Page 20 of Flirting with Forever

“Ah. Well, perhaps a stint stretching canvas would be more to his liking.”

“Excellent notion.”

Stephen started out but paused at the door. “Peter,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I have taken the liberty of placing one or two very handsome widows into your diary this week, and I thought perhaps—”

“No,” Peter said with a choking rush of sorrow. “It has been but a year.”

“Nearly two, Peter. Nearly two. And one of the widows has twice been kind enough to—”

“Enough,” Peter said. It had been two years in Stephen’s memory, but for Peter, who had already endured the rest of his life here and more beyond, it had been eight. Eight long years, and even now his heart felt as lifeless and ill-prepared for the intimacy of another person as a stone.

“You mope,” Stephen said. “You brood. You bury yourself in your work. Ursula would not have wanted this. There. I’ve said her name. I’m tired of tiptoeing around as if she never existed. We all are. Peter,” he said more softly, “she was my friend too. I know she wouldn’t have wanted this. You know what she would’ve said. She would have damned you for your foolishness.”

Peter smiled in spite of himself. “Aye, I can hear her now.”

Stephen’s eyes twinkled. “A fair temper, that one. I could tell the day I first laid eyes on her, the first day she came in to model.”

“’Twas the coloring. The red hair.”

“The coloring, the eyes, the way she refused to lower her shoulder.”

An obscure sentimental joy came into Peter as he remembered the scene, as clear in his head as if the years gone by were no more than a snap of his fingers. “God help us, she was a terrible model—stubborn, short-tempered, easily bored.”

“But so, so beautiful on canvas.”

“Indeed.” Peter’s eyes started to smart, and he turned away.

Stephen sighed. “I have said enough. More than enough, I expect.”

Far more. Peter felt the familiar wave of grief.

“I have finished tomorrow’s schedule,” Stephen said, deftly changing the subject. “Might I observe your trade is as strong as ever?”

Peter grunted. At this point in his career, his schedule had always been full, not that the schedule had mattered to him. He’d always taken the commissions he desired, worked until he was done, and let Stephen handle the patrons whose appointments had been delayed or canceled. All that mattered to him now was appeasing the king until he signed the document that would issue an edict of marriage between a long-dead woman and the man who had loved her.

Stephen, evidently sensing his master’s wish to be alone, made his exit bow. Peter held up a hand.

“I know your intentions are good, my friend,” he said. “But I…I cannot. Not yet. Do not ask it.” He cursed Mertons and the Guild for the torture he was reliving.

Stephen bowed again, added a long-empty wineglass to the collection of dishes in his hand, and went out.

Eight

Cam fidgeted on the hard bench. She’d been marched to the waiting room by the man, who was now describing the process patrons must follow to secure a place on Lely’s schedule. She was waiting for a pause into which she could reasonably insert a request to use the privy, cover for another try at the models’ room, when the door behind the secretary’s desk opened. It wasn’t Lely, but the man in the smock who had reported on Miss Quinn’s disposition earlier. The man looked at her and nearly fumbled the tray of dishes and glasses he was carrying.

“Mary, Mother of God,” he uttered.

“Stephen, any word on Peter?” the reedy man said. “I checked every place you suggested. No sign.”

Stephen pointed wordlessly at the doorway behind him, though his gaze never left her face. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Actually he looked as if he’d seen a ghost standing between Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa, holding the lead to a unicorn.

Stephen’s colleague rushed toward Lely’s door, clapped the list under Stephen’s arm as he passed, and disappeared into the office.

“I think,” Stephen said firmly to Cam, “you will have to leave.”

Nine

“But I haven’t seen Peter Lely yet,” Peter heard a voice in the waiting room declare.