No tether at al to the place she’d left. A chil went through her.
Then she remembered Jeanne’s text. Wait a second …
She typed out a quick “U THERE?” and hit SEND. The green sending bar didn’t budge. No service meant no service for texts, either. But how could that be? She’d gotten the text from Jeanne, after al . There must be a signal there. She held up the phone like the man in the Verizon ads and began to retrace her steps. What she saw when she turned, however, made her stop.
There, in front of her, was a wardrobe stuffed with gorgeous gowns spil ing their skirts like satin waterfal s to the floor.
This must be the cache. And a cache it was. There was a pale pink with ermine trim, a crimson with jet beads, a Kel y green with lemon yel ow panels in the skirt and a dozen others. Cam reached for the plainest she could find in case someone here would recognize it—a gray moiré silk that slipped like water through her hands. It also had the benefit of a looser bodice that tightened with laces as each side and sturdy shoulders, critical for someone whose bra usual y prayed for mercy.
It wasn’t til she removed it from its hanger that she saw the exquisite embroidered lining upon which peacock feathers in brightest cobalt, purple and green thread appeared to float on air. What sort of a man furnished a woman a dress like this? The sort of man who liked to share the private knowledge of what was hidden beyond view with his sitter.
The dress fit her perfectly. In fact, it took her breath away.
The silk cupped her breasts like a lover’s hands, and when she tightened the thick, luxurious fabric with the laces, she felt an amazing transformation. She might not feel confident, but damn if she didn’t look it. If she could just get back to the model room, perhaps she could reach Jeanne, and then what would happen she didn’t know, but making that connection to the place she belonged seemed an absolutely essential first step in keeping herself from sinking into sheer, asphyxiating terror.
She pelted down the hal , past Mercury and through a group of several surprised young men in smocks who had to be apprentices, and found herself once again in the hal way with the buckets. She grabbed the first doorknob and ran in, phone held high.
But she had chosen the wrong door. Here was Lely’s empty studio, laid out before her like a treasure—
workbench, paints, stacked canvases and an easel.
She found herself exhaling slowly. For a lover of art, this was heaven! A Restoration master’s studio! She tiptoed forward, almost afraid it would disappear if she approached. She wanted to see the tints, the fabric, the workmanship on the canvases. She wanted to smel the turpentine. She wanted to feel the texture of the brushes.
But most of al , she realized, she wanted to see Lely paint.
He wasn’t Van Dyck, but there were only thirty years separating them at their peaks. Techniques wouldn’t have changed much. And, in any case, he would have stories of Van Dyck. They’d been alive at the same time for a number of years, and she’d never met an artist who didn’t enjoy dishing about a rival.
She leaned forward and sniffed, letting the rich, distinctive scents of a painter’s craft fil her head. This was a part of Jacket she loved. There were certainly parts she didn’t love—parts that had hurt her deeply—but this, the gritty world of artistic creation, was definitely in the plus column.
She didn’t know how she’d gotten to this strange world, and she was desperate to get back, but the researcher in her couldn’t help but hope she’d have a chance to see the painter in action. She ran a hand over the silky brushes, fat and thin, that extended from a pot on the workbench. The researcher might hope, but the aesthete—that being who, like her sister, had
