"You do not agree?" he asked.
"I don't think your ideas would go over very well with the women back home."
He made a dismissive sound. "Americans are so uptight. They treat a breast like a temptation sent by the devil."
"I confess I never thought of my own that way."
Which, of course, made him look to see what wiles the devil might have wrought on her chest. "Mmm," he said in appreciation, and saved himself from further harm by arriving in front of the shop he was seeking. "We shall build ourselves a movable feast. You like soft cheeses, yes?"
"Not the smelly ones with all the mold."
He made a wounded sound. "For a woman who works with food, I think you are sadly uneducated on how to eat."
Eliza rolled her eyes. The man was incorrigible. He invited himself along without even awaiting her aye or nay, he criticized her clothing, accused her and her countrymen of being prudes, and now implied that she knew nothing about her field of expertise.
And yet… He seemed, for whatever reason, to be making an effort to be charming, in his own chauvinistic way. She was pretty sure it was due to guilt for almost making her cry yesterday, which seemed rather funny, considering the trouble she had caused him to begin with.
She could not tell herself she was sorry to be sharing his overbearing company, whatever his motivation. As long as she kept her head on straight, and knew not to take any of his flirting personally, as she had been stupid enough to do yesterday, she could see no harm in spending a few hours with him. A native guide would be nice, especially if he was going to put together lunch for her.
She let herself drift along beside him as he made his purchases, speaking in Flemish to the staff behind the counters. She got distracted by a display of packaged cookies, and then Sebastian appeared beside her, his basket full.
"You want some of those?" he asked, and then without waiting for an answer, "These are good." He dropped a package in the basket, and moved on.
She trailed after him, and when they got to the checkout counter she fumbled for the money in the zippered compartment of her day pack.
"Do not concern yourself," he said, setting his fingertips briefly on her forearm as she dug around.
"I should pay my share."
"Please, no. I insist."
She looked up at him and he smiled, his eyes sincere, and then he had turned away and was paying the checkout girl, joking with her in Flemish as Eliza zipped her bag back up, feeling slightly awkward.
When they were back out on the sidewalk, Sebastian nudged her with his elbow, looking at her with eyebrows raised until she once again took his arm.
"The last guy I dated insisted that if an outing were my idea, I should pay," she said.
"Pay your half?"
"No, for us both."
He widened his eyes at her. "You are joking, yes?"
"I am joking, no."
Sebastian made a disapproving sound. "Maybe I understand why you do not want American men to look at you."
"I suppose it's only fair, though," she said blithely, seeing that the idea offended him, and wanting revenge for the teasing of yesterday. "After all, we women want equal pay for equal work, equal rights and all that. We shouldn't expect doors to be held open for us, when we can open them ourselves. Fair being fair, a woman should send you flowers as often as you send them to her. Would you like that, Sebastian?"
He shuddered under her hand. "I think not."
"Some evening she could pay for the opera tickets, pick you up in her car, take you out to dinner, and then over the chocolate mousse she bought you she could take a little black velvet box out of her purse and offer you an engagement ring, promising to provide for you when the children came."
He made an exaggerated face of horror. "God save me!" he said, then smiled, tilting his head down to hers, just touching her forehead with his own. "You are teasing me, poking a stick at the bear in the cage, eh?"
She smiled innocently. "Perhaps." They walked a bit in silence. "Is there ever a time you let the woman pay? In your personal life, I mean, not business?" she asked, still intrigued by the topic. Her prom date in high school had expected her to buy her own dinner.
"No."
What a lovely answer.
He led her down a side street, then through a gateway into a tiny garden area walled in by brick buildings. A few young people sat in the sun or on low walls, one of them playing a guitar. He led her to a small arched bridge, which they crossed to a shaded courtyard full of trees. There was a bronze statue in the center, and benches around the edges. Buildings formed three of the walls, the glass windows in one showing a dark display room of antique carriages. The fourth side of the square was a low wall banking a canal, the opposite bank made up of old houses. They were wooden, their foundations beneath the waterline, their small windows made of diamonds of leaded glass.
The wall was wide enough to sit upon, a tree that grew close by arching green branches down toward the water but allowing dappled sunlight through to warm the cement top. Sebastian set the bag of groceries on the wall; then before Eliza knew what he intended he grasped her above the waist and lifted her up onto the wall herself, leaving her feet dangling a good two feet off the ground.
She blinked at him. "I could have done that myself."
"But it is so much more fun this way, don't you think?"
Well, yes, actually, she did think. It had been a very long time since a man had touched her in any way.
She watched him unpack his purchases, then take a Swiss army knife out of his pocket and start cutting open a crusty baguette: James Bond making lunch. Reminding herself that Sebastian was, after all, a trained chef, whereas she thought boxed macaroni and cheese was a gourmet delight, she left him to his business, contenting herself with observing him instead of offering to help.
He caught her watching when he switched to slicing a tomato, and gave her a crooked grin. "Your American boyfriends, did they never make you a sandwich?"
"Not that I recall. One did show me a cheesecake he had made, but he never offered me a piece."
Sebastian shook his head and went back to his slicing.
"You can't really be so surprised by this, can you?" she asked him as he unwrapped a triangle of soft cheese with a white rind. "You've been living in the U.S., and I assume you've dated American women. They must have had similar stories."
He looked up at her from under his brows. "I've never dated anyone quite like you."
The comment took her unawares, and she blurted out, "But we're not dating."
"Ah, no. Of course not. We are two single people sharing an impromptu lunch. No, not a date." He went back to his preparations.
She found that that wasn't exactly the response she wanted. He could have protested a bit. "You didn't answer my question, about the women you've dated."
"Didn't I?"
"No."
He spread a new linen napkin over the top of the wall as a tablecloth, and set out two sandwiches of Brie and tomato on the crusty bread. He arranged a cluster of the largest purple grapes Eliza had ever seen in the middle, then twisted the tops off of two bottles of Belgian beer and set them on the napkin as well.
He took his jacket off and laid it over the back of a nearby bench, then boosted himself onto the wall, swinging one leg over to the canal side so that he straddled the top, facing her. "As you Americans like to say, 'Voilà!' " he said, holding his hands wide to encompass the food.
"You're not big on modesty, are you?" Eliza said, her stomach groaning its appreciation at the sight of the food. "But I admit it looks much better than I would have come up with."
The food's appearance was more than matched by the taste. She even drank the beer, finding it to be a far cry from her one previous experience with the substance at a college party. This tasted like it could be a meal in itself.
"It will stimulate your appetite and make you overeat," Sister Agnes warned her.
I couldn't be any hungrier, and be
sides, there are lots of B vitamins in beer.
"Suit yourself, but don't complain to me when you find yourself running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. How appealing will that look to your young man?"
Perhaps she shouldn't finish the whole bottle. The grapes were an inch and a half across, with tough skins that burst when pressed, filling her mouth with juice. She closed her eyes in bliss as the juice curled around her tongue. "I didn't know that grapes could taste this way," she said, opening her eyes and plucking another off the bunch.
"It's good to see you enjoying your food. I don't think you liked your vegetarian pita last night."
She took another swallow of the beer, feeling a faint, pleasant muzziness in her head. "I have a confession," she said, opening up the tail end of her sandwich, picking out the cheese and popping it in her mouth, reveling in the silky texture. "I hate vegetables."
He laughed.
She finished off the grapes. "Where'd the cookies go?"
He retrieved them for her and opened the box of the chocolate-covered biscuits, watching her as she savored her first bite. "You love food; I can see it in the way you eat."
"Too much," she said, brushing crumbs from the corner of her mouth. It seemed to make him happy to see her enjoying his picnic, so she took another cookie. "Which is what drew me to dietetics to begin with. All I ate through high school was junk, and then freshman year in college I gained nearly twenty pounds. Getting obsessed with nutrition seemed a better way to cope with the problem than vomiting in the bathroom, like some of my dormmates."
"So now you have learned to control yourself," he said, a trace of humor in his voice.
She leaned back on her hands, replete with good food. "If I'm not in control, terrible, terrible things happen," she said. She tilted her head back, feeling dappled sunlight on her face. "I could go to sleep right now."
He chuckled, and she heard him moving about, clearing away the remains of the meal.
She squinted one eye open at him. "What's so funny?"
"I think you are a cat at heart. Give you good food and a sunny ledge, and there is nothing more you seek."
"Being petted is sometimes nice," she said, then clamped her lips shut. Oh, wicked beer, giving her loose lips.
But he just smiled and finished cleaning up. She sat up straight, and then he came and stood before her, laying his warm hands over her knees. She met his eyes, her lips parting as her breath caught in her chest.
"What will it be, Madame Pussycat? A nap on the ledge or the dark medieval paintings of the museum?" He kept his gaze locked with hers, his thumbs massaging slow circles on the insides of her knees.
Thought flitted and fled. She could smell the faint, warm scent of his cologne, hear her own breathing, feel her heart thudding in her chest. His deep blue eyes held hers and she swayed slightly, drawn irresistibly toward him.
One of his hands left her knee to reach up and cup her face, his thumb smoothing gently over her cheek. She tilted her head against his hand, eyes closing in lazy pleasure, barely aware of the sounds of the people nearby, and the gentle floating notes of the guitar being played across the footbridge.
She felt him move his face close to hers, almost touching, his mouth near her ear. "I think you have no head for alcohol," he said softly, the touch of his breath sending shivers up her neck.
"I don't know," she said. "I never drink."
He laughed, pulling away, then set his hands on her ribs and lifted her down from the wall. "To the museum, then. If I let you sleep, it would be hours before you awoke."
A vague sense of having come very close to embarrassing herself kept her from protesting, although part of her still thought that a nap would be just the thing, preferably with her head in his lap, his fingers stroking through her hair.
Good Lord. She must be drunk.
She made a concerted effort to gather what remained of her wits, feeling faintly dizzy but otherwise unimpaired.
She took his arm when he offered it, clothed once again in his summerweight jacket, and let him lead her across the courtyard to a glass door. It led, to her great surprise, into the gift shop of the Groeninge Museum. She had had no idea they had been picnicking just outside its walls.
She excused herself to use the ladies' room, Sister Agnes's comment on the diuretic effects of beer having proven itself true. She washed her hands, the cold water and bright whiteness of the rest room waking her, bringing her further back to herself. She fussed with her hair in the mirror and checked her teeth for sandwich remnants. She stood back a few paces, looking herself over with a critical eye, and then shrugged at her image. There was nothing more she could do.
After seeing her own baggy-dressed self in the mirror, Sebastian looked all the more elegant to her eyes when she emerged from the ladies' room— both elegant and appropriately casual at once. He was not one of those men who needed their girlfriends to tell them when their pants fit too tightly.
"You don't have to come in with me," she told him when she rejoined him in front of a display of postcards featuring paintings from the museum. "I know you must have seen this place a hundred times."
"But never with you. I am curious as to what your American eyes will see. I grew up with this type of thing around every corner, and am long past seeing it fresh."
He had already purchased tickets for them both, and as he led her through the entrance she said, "Europe seems another world from where I grew up. So much is so old. Do you know, there are buildings in Seattle that were built in the twenties that have been declared historical, with a little brass plaque beside the door and everything? And here, you walk down the street and every building is four, five, six hundred years old. It looks like some fairyland constructed by Disney."
"Please," Sebastian said, sounding pained.
"Well, you asked," she said. "The only thing an American can compare this to is Disneyland, although the churches do look a little like some of the buildings on college campuses." She grinned up at him, feeling a return of wickedness. "Maybe Bruges should start marketing a mascot of sorts. Bruges Bunny, maybe, or the Boar of Bruges. Get someone to dress up in one of those costumes with the big heads, and greet tourist children, handing out little chocolate pigs or something."
"You have a twisted mind. The first time I saw you, I thought you were such an innocent-looking little thing."
"What, with your chocolates smeared all over my mouth?"
"No, in the Brussels station. You were looking up at the departures, trying to figure out which train you were supposed to take."
"You saw me?" she asked, surprised, suddenly embarrassed. She hoped she hadn't done anything awful, one of those unconscious things like rearrange her underwear.
"Yes. And I thought you looked so innocent, but I believe I am finding there is something of the devil in you."
"It comes from growing up in a neighborhood of boys."
"In your case, I think it may be innate."
"Mmm." She was not certain what to make of that. They entered the first of the connected rooms of the museum, the walls dark, the lighting set to show the paintings to finest advantage. This part of the museum was devoted to medieval paintings, the subject matter mainly religious, with the occasional portrait of a secular patron.
Eliza had seen reproductions of medieval paintings in books of art, but somehow they had failed to represent the real things. The colors were so rich, so clear— reds, blues, greens, gold, even the browns had life. And the details! Every yarn in the rug beneath a Madonna's feet could be discerned, the artist capturing even the worn area at the edge, where the pile had worn off and the warp and weft had begun to fray.
Not all the paintings were so finely done, and many had figures who looked stiff and unreal. A painting of the last judgment featured a multitude of naked men and women, all with thin, sinewy bodies that made them look this side of anorexia. It wasn't until she came to a painting entitled The Flaying of Sisamnesthat Eliza broke her silence.
&nb
sp; "Oh, disgusting!" She winced, turning her head slightly away, yet unable to completely break her gaze from the painting.
"It is rather graphic. Do you think they got all his skin off in one piece?" Sebastian asked mildly.
"Why would anyone paint such a thing?" Eliza asked, facing Sisamnes once again as he lay in agony on a tabletop, a group of uninterested men surrounding him, some of whom were peeling the skin off his left leg. A dog on the ground beside the table scratched at his ear, unconcerned.
"If I remember correctly, Sisamnes was a judge who accepted a bribe. This was painted for the aldermen in the Bruges town hall, to remind them to be impartial in dispensing justice."
"What, did they flay people, too?"
"I doubt it. I always rather liked the painting, if only for the dog. I always thought it was an effective touch."
Eliza grimaced and moved on with relief to more depictions of round-headed Marys and oddly-shaped Christ Childs.
She eventually stopped before a painting by Jan van Eyck, The Madonna with Canon Jorvis van der Paele. The Madonna sat in the center in a red robe, a blond and rather froggish-looking baby on her lap. The canon knelt to the right in a white robe that hinted at the beer belly beneath. His face was saggy and wrinkled, his head bald but for some white hair above his ears. He looked like any older man from the streets outside the museum, whom you might see eating sausages and potatoes for his dinner.
"I don't understand," Eliza said, standing before the painting and placing her hands on her hips. "Canon Jorvis there, he looks real as life, but look at the Madonna and the child. What baby ever sat like that? And the Madonna's face, she doesn't look like anyone I've ever met; she's all smooth-faced and unreal. Did this van Eyck only know what men looked like? Did he never really look at women or children?"
"I don't think it's so simple," Sebastian said.
"He gets every fold of clothing right, every detail of the floor, every hair on the canon's head, but he can't do a woman's face. He must not have thought much of women, or of babies, either," she declared, vague thoughts of medieval inequality and chastity belts swimming in her mind, pumping up a sense of feminist outrage.
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