Fifteen #2
It had been a December night four years ago when Jacket found her watching the same scene from the top of Mt.
Lebanon’s open-air parking garage and had swept her into his arms, offered to move to the States, and asked her to marry him.
A month later he’d bought them the loft space, high atop the building across the street, having convinced the building’s owner to scrap plans for a suite of offices.
As Jacket said when he handed her the keys, “I want to give you the night sky.”
It seemed like such a long time ago. But when he’d given back the ring, she’d felt some of the same sort of magic again.
Her heart twinged. Would she ever see him again?
She knew where she was, but not how she’d gotten here or if she’d ever get back.
She couldn’t even get a look at her phone for fear of Lely seeing it.
While she couldn’t help but admit she was enjoying his company, she wished she could get just a moment or two alone.
The phone buzzed to flag a new text. Oh God, she had service! But then she saw Peter’s eyes.
“Um.” She jerked the chair forward. “Sorry. Readjusting.”
He returned to his tablet.
Whew! She moved her hand slowly to her purse. His gaze lifted, and she stopped. If she could only get him to leave.
“Mr. Lely, might I have a glass of water? I find I am quite parched.”
“Certainly.” He went to the door, and she reached for her phone. But then he tugged a brocade pull beside the door, and in the distance she heard the faint ring of a bell.
Crap! How hard was this going to be?
“Someone will be here in a moment.” He lowered himself once again to the stool.
“Thank you.” She sighed and inclined slightly. “’Tis not the best light for sketching.”
He paused. “You are versed in an artist’s needs?”
She nearly laughed. An artist’s needs. Did she have the energy to do that again with Jacket? “A bit.”
“Do you draw or paint?”
Cam started. He meant her. It wasn’t uncommon for a woman in Lely’s time to have been tutored by a governess in sketching and even watercolor—Dürer had popularized the latter as a medium in Western Europe in the early sixteenth century—but from the time Cam had abandoned hopes of becoming a painter herself any direct question about her own artistic abilities made her self-conscious.
The door opened before she could answer. It was Moseby, who started visibly at the sight of her. The look of horror that followed suggested the rules about when the master may and may not be interrupted were well-known and strictly enforced. Poor Moseby. It just wasn’t his day.
“I do beg your pardon, sir, most humbly I do. I thought you had rung,” he said and attempted to slip back into the hall.
“I had, Tom. Come in.”
Moseby reentered, cap in hand, looking as if he’d rather be carved into pieces and served en brochette. “Sir?”
Cam thrust her hand in her bag and jerked the phone into view, “What the hell just happened?” the text read. Poor Jeanne. She looked at the signal. One bar.
“We should like some water and wine,” Lely said, “as well as cheese and fruit.”
Cam tilted the phone, and the bar disappeared.
“Immediately, sir.” Tom shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“I am most grievous sorry about the painting of Miss Gwyn, sir. Most grievous. You were quite the canny one, miss,” he added enthusiastically in Cam’s direction.
“A right bit of sleight of hand, what with donning that gown in a whore’s trice. It was downright—”
Lely cleared his throat significantly, which almost made Cam drop her bag, but the noise had been aimed at Tom, who paled and retreated, though he only made it two steps before reversing himself and returning.
“Tom, this is more time than I had wished to spend with you this afternoon,” Lely said, returning to his sketchbook.
The young man relaxed, and even managed a lopsided smile, the master’s teasing tantamount to forgiveness.
He said, “The cheese and fruit, sir, is that to be your supper?” Then, apparently deciding there was a better path into the matter at hand, tried this instead: “Sir, Miss Kate sends her compliments. If she is not to be a Danish supporter, she wishes to eat, and would you be wantin’ to join her at the Orb and Scepter for joint of suckling pig?
No charge for her time.” He blew out a long breath, grateful to have completed his mission.
It seemed to be Peter’s turn to shift with embarrassment.
His cheeks turned ruddy, and Cam didn’t know if he regretted the revelation of his model’s status as a prostitute or the fact that, despite having taken advantage of her marginalized position by employing her for his patrons’ pleasure, he was still ungenerous enough to require a free ride when her own meter was running.
Cam hoped it wasn’t the former. It would have been hard to imagine a woman willing to pose entirely nude coming from any other profession in Peter’s time.
And as for the latter, well, Cam had hardly met an artist who didn’t feel as if every pleasure in the world was owed him.
Why should Peter be different—other than the fact, of course, that she’d begun to think he might be?
Peter dropped his pencil and had to bend to retrieve it. “My compliments and regrets to Miss Kate,” he said stiffly. “I am otherwise engaged.”
Moseby nodded happily, this message being far easier than the first. “Otherwise engaged.” He bowed. “I will inform her immediately.”
* * *