a five-mile radius, the king—and therefore, Peter—would have the devil to pay.
The duchess flung open the first door she found, and a half dozen of his newest apprentices, already keenly aware of the maelstrom engulfing the studio, gripped their brushes, unsure what new terrors might lie ahead.
With an aggrieved huff, the duchess spun around, clipping the closest easel with her skirt and causing the owner to drop his palette. She swept back into the hall and tried another door, only to find a closet filled with pots of painting supplies.
The next door was the dining room, and Peter’s heart was in his throat. Nell would certainly be smart enough to hide if she had heard the duchess. But had she heard?
The duchess jiggled the knob and turned with a triumphant “Locked!”
Peter already had the key on his outstretched palm. She grabbed it and jammed it into the lock. An instant later, the door opened onto the empty but exquisite room, decorated in shades of turquoise and brown in the style of the Turks, with lacework brass lamps, minaret centerpieces, and tufted, tasseled ottomans instead of the usual chairs. It had been the only room of his home accessible through the studio, laid out by the architect to extend like an arm from the town house next door, where he and Ursula had lived, in order to facilitate the dinners he’d been expected to provide his patrons. Its contents, from the rubbed teak table inlaid with bits of mirror and lapis to the solid silver, hand-chased drawer pulls, had been chosen by her. Peter had shuttered the town house after her death, and though Stephen had insisted in keeping this room tidy and polished, Peter himself never entered it and even now felt the sharp stab of sorrow that overtook him whenever he saw such a reminder of his former life.
But his heart lifted as the duchess gasped. Even she appreciated the sheer delight of Ursula’s decoration. Stephen’s furtive glance toward the sideboard, however, the only possible place for Nell to hide, and his resultant look of concern worried Peter.
“Where is she?” Peter whispered fiercely.
