Seventeen
Without a way to get to her phone, Cam was stuck.
No alternate next move presented itself.
She could run, but to what end? She had arrived after an earthshaking mouse click, and now she felt like a mouse caught in a trap, in a painter’s studio that had closed for business three hundred years before she was born.
There were no rules for the situation in which she found herself.
At some point, Lely would either return her purse or leave the room.
Until then, she would soak up some color.
After all, if wasn’t every day a historical biographer landed in the same century as her subject, and with a man who succeeded him as royal portraitist and presumably knew him well.
“It must be a very grand honor to be the king’s portraitist.”
Lely made an indeterminate noise. “Words do not do it justice.”
He had decided on velvet the color of chestnuts for draping the chaise, and it was the edges of this material Cam now gripped. Despite all her years in the art world, she was unprepared to be the focus of a master’s efforts.
“Um, how would you like me?”
He gave her a brief smile. “Given your comment on the wedding night, I’m unsure how to answer. To what are you used? How does your fiancé pose you?”
“My fiancé does not pose me.”
He laid down his mixing knife and gave her a careful look. “Do you mean to say you have not posed? Ever?”
She flushed. “No.”
“Then I suppose it truly shall be like a wedding night.”
The warmth rose to her ears and scalp. She reached for the glass of Rhenish, which had been refilled in her absence.
“Have your last,” he said. “I should like to have you lying down.”
With a sharp inhale, she set the glass on the table and reclined on the chaise, finding a place among the pillows tucked against the rise at the back.
The curtain of olive silk rolled in a graceful wave across her legs.
She lifted a heel under her hips to anchor her against the velvet.
The other foot peeked from the fabric. Several pillows buoyed her back.
A small one supported her neck. It was wondrously comfortable.
And then, of course, the way that he looked at her was making her feel pretty at home as well.
“You will have to do without the head pillow when I block in your face. After that, when I begin your body, you may have it again.”
“All right.”
“It may hurt a bit at the beginning, but after that, I promise, you may relax and enjoy.”
“The metaphor is growing uncomfortably warm.”
Peter let out a small, deep laugh. “The chain is lovely.”
She touched it, flustered. No matter what Jacket had said when he’d placed it around her neck, it represented an offer on his part, an offer about which she was strongly conflicted. She wished Peter had not seen it, though she couldn’t quite express why.
“Is there a pendant with it?” he asked. “It might make an interesting point of focus. And if it is a gift from him, it will please him to—”
“No,” she said. “’Tis mine. I’m glad you reminded me, though. I was going to take it off.” She twisted her body until she’d blocked his view, unclasped the chain, and slipped it and the ring into the pocket of the dressing gown.
He gave her a warm smile and picked up his palette. “Now loosen your gown, if you please.”
If I please? She reached for her belt, wondering what other commands he thought she would follow without question that evening.
She loosened the tie with one hand and let it drop.
Immediately the silk resettled, falling in an unrestrained heap that ran from her shoulder to her hip.
The fabric gaped, exposing an easy swath of white muslin, which, in turn, followed the curve of her breast. She could feel the air on her sternum.
She wondered if he could see the beating of her heart.
“How do you want me to look?” she asked.
“I do not want you to look. I want you to think.”
“Think?”
“Aye. The portrait is for him, aye?”
“Aye.”
“You are to imagine him. When he looks at this painting he will possess you. Each time he sets eyes on it, he will know he, among all men, has triumphed in winning your hand. This is his Troy. Do you understand?”
“Aye.” Her voice was barely a whisper. What she wanted to think about was Peter, not Jacket.
“You are to show him what it is to be possessed.”
A tall assignment. She thought of Jacket on that long-ago night in the ladies’ lounge. He had possessed her. No question. He had filled her senses and loosened her tongue and made her mistress of some very surprising behavior.
She watched Peter mix his paints and wondered if he’d possessed Ursula in such a manner. Had Ursula broken his heart? Or had their relationship been at an end when she’d fallen into the arms of the man Nell mentioned? What had she said his name was? Old Pauly?
The color on Peter’s brush was dark. He would have to do the underpainting first, the base from which the bright of her hair, face, and gown would rise.
The easel blocked much of his body, but she could see his face, which took on a quiet intensity as he calculated the ratios of his arrangement.
Part of her was noting the workings of a seventeenth-century master, but the other part of her, fueled by the potency of the wine and Peter’s noble gesture with Miss Quinn, was heading in an entirely different direction.
She watched the movement of his thigh, the nearly imperceptible flexing of muscle as he worked, and the fine, muscled calf below.
Nell had said Cam resembled Ursula. There were certain sorts of men who were besotted with red hair, just as there were certain sorts of women besotted with artists.
She wondered if Peter was imagining Ursula laid out here.
She wondered if Peter had painted Ursula nude, and if he had, if it had evolved to fevered lovemaking, right here on this chaise?
The picture of Peter crouched over her, his powerful hips, stripped of their proprietous wool breeks, moving to a hastening beat, danced in her mind. She liked this mixture of strong wine, a man who knew how to make a woman feel like she was the only person on Earth, and a very active imagination.
“I am about to begin,” he said in a low voice.
Yes.
The first scratch of brush on canvas sent an electric shock through her. It was as if he had drawn the bristles down her flesh. A delicious tingle slithered through every nerve, and a welcome warmth bloomed under her gown where her heel was tucked between her legs. She took another long sip.
“You are perfect,” he said. “’Tis exactly what I want.”
Exactly what he wanted. She closed her eyes and smiled.
There was something powerfully seductive in that phrase.
The image returned readily—Peter, with his hand on her face, guiding her hungry mouth to his.
When his hand in the vision ventured lower, her own nipples tightened.
Cam wondered if Peter could see the change through the thin muslin.
She found herself reveling in the notion and grinned.
Lost in time? Why not make the best of it?
She settled her weight more firmly upon that heel.
The brushstrokes continued. Peter worked briskly, and every scrape translated to the rustle of silk as flesh met flesh. In her mind, he took her hips and held them hard as he plumbed their depths.
A wild heat rose between her legs, and Cam found herself responding as easily to the image in her head as she might to the real thing.
Good God, where are you going with this, girl?
It had been six months since she and Jacket had made love, and during that time she’d had no desire to go to bed with anyone.
The part of her that responded blindly to the call of lust had been muted that day after she’d opened their bedroom door.
Yet here she was constructing an interlude as erotic as those in the novels she’d read.
There was a strange freedom to being cast into another time that she’d never felt before. It was as if she were in a dream of her own making, with no one to justify her actions to but herself. This, she decided, could be a very dangerous thing.
She turned, and a nipple brushed the carved wood of the arm, sending a magnificent plume of heat through her.
But the wood was Peter’s finger, and she longed for his touch.
She moved gently, no more than the motion of inhaling and exhaling, and let him rub the tender flesh.
He taunted her. She could feel his throb, let her fingers ride the satiny flesh.
He drew up beside her, spoon to spoon, and rolled the nipple slowly, kissing her neck and ear, the barest scent of vanilla reaching her nose as she stretched against him like a cat.
Oh, the Rhenish is definitely working.
She stole a glance at Peter. He was laboring intently now, brushing the paint on with short, expert strokes. She closed her eyes and opened them again, and this time he was looking at her. Her breath caught, and he looked away.
“Is he in your thoughts, Mrs. Post? I do not wish to shock, and you will pardon me for saying this, but as you carry yourself with far too confident a grace to be a maiden, I intend to speak plain. You must be filled with him, do you understand?”
His brown eyes deepened in color, and she felt her pulse quicken. “Aye, I understand.”
“Some women cannot do it. But I see you have no fear.”
“‘No fear’ might be overstating things.” Her heart was thumping so hard she wondered if he could hear it.
“There are certain things I can do to enhance the effect—if such an aid is needed.”
Blood roared in her ears. What had he seen? What was he offering? She thought of his mouth on hers, a welcome hand between her thighs. “What?”
“There are tricks. A wash of rose madder on the cheeks, a pinwheel of gold in the eye.”
She flushed deeply at her mistake, so deeply that for an instant the world blurred.
He saw her embarrassment, and guessed its source. “To that end, milady, I have but one aid, though it is extremely adaptable.”