Page 32 of Flirting with Forever

Moseby nodded happily, this message being far easier than the first. “Otherwise engaged.” He bowed. “I will inform her immediately.”

* * *

Peter reached for the pencil blindly. He had no wish to meet his companion’s eyes. There had been a time before Ursula when neither his supper table nor his bed had lacked for companions—lithe, accommodating beauties from all reaches of the court who had sought his company with eagerness. But he had never been a whoremonger, and he employed the women to keep them off the street. If you had two eyes, two arms, two legs, and the semblance of a smile—and often even if you did not—you could find a place in one of Peter’s tableaux. His patrons liked to have the beautiful ones around. If you were not beautiful, you cleaned or cooked. But beautiful or no, you did not warm the bed of Peter Lely. Kate knew that, even if she chose to pretend she didn’t. And all of the women received a decent wage, all the food they could eat, and a place to sleep in the studio if a place was wanted.

No, he had no wish to glimpse the look on Mrs. Post’s face. What he wished was to lose himself once again in the sketch and their easy conversation. Forgetting himself, even for a moment, had been nectar indeed.

“I do not mean to displace Miss Kate,” she said. “If you have an engagement, you need not cancel it. We won’t be long.”

He gripped the pencil and continued to fill in the shadow. The lily of the valley scent that seemed to blossom off her skin was torture. “Kate is in my employ. She’ll understand.”

“As you wish.”

“Tell me,” he said, capturing the puddled line of the hem, “what size portrait you seek?”

He felt rather than saw her shift.

“I don’t know. The usual, I suppose.”

“We have full-length, three-quarters, and half, depending on your needs. Is that his ring?”

She touched a chain at her throat, thinking he meant the ring Jacket had given her, then followed the line of his gaze to her other hand.

“Oh, this? No.” She held out the aquamarine in a filigree setting. “This was my mother’s. She got it from her mother-in-law after my father proposed. Then she gave it to my brother’s wife when he proposed.”

He looked up, curious. “And then your brother’s wife gave it to you?”

“No, she passed away, actually.” Her face clouded, and he regretted the question. “My brother wanted me to have it. I think he felt it would keep a piece of her alive for him.”

Aye, Peter thought, to send both a bolt of joy and sorrow through him each time it came into view. How tiringly predictable the despairing are. He touched his emerald and wondered what sort of bittersweet treasures Mrs. Post kept of her dead husband.

“You have seen a world of unhappiness,” he said. “A husband, a sister… ’Tis a comfort, I suppose, you have a brother with whom to share—”

She held up a hand, wrenching discomfort on her face. “I have a confession to make.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not a widow. I’ve misled you.”

Peter, who had anticipated the revelation of her real name, felt his stomach lurch. “I see. You are married.”

A beat. “No.”

But this was not the “no” of a maiden. He steadied the pencil and waited. You fool.

“There is a man—”

Peter’s heart clenched.

“—though we are not married.”

“You’re lovers?” The words were as natural as if he were asking about the tides or the upholstery in a carriage. He finished the drape of the gown and flipped the page in the book. He would not deny himself at least a small sketch of that hair, even if it were the only way he might possess it.

“Yes,” she said with a hard, crimson flush. “Well, no, not now. We were once. We were engaged to be married, though it ended badly, and I left him. That was in June. He’s asked me to reconsider.”

The blood howled in Peter’s ears, though he noted instantly she did not say she’d accepted. He brought the pencil in an untamed curve across the page, followed by another, and another. “Tidings of joy to you, then,” he said, trying to keep the question from his voice.

“Aye.”