Page 26 of Flirting with Forever

“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 been 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.

“I don’t know! Oh, Lord, I don’t know.”

Charles, who had witnessed this exchange, gave Peter a warning glance. Peter in turn gave Stephen a glare that suggested Nell had better be found and rehidden if Stephen were to have the slightest hope of keeping his position. Stephen hurried off.

“Here,” the duchess demanded. “Open this one.”

It was the door to his studio.

“Let me ensure there is no sharp glass or metal lying about. This is a room used for—”

“Open it! Open it now!”

Peter bent reluctantly and opened the door.

The duchess barged by him. “There she is!”

Peter’s heart dropped into his shoe.

“My dear, I can explain—Oh!” the king exclaimed. “Oh dear.”

Peter drew up behind the duchess and looked past her heavily powdered wig. There, on the chaise, laid out like Venus herself, was Peter’s visitor, Mrs. Post, or whatever her true name was, reading a broadsheet. Unlike Nell, however, this Venus had her robins-egg blue dressing gown knotted demurely at the waist, though the fabric yawned enough to give everyone in the room a glorious view of a pink calf, a flawless knee, and the most remarkable sliver of thigh.

He didn’t know how or why she’d done it, but wanted to fall on his knees and thank her for the deception.

The woman lowered her broadsheet, gazing at the spectacle before her. She’d undone her hair, Peter noted with a tickle in his belly, letting it trail over her shoulders exactly as Nell’s hair was in the portrait, even though her hair was not quite a match. For an instant, Peter imagined the weight of that liquid fire in his hands and wondered what it would be like to pull the hairpins free himself…

“Good afternoon,” the king said warmly, and Peter woke from his daydream. “This must be the Spanish countess Peter mentioned,” the king added to the duchess.

The Spanish countess? Good Lord, thought Peter, who had forgotten this important detail, I’m ruined. “Er, I beg your pardon. Your Majesty, may I introduce…” He gave his savior a panicked look.

“I am Countess de Iñigo Montoya,” she said in an eager but far-from-convincing accent, “widow of Antonio Banderas.”

Peter held his breath.