Flirting With Forever Gwyn Cready (best book series to read txt) 📖

Cam understood her removal was being requested. “I could—”

“No. Stay,” Peter said. “There is a painting I wish to show His Majesty downstairs, in any case. Though it is nearly six, I do believe the light wil stil do for viewing.”

Charles nodded and began down the stairs, fol owed by Stephen.

Peter gave her a deep bow. “Until I return.”

19

Mertons watched Stephen bustle into the larder and begin to gather glasses, with the cook, a ful -bosomed Scot with raven hair and sparkling eyes named Morag, directly on his heels. Mertons, who had been rerunning the calculations this last hour, trying to narrow the window of time in which the writer might arrive, found the spare amenities of the Restoration period charming—like camping for time-jump accountants. He clutched his ale with a happy smile.

“How many times can we expect Himself in a day?”

Morag said with a huff of outrage. “I barely got my floors swept from the last visit. Does the king have nothing better to do? Not that one, you great gowk!” She waved Stephen away from an intricately carved decanter. “That’s for special guests.”

“He is the king, madam,” Stephen said.

“Your king. We Scots have set our sights a wee bit higher, thank ’e. He may have that one,” she said, pointing to a far simpler vessel, “and the second-best brandy.”

Mertons dabbed the corner of his mouth with his fist.

“Did Peter finish with that last sitter, then?”

“Finish with her?!” The cook’s eyes darted worriedly to Stephen’s.

“Wel , I hope not, though the king could not have arrived at a worse moment. They had clearly, er, come to some sort of understanding.”

Mertons’s gaze went from Stephen’s private smile to the hand Morag now flung over her heart. He had made no calculation for a love affair, though if this was a continuation of something from the past it would be of little consequence. “Is the woman Peter’s mistress?”

“Mistress?!” Stephen laughed. “I can barely get your cousin to converse with a woman, much less”—he stopped, evidently remembering Morag—“court her. The man is a monk. Has been, ever since Ursula’s death.”

Ursula? Who was Ursula?

Stephen lifted the salver and headed toward the hal .

“Say a prayer the king’s visit is short.”

“The cheese has turned,” cal ed Morag. “Start him on that.”

Mertons tapped a finger. How had the intel igence failed to include any mention of Peter’s wife? Such an oversight undermined an operative’s performance and added significant risk to the plan. The Executive Guild must have known, had to have known. They had probably been too concerned with stopping the tube hole to worry about an operative issue. The specifics of travel-craft were hardly their long suit. It certainly explained Peter’s dourness this past week, and it might also explain his disappearance this afternoon. He might have gone to her grave, for example, or another place important in their relationship—and neither of those were within spec, of that much Mertons was certain.

Neither, of course, was a new love affair, though the log did show Peter holding weekly sittings with a number of women, and who knew what went on in those private rooms. It wasn’t as if the log was that specific. Nonetheless both the wife and lover were of considerable concern to him, especial y if the lover were not from his old life.

Romantic intrigue was one of the hardest factors to forecast in time science. It emerged spontaneously, even in the most control ed environments. It could swamp a smoothly running calculation in a matter of seconds, and it left anywhere from a 3 to 19 percent wobble in even the most airtight forecast.

Which only corroborated what he knew from his own experience, since he’d dropped like a ton of time-tube liners when he’d met dearest Joan, and what a trial by fire that had been.

“This woman upstairs,” he said to Morag. “Is she a new client?”

“So I’m to understand. I haven’t seen her, though Stephen says she’s the saint’s own image of Ursula.”

Mertons had to smile. He himself had a soft spot for a fine ankle, and he understood what it meant to fol ow type, even against reason. “It would be a good diversion for him, I suppose.”

“Oh, aye. A man needs a woman’s touch. Though I could have wished