Six #3
This must be the cache. And a cache it was.
There was a pale pink gown with ermine trim, a crimson with jet beads, a Kelly green with lemon yellow panels in the skirt, and a dozen others.
Cam reached for the plainest she could find in case someone here would recognize it—a gray moiré silk that slipped like water through her hands.
It also had the benefit of a looser bodice that tightened with laces at each side and sturdy shoulders, critical for someone whose bra usually prayed for mercy.
It wasn’t till she removed it from its hanger that she saw the exquisite lining of embroidered peacock feathers in brightest cobalt, purple, and green thread.
What sort of a man furnished a woman a dress like this?
The sort of man who liked to share the private knowledge of what was hidden beyond view with his sitter.
The dress fit her perfectly. In fact, it took her breath away.
The silk cupped her breasts like a lover’s hands, and when she tightened the laces, she felt an amazing transformation.
She might not feel very confident, but damn if she didn’t look it.
If she could just get back to the model room, perhaps she could reach Jeanne.
Making a connection to the place she belonged seemed an essential first step in keeping herself from sinking into sheer, asphyxiating terror.
She pelted down the hall, past Mercury and through a group of several surprised young men in smocks who had to be apprentices, and found herself once again in the hallway with the buckets. She grabbed the first doorknob and ran in, phone held high.
But she had chosen the wrong door. Here was Lely’s empty studio, laid out before her like a treasure—workbench, paints, stacked canvases, and an easel.
She found herself whistling silently. A Restoration master’s studio!
For an art lover, this was heaven. She tiptoed forward, almost afraid it would disappear.
She wanted to see the tints, the fabric, the workmanship on the canvases.
She wanted to smell the turpentine. She wanted to feel the texture of the brushes.
But most of all, she wanted to see Lely paint.
He wasn’t Van Dyck, but there were only thirty years separating them at their peaks.
Techniques wouldn’t have changed much. And, in any case, he would have stories of Van Dyck.
They’d been alive at the same time for a number of years, and she’d never met an artist who didn’t enjoy dishing about a rival.
She leaned forward and sniffed, letting the rich, distinctive scents of a painter’s craft fill her head. This was a part of Jacket she loved. There were certainly parts she didn’t love—parts that had hurt her deeply—but this, the gritty world of artistic creation, was definitely in the plus column.
She didn’t know how she’d gotten to this strange world, and she was desperate to get back, but the researcher in her couldn’t help but hope she’d have a chance to see the painter in action.
She ran a hand over the silky brushes, fat and thin, that extended from a pot on the workbench.
The researcher might hope, but the aesthete—that being who, like her sister, had been nurtured by her art historian father to find the divine in every artistic endeavor—knew with absolute certainty she would never pass up the chance to see the act of creation in process.
A noise made her turn, but it was just another apprentice, trotting hurriedly by the door. Reluctantly she exited and took her bearings. When she spotted more buckets and a ladder, she hurried farther down the hall, only this door was closed.
She reached for the knob, but just as her hand gripped the cool, polished brass, a voice behind her made her jump.
“Madam. These rooms are off-limits. May I show you the way to the waiting room?”
Cam wondered how hard it would be to pretend she didn’t speak English. Her college roommate, Natalie, had been Puerto Rican, and Cam had picked up a few key phrases. “Qué?” She jerked the knob but her effort went unrewarded. The door was locked.
“Madam, please!”
She turned. A tall, extraordinarily reedy bald man with an armful of papers gazed at her sternly. She slipped the phone unobtrusively into her bag. “Qué?”
“Kay?” he repeated blankly and looked at a paper in his hand.
“Qué. Qué?” Oh, the hell with it. “My name is Kay, er, Katie Holmes.” She dipped a curtsy.
Her English accent was amateurish at best. The man frowned and began a slow, careful review.
Realizing with a horrified start she had no shoes, she thrust her shoulders back, and the man’s eyes screeched to a halt at her neckline.
Different ages, different clothes—same hormonal magic.
His face relaxed into a slightly less concerned smile. “I presume you wish to see Mr. Lely, aye?”
“Ye—er, aye.”
“About a painting?”
“Aye.”
“That is possible, of course, only with an appointment.” He scanned the paper in his hand. “I don’t see a Katie Holmes here. You do have an appointment, I presume?”
Cam shifted. Run or lie? Running would likely get her removed from the premises. She fingered the phone in her pocket. She had to stay, one way or another. “I, well…It’s complicated.”