Nine
“But I haven’t seen Peter Lely yet,” Peter heard a voice in the waiting room declare.
Despite the explosion of Mertons into his office like a misfired mortar, he smiled.
The woman had an odd, eager lilt to her words that reminded him of his countrymen when they first grew conversant in English.
He knew only too well what it was like to be a stranger in a new place.
He wondered if perhaps she was Dutch or had a Dutch parent.
“Where have you been?” Mertons’s gaze went straight to the now closed storage room door.
Peter kept his eyes from following Mertons’s. “I do apologize. I was napping.”
“What is your name?”
Poor Stephen was checking the woman against the list, and Peter found himself listening for the reply, partly because he thought it might give him a further clue to her origin, and partly because he had always favored contraltos.
“It’s there,” she said. “On the list.”
“Peter?”
“Pardon?” Mertons had said something, though Peter had not the faintest idea what.
“I said I checked your room. You were not napping there. I checked everywhere.”
“On this list?” Stephen said, surprised. “I made most of it myself. Where is your name?”
“I was in the wardrobe,” Peter replied impatiently. He wished Mertons would stop talking so he could hear.
“The wardrobe?”
“Oh, dear,” the woman said. “I can barely read your writing.”
“Lady Humphries,” Stephen began, evidently reading off the patrons on the list, and with a spark of delight, Peter realized she was shopping for a name. “Miss Mary Tallyrand, daughter of Lord Tallyrand. Henrietta, wife of Mr. George Palmer. A widow, Mrs. Eu-jeanne Eu-jen Eugenie Post—”
“Mrs. Eugenie Kay Post. That,” she said firmly, “is I.”
“The wardrobe, Peter? Really?”
Peter stood, unable to stifle his curiosity. “It is dark, it is cool, and at least until now,” he said, drifting toward the door, “no one has thought to look for me there.” He thought if he took a spot three-quarters of the way across the room and tilted his head just far enough…
Mertons blew out a long exhale. “I-I know you don’t enjoy being here, Peter, but we’ve talked about this. You must realize your absence could have been disastrous. If the writer had arrived while you—”
“Bugger the writer, Mertons. Mrs. Eugenie Kay Post has arrived, and I intend to enjoy this little performance—”
Then Peter saw her, and a searing pain cut his heart.
Sorrow, betrayal, fear, and, above all, a burning anger flared like a gunpowder charge, sucking the air from his lungs.
She was beautiful, with ringlets of sun-polished copper, eyes as crystal blue as the Zuider Zee, shoulders as proud as a sultan, and a fine, high bosom.
And beautiful she should be, for she was almost the dead spit of Ursula.
He knew she must have been picked by Stephen like an apple in Eden to tempt him.
Well, damn Stephen and his detestable machinations. Damn his handsome widows. He wondered if she were a widow at all. He wouldn’t put it past his meddling friend to have hired an agreeable whore so long as she had the right face and hair.
Peter retreated a step but it was too late. The woman spotted him and smiled tentatively.
His head started to buzz. He felt manipulated, his fastidiousness made to look ridiculous.
He would be forced to talk to this woman as Stephen looked on.
Peter’s cheeks flushed and sweat broke out on his forehead.
He wished to run or to curse—something, anything to master this upsetting tumult of emotion.
Stephen looked as if he’d prefer to be hanged, and if Peter had had easy access to a rope, he would have accommodated him.
“Peter,” Stephen said stiffly, “may I introduce Mrs. Eugenie Kay Post. Mrs. Post, this is Peter Lely, court painter to His Majesty King Charles. I was just explaining to Mrs. Post that you are—”
“I need only a moment of your time, Mr. Lely,” the woman said, interrupting. She extended an arm the color of glazed bisque. “I wish to discuss a commission for a landscape. My time in London is limited.”
“I imagined as much,” Peter said coolly, but his words emerged through a mouth so dry they lost their resonance, heightening his embarrassment.
He kissed her hand quickly, then released it as his own started to quake.
He hated that she had this effect on him.
To have felt so little in the way of attraction for so long and then to feel this…
It was too much. “My clerk has failed in his duty. Desire him to explain the complexities of my diary. I am a very busy man. I suggest you take your custom elsewhere. Good day.”