On the cover was a portrait by Lely. She recognized it now, had seen the original at the Yale Center for British Art a few years back. The young woman, a courtier of some sort, face framed in light auburn ringlets, gazed at Lely with a look of relaxed and bemused understanding, as if she had shared her innermost secrets with him and knew they would be safe. Her frock, if one could cal it that, was rendered in a stunning pumpkin silk that draped in gleaming folds so realistic Cam could almost hear the rustle. In the woman’s left hand was a pale peony, open and tinged with pink. She held it toward the viewer. But the most eye-catching part of the portrait was the porcelain white breast, curving upward to a firm rose nipple that sat unashamedly above the neckline of the silk.
Cam put a hand to her cheek. “Wow.”
“You’ve been using that word a lot,” Jeanne observed.
Taken as a whole, the portrait packed a hel of a punch. A woman of the court, whose hair, makeup and clothes suggested a position of wealth and importance, yet who gazed upon her portraitist with unveiled sensuality, and who, more important, let her portraitist gaze upon her in dishabil e. Even in the licentious court of Charles I , this would have excited the attention of viewers—heck, Cam’s own bel y was tingling. And yet the portrait was not pornographic or leering in any way. It was a masterful y executed study of classic beauty: the proportions of the woman’s face, the gleam of her skin, the delicacy of the blossom, the living, moving silk. But it was something beyond mere craft that provoked Cam’s admiration. It was the trust the artist had built with his subject and the obvious appreciation with which he had portrayed the woman’s assurance.
Cam found herself wondering with some intensity what sort of man was capable of seeing a woman like that.
“Look at this,” she said, turning the book toward Jeanne.
Jeanne’s head tilted slowly. “Wow.”
“I told you. It’s by Peter Lely.”
“Was he her lover?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Look at the way she looks at him. I mean, jeez. It’s like they just …”
Cam nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Her eyes, that smile.”
“And let’s not forget that breast. Amazing, isn’t it?”
“But what sort of woman …”
“Peels the papaya? Yeah, I don’t know. A damned at-ease one, I guess.” Cam opened the book and began to page through it. “Holy moly. There’s more.”
Jeanne squeezed in next to her. Lely’s women didn’t al have a breast on display, though a decent—indecent?—
proportion of them did. But every one of them beheld their portraitist with the same worldly, self-assured, half-lidded gaze.
“Did he do all of them?”
“Probably,” Cam said. Painters general y considered themselves the absolute center not only of their own universe, but everyone else’s as wel . She had to admit, though, this was a little like thinking-women’s porn—being adored from across the room by a man, master at his art, who saw you, fat or thin, beautiful or plain, as the most stunning, empowered, attractive woman on Earth.
“He’s Jake Ryan,” Cam said.
“Pardon?”
“Jake Ryan, the hero of Sixteen Candles. The man who fal s for Samantha Baker even though she isn’t cheerleader beautiful. Lely is the man who loves the woman posing for him for what’s on the inside.”
Jeanne flipped a page and found a woman with both breasts on display. “That’s what’s on the inside?”
“But look at her. Look at the way he sees her. And look at the way she looks at him in return.” Cam felt her breath quicken. Her eyes met Jeanne’s.
Jeanne said, “I’m gettin’ a little—”
“Yeah, me too.”
But that had always been Cam’s problem with artists.
That is, until she found Jacket not deep in his latest reaping, as he’d told her that night on the phone, but deep in Cam’s jewelry designer. That’s when Cam decided she wasn’t ever going to be painter-stupid again. If men in bars had beer goggles, women who fel for
