Seven
Peter brushed by the desk usually occupied by his clerk, Stephen, and let his office door shut behind him.
After a quick look to ensure no one was about, he went to the storage room and lowered the window to its original position.
He damned his luck at running into that blackguard, Sir David.
He’d entered by way of the servants’ door, but even then he’d taken a chance of running into Mertons, who would have been beside himself by now if he’d figured out Peter had left the building.
Charles’s royal entourage had been at Charles’s club in Maiden Lane, but not Charles himself, and it had taken Peter more than three-quarters of an hour to track down the king in the Berkeley Square dressing room of the Honorable Genevieve Longchamps, though how much longer Genevieve’s title would apply given the king’s obvious intentions he could only guess.
Peter slipped a hand in his waistcoat and touched the letter, more valuable than gold.
He believed the king would keep his word and sign it.
He had to believe it. Charles had his faults, to be sure, but for the most part he was a man of honor in business, and he had always treated Peter fairly—as fairly as a monarch could treat anyone—though he had certainly extracted his pound of flesh in the years since their first meeting thirty years ago, Charles the wide-eyed, ten-year-old son of the king and Peter the scrape-farthing Dutchman with the striking palette of colors.
Six years from now, Peter knew, Charles would bestow a knighthood on him.
Charles would say it was for a lifetime of contribution to English art, though Peter knew it had been as much to lift his spirits.
But the gesture would fail, and Peter would be dead within the year, collapsing at his easel and finally earning the peace for which he had so longed.
Or so he had thought, until he found that death, at least the part of death spent in the Afterlife, had not erased any of his memories.
How long would Ursula’s death haunt him?
A double tap at the door roused him from his thoughts.
Stephen. Peter felt disloyal for returning here, like a spy, into the lives of his friends and the people who worked for him, with no admission of his prescient knowledge of his future as well as theirs.
Mertons, however, had insisted Peter tell no one, and so no one had been told.
“Come,” Peter said.
Stephen, as upright as a bishop, but with the broad, good-natured face of a tavern owner, ducked in and began to gather the stray dishes from breakfast.
“Miss Quinn?” Peter asked as he took his seat.
“Attended to.”
“Good. And Sir David?”
“Gone.”
“Which reminds me.” He caught Stephen’s eye and let the corner of his mouth rise. “The king has taken a new fancy.”
A look of horror came over Stephen’s face. “We cannot begin the painting over. Not again. First Nell, then Barbara Villiers, then Nell again, and now someone else? The paint on the face has been scraped down so many times the canvas is getting to look like my gran’s lacework underneath.”
“I think we are safe with Nell for now,” Peter said.
“We should endeavor to finish it this week, however. With that delivered, the king’s only choice will be a new commission.
” So long as the king maintains his royal prerogative with the women of the court, Peter thought, I shall always have work. “How are the mezzotints today?”
“Good, good. Except for Collins with the broken finger, we’ve been producing at a prodigious rate. Nothing to worry about there.”
Peter felt the pause. “But?”
“Might I observe the new apprentice, the tall one with no hair, is not going to make much of an artist.”
He meant Mertons. Peter snorted. “He’s my cousin. From my mother’s first marriage. I’m afraid it was this or transportation to the New World.”
“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.