Ford first saw Greer Jones earlier that day at Roastbusters, his new favorite coffee place on East Bay Street. He’d just picked up his black tea with milk and a teaspoon of sugar—a habit he’d had since he was a child—when she walked in and got a coffee to go. He knew immediately he wanted to paint her. She looked distinctly American with her strong, clean good looks. She also had something else … something that made people around her look twice. It might have been her air, which suggested competence and control—and whether she knew it or not, a bold sensuality with her glossy red lips and pin-striped tailored pantsuit.
The artist in him wanted to discover more. So did the man. She was sexy, someone who looked as if she had places to be, a total turn-on. And when his sensitive and primal sides worked in concert, he did his best—and most dangerous—work.
When she left Roastbusters and started walking, he did, too. He flipped open his phone while watching his potential model swing her sleek briefcase at her side and sip at her coffee. Pressed the number he’d carefully programmed to ring in England at Anne’s manor house on the Thames.
“Oh, God, Ford, that Hollywood power couple who moved into the neighborhood just came over and borrowed a cup of demerara sugar,” Anne told him in that breathy way she had. “They’re making chocolate chip biscuits with their twins and ran out.”
“Lucky you.”
“Not with the paps lurking on the road. He was quite apologetic, but it’s not their fault, is it? Guess what—she wanted one of my novels to read by their pool. She said she’d never read a romance, and when I told her my heroines were empowered ballbusters in an era when it was extremely difficult to be one, she was all in.”
“Good for you,” Ford said dryly, slightly terrified by Anne’s historical romance novels, which dropped once a year and made the New York Times list every time.
“So how are you, brother dear?”
“I’ve finally found her,” he said. “The woman I want to paint.”
“Good. She must be perfect. Is she?”
“I think so.”
“Very American looking?”
“She is. Super-independent air.”
“In what way is she compelling?”
“I don’t know yet, but she is.”
“I’m counting on you. The galleries don’t think you’re in any position to come up with a canvas this fast, but I assured them you don’t wait for your muse. You command it to appear at will.”
“Tell them I work no matter what, if that’s what they’re worried about. They don’t need to know that if it’s no good—which ninety-nine times out of a hundred it’s not—I start over.”
“No, darling, we won’t tell them that. We’ll hope that you get a lightning bolt of inspiration and get it right the first—or second—time.”
“I’ll have to.”
“How awful for you to be under such pressure. But not really.” She sighed. “I know you’d do this whether you got paid or not.”
Anne was right. It was who he was, and who she was, for that matter. They both accepted that the life of an artist wasn’t an easy one. It was filled with angst and doubt. But the compensation was the inherent sense that you knew your purpose. You might be shite at it, but you walked through the world with a map in your head. Many people weren’t so fortunate.
“And considering your recent misfortune, this challenge is a good distraction for you,” Anne said.
“No painting is ever a distraction.” It was always everything. The rest of the world faded away.
“I understand that, but I’m speaking at the moment as your sister, not your manager.” An art major at university and avid collector, she’d coveted that role in his career. After his first manager moved to Australia, he’d granted it to her, sure she was making a mistake, considering the time she was required to spend on her own career, but so far, so good.
“Well, don’t get too excited,” said Ford. “She doesn’t even know I exist. I’m following her right now.”
“You are?”
The woman who’d come to fascinate him threw her coffee container into a rubbish bin at a corner and turned right.
“She might say no,” he told Anne. “How many people can drop everything and pose for a portrait?”
“She won’t say no,” Anne said. “You know when you know things better than anyone I know.”
He tried to wrap his head around that one.
“And if the exhibit—which includes this yet-to-be-painted painting—does well in Manchester, Edinburgh, and Liverpool,” she went on, “it may get picked up by the Tate Modern. That’s our goal, always. We’ll get there.”
She rang off before he could speak, and without saying goodbye.
But he wasn’t surprised. Anne lived a very busy life apart from being his manager and a full-time novelist. She had four children under age thirteen and a cerebral Oxford professor husband, besides. Not to mention the Hollywood celebrities next door. She could create a business on that fact alone, but she wouldn’t dare. She valued privacy too much and could never be anything but a class act.
“The Tate is your goal, Anne,” he murmured, and put his phone away.
His goal was to paint. And paint. And paint. He hoped the world would like his work, but he wasn’t painting to become rich. He was already rich. He wasn’t painting to become famous. His family was in Burke’s Peerage. The title went back eight generations. And fame was embarrassing. It simply wasn’t done. Best to be low-key about one’s talents and standing in society.
All he cared about was creating a body of work that represented truth as he knew it. Nothing more. And if other people found his work pleasing, or arresting, or unforgettable—if they remembered him as a painter who captured something elusive and universal about life, then he’d accomplished something worthwhile.
* * *
“Well?” It was Anne again.
He was back in his apartment on Wentworth Street in an old Charleston-style single home. He shared the second floor with two male College of Charleston undergrads, so there were beer cans everywhere and ten-speeds on the balcony. The slight slant to the floor didn’t bother him, and neither did the tiny kitchen with its refrigerator empty of everything but beer, a few Cokes, and frozen pizzas. He’d taken the first short-term lease he could find, and he couldn’t care less about the state of affairs in the house.
He was in the studio most of the time anyway. That was a space he rented in a co-op on East Bay Street. He had to bike there each morning on narrow roads, with trucks and cars either rushing past inches away or being stuck in traffic jams and spewing exhaust. Occasionally, he’d revert to cracked pavement, which was illegal, and shoot past the lot of them if his hands were itching to grab a brush and paint.
“I never asked her,” Ford said. “It just didn’t come up.”
“So you met her?” asked Anne.
“Yes. And I liked her.” Really liked her, but he wouldn’t tell Anne that.
“Oh,” she said.
“Stop imagining happy endings for me, will you?”
“Never.”
He sighed. “At any rate, she was slightly crazed at this auction I followed her into.”
“Crazed? That’s good?”
“Refreshing.” She hadn’t been afraid to be herself. And she was, frankly, mesmerizing. Lovely, sweet, and spirited. He wanted to keep her on his lap when she fell into it. He wished he could have turned her around, put his hands inside her tailored jacket, caressed her back, and made out with her—right there in front of the auction crowd.
It was a mad fantasy. He was English. And he was a baron, besides. He didn’t do things like that. The only passion he showed publicly was in his paintings. Otherwise, all his lusts and cravings, his rages, his sorrows, his joys … they were reserved for display only in the privacy of his homes in Surrey and the Cotswolds, his more primal desires unleashed in his bedroom with women he could trust. Even there, however, he would hold back. He’d been trained since a child to be wary of people who might try to capitalize on his family connections. And sure enough, he’d recently been burned that way, despite his knowing the sting of betrayal could come at any time.
But when it had, he hadn’t seen it coming. He thought he’d be able to. That was what kept him up at night. How could he have not seen it coming? For the first time in his life, he felt stupid. And vulnerable.
“So what’s your next step?” Anne asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The two lads he lived with were mellow frat boys with summer jobs at the city marina. Their frequent influx of girls who spent the night didn’t bother him, either. The young ladies sometimes made breakfast for everyone in the morning, if they stayed that long. Their long, tanned legs and Daisy Dukes shorts weren’t a hardship to observe, but when they got too friendly, as they sometimes did when they heard his accent, and assessed him as a potential “older man” boyfriend—he was a ripe thirty—he’d say something about checking in with his parole officer and then leave the apartment, which his roommates appreciated.
From his perch on a stool in the kitchen, he waved at one of them coming through the front door. It was Gus, who saw him on the phone, waggled his brows, and gave him a thumbs-up. He and the other flatmate, Drake—once they established Ford was not gay, a question they asked him on his third morning there, when he hadn’t yet had a girl over—were always hoping Ford would “score with the chicks,” as they called it. Gus was carrying a surfboard under his arm, which he placed against the wall in their small living room next to two others. He then plopped down on a shabby sofa and clicked on the television.
“You don’t have all the time in the world,” Anne said on the phone.
“I realize that.” Ford stood and looked out the kitchen window at the street below. Hydrangeas and gardenias rioted in a small front garden bordered by an iron fence, and he had a small stab of homesickness for his mother’s garden, much more formal and expansive—overseen by three hired gardeners—but still a labor of love designed by a woman who only cared to bring pleasure to her husband and children. At the curb, a carriage step made of distressed, rounded stone served as a reminder of the city’s historic past and was currently occupied by an orange tabby cat soaking up some sun. “I didn’t get her number.”
“How unlike you,” Anne said.
He scratched his head. “It is.” And he couldn’t explain it. He’d walked abruptly away from her both times they’d met. “I’ll come up with something. I know where she works.”
“Good,” said Anne. “Keep me posted.”
“I will.” He rang off.
“Ford!” Gus called from the living room. “Grab me a beer, will ya?”
“Sure.” He brought out two cans—the boys were on a budget—and tossed one to his blond flatmate. Neither Gus nor Drake had any idea who he really was. They wouldn’t care, he was certain—titles meant nothing in the United States, and he loved that fact—but it was easier not to mention it. This way he’d be assured of experiencing Charleston as a regular dude, as Gus was fond of calling him. Gus even called girls dude.
Ford sat down on an overstuffed ottoman that immediately tilted sideways. He’d forgotten. But he compensated easily, keeping his beer level, his feet planted a little farther apart, and prepared to chill—another word his flatmates were fond of.
“So how’s the painting going?” Gus asked him, as he took a swig of his beer from his can.
“Not too great at the moment,” Ford replied, downing half of his.
“You don’t smoke weed?” Gus squinted at him.
“Nope.” Ford shrugged.
A comfortable silence settled between them. Their window AC unit was working, finally, and they both basked in its humming presence.
“So how do you get those creative juices flowing then?” Gus crushed his can and threw it toward the rubbish bin in the corner. He missed.
Ford did the same thing and made it.
“You’re an old man,” Gus said. “You’ve had a lot more practice.”
Ford gave a short laugh. “Yeah, in the U.K., basketball’s a thing.”
“It is?” Gus sounded surprised.
“No.” Ford laughed. “I’ve just got better motor skills than you, mate.”
“Fuccccck you,” Gus said, and laughed.
It was amusing “chilling” with American youth.
“Get back to your inspiration,” Gus said. “You don’t smoke weed, you’re not an alcoholic … what do you do?”
“I start,” Ford said. “And I hope inspiration will come. Much of the time, it doesn’t.”
“That sucks.” Gus put his fist in front of his mouth and belched.
“You get used to it.” Ford stood carefully, putting all his weight out front so he wouldn’t fall on his arse, thanks to the missing two wheels on the ottoman’s feet. “Actually, I have something now I really want to work on,” he said. “I feel loads of inspiration.”
“A shitload of inspiration,” Gus said. “No guy says loads over here.”
“Right.”
Gus picked up the remote and switched channels from ESPN to an HBO movie. Ford had volunteered to enhance their cable options, and Gus and Drake were loving the expanded access.
“Gotta go to the studio.” Ford didn’t really. He needed to find Greer Jones. But he thought best when he was in his studio, either cleaning up or doing sketches. It was in an old cigar factory on East Bay Street. Some forward-thinking creative had converted the top floor into fifteen spaces, which were rented out at reasonable rates on a sliding scale based on one’s income. Ford was paying the top amount, plus making a donation every month, and happy to do it. The light was great, the ventilation top-of-the-line, and it had every modern convenience he needed, including a private bathroom and a shared kitchen down the hall. The open-faced brick walls lent the space old-fashioned charm, and he could play music on his Bluetooth speakers without worrying about disturbing anyone.
“Wait.” Gus tossed aside the remote and stood. “You got something in the mail today. From merry old England.” He tossed a small, square package to Ford.
“Ta,” Ford said, knowing Gus would laugh at his shorthand for thank you—which he did.
“You’re welcome,” Gus said, and laughed again. “God, I love having a foreigner as a roommate. You’re like, weird.”
“Whatever,” Ford said, and took the package to his room, a smile tugging at his mouth.
He couldn’t tell who the package was from. And then he couldn’t open it because there was so much tape around it. So he went to the kitchen and brought back a knife.
“Bloody hell,” he said when he finally got the top off a smaller box inside the larger cardboard container. He pulled a lacy ivory negligee from some hot pink tissue paper and held it up. It was tiny. He dropped it on his desk, where it pooled in a slithery, silken heap, and searched for a note.
There wasn’t one.
Then he noticed the monogram on the bodice: TW, it said, in an elegant, intertwined scroll. And he realized this was Theodora’s wedding night attire that she never wore: Teddy’s teddy.