Flirting With Forever Gwyn Cready (best book series to read txt) đ
- Author: Gwyn Cready
Book online «Flirting With Forever Gwyn Cready (best book series to read txt) đ». Author Gwyn Cready
âPerhaps he guessed. Some writers are very good at that, I hear.â
âPerhaps he guessed Van Dyck liked his eggs poached in cream and sprinkled with nutmeg? Perhaps he guessed Van Dyck entertained his closest friends with a portrait of Lord Harwich painted with horns and a snout?â Mertons lowered his voice to a whisper. âPerhaps he guessed Van Dyck needed a brisk paddle to ensure the structural integrity of his âmonument to Cupidâ?â
âOh dear.â
âAnd itâs worse than that.â
âIâd rather not hear.â
âStratford gave himself carte blanche to fil the rest of the book with whatever lies he wanted. He cal s it a
âfictography.â Do you see? A fictional biography. An abomination, if you ask me. Why canât writers stick to the truth?â Mertons returned his gaze to his ever-present clipboard. As tal as a boat pole and nearly as thin, with a crown as hairless as a babyâs, he looked about as much like an apprentice painter in 1673 as he did a centurion at the Battle of Thermopylae. Nonetheless that was the cover the Guild had instructed Peter to provide him.
âAnd why does Stratford come to me?â
Mertons shuffled his feet. âWe donât know.â
âDonât know?â Peter cultivated surprise. This was his favorite part of the story since the answer could not be found on the clipboard or anywhere else.
âNo. Perhaps heâs broken the security algorithm.
Perhaps heâs found a tube weâre not aware of. Al we know is this biographyâpardon me, fictographyâwil change the way thousands of people feel about Van Dyck. So our job is to stop Stratford from writing that book. The book is nothing but lies.â
âNothing but lies? You mean Van Dyck didnât pass around a portrait of Lord Harwich?â Peter had seen it himself once. He declined to cal to mind the other, more picturesque details of his col eagueâs personal life.
Mertons flushed. âThereâs a difference between tel ing a story and appealing to the prurient interest of readers.
Stratford takes the story, embel ishes it, and with The Girl with a Coral Earring makes the entire seventeenth-century art world seem like some sort of giant sultanâs tent in which artists run, satyrlike, over pil owed beds, chasing wil ing and unwil ing women to their reputational doom.â
Peter considered the artists he had known, including himself before the settling influence of Ursula, and found the description to be more accurate than not.
âI see you are amused.â Mertons crossed his arms. âI wonder if you would feel the same if the subject of the biography was you.â
biography was you.â
Peter stiffened. He hated to admit it, but Mertons was right. Seeing his own life splashed across the pages, stripped bare for the amusement of a reading public who would not care what parts were true, or regretted, so long as the salacious bits of intrigue kept them turning pages, would be more than he could bear. There was a special place in hel for a writer like Stratford, who picked the bones of the dead to further his own career, and Peter supposed he should be glad heâd have a hand in bringing the blackguard down. But the thought brought him little joy, trapped as he was in one of the most unhappy times of his former life. He wished another artist in the Afterlife had been given the unusual opportunity. He glanced again at the clock. âAnd here, in this studio, in this particular time, is the onlyâwhat do you cal it?âpoint of intersection?â
âNo, there are a number of intersections in Van Dyckâs life as wel , but the Guild is just about to place him in his new life, and, as you know, we cannot retrieve him once that has been done. You, being between lives, are available. Though perhaps when you said âin this particular timeâ you were referring to this time in your own life?â
Mertons unclipped the mass of paper in
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