Page 48 of Flirting with Forever

“Did you hear that?” She pulled the camera in and sent the text. “It’s coming.”

Whoosh. The picture went.

“Hang on,” Jeanne said, and Cam heard the keyboard clicks. “Got it. Jesus. Are those cutouts for breasts?”

Cam turned to look at the armor breastplate. “Yes.”

“You’re not in the sixteen hundreds. You’re at some lascivious costume ball.”

“Jeanne, it’s like nirvana for a researcher,” Cam said excitedly. “The studio was filled with nude models when I landed. Peter spends half his time hiding the king’s mistresses from one another. Nell Gwyn thinks I have an excellent eye for gowns. And I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out how the old breast-out-of-dress thing happens.”

“Now I know you’re lying.”

“Jeanne.”

“Gimme a break, huh. You’re asking me to believe you’re hanging around with, like, Marie Antoinette.”

“She was a French queen and a hundred years later, but I see your point. Nonetheless how else are you going to explain the orange Crush?”

There was a long pause. “I’ll give you a temporary pass. Very temporary.”

“Thank you. I feel better knowing someone believes this.”

“Peter Lely, huh?”

“Yes, and he’s amazing: You’d think he’d be such a narcissist—I mean, you know how painters are—but he’s really so sweet, like this closet good guy. And he’s cute, with these eyes the color of”—she groped the air, searching for the right words—“Kit Kat bars. And he’s got this sort of Karate Kid/Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon thing going on the way he can just look across the room and make magic happen. And don’t even ask about the way he moves when he paints. Oh my God. You can tell by the way he runs the place that he can do absolutely anything.”

“Jeez, you must have gotten a ton of stuff on Van Dyck.”

Cam clapped her hand over her mouth. She’d totally forgotten Van Dyck.

“No,” Jeanne said in disbelief. “You are not going to tell me you’ve been in the sixteen hundreds for an hour and didn’t ask anything about Van Dyck.”

“I-I—” Cam wracked her memory. Had she heard anything on Van Dyck? “He might have had a relative who managed a theater.”

“Wow, that’s gonna bust the art biography world wide open. What about dirt? And what are you doing in that getup?”

Cam looked down, confused, then remembered Jeanne had the picture. She clutched the gown tighter.

“Ah…there was an accident.”

“Mustard?”

“Funny. No. A too-many-mistresses-at-once accident. Nell Gwyn, the one I mentioned? She’s one of them—the good one. There was a bit of a kerfuffle with the other one—a real bitch of a duchess. But anyhow, she—Nell, I mean—really admired my dress—long story, but we had to switch.”

“I see. Then the olive gown in your picture is Nell’s?”

Cam thought of Nell’s robin’s-egg blue dressing gown upstairs on the floor near the fire. “Well, no. Not exactly.”

There was a short pause in which she could feel the wheels turning in Jeanne’s head.

“Really?”

Cam yelled, “Wait!” but it was too late. She heard the sound of the phone drop.

Oh, I’m toast.

“Well, well, well,” Jeanne said. “Here I am on page twelve of that lovely exhibition book and what do I see? An olive gown with ruffled sleeves. You’re posing for him!”