Page 11 of The Winter Princess
I continue my inspection and find a simple iron sitting on a shelf. My mind doesn’t know what to do with it. This is the puzzle that jerks me back to my mission.
“NeerVelasquez,” I call.
Silence.
“Oskar Velasquez,” I say, louder.
“Read the sign,” he growls, his enunciation more correct than a royal princess’s.
My eyes dart around, landing on the ripped corner of a framing mat. In thick, black copperplate it reads, “Busy.” An arrow points at a notepad and pencil nearby.
“You don’t understand,” I say, striding forward a few paces. The vision of the exhibit banner falling to the ground and knocking over the prime minister has been replaying in my brain all night. “You’re needed for a staff meeting.”
“I doubt that. Is the sign illegible?”
I examine the scrap in my hands. It may be the most legible sign in the history of signs. Impossible to misinterpret. The simple act of lending me his jacket in my hour of greatest need was obviously an aberration.
I raise my voice so it carries. “The prime minister is threatening to pull all government funding. There’s a meeting to discuss it in the conference room, and you’re going to be there if I have to drag you myself.”
I hear an irritated plunk of something hitting water, the roll of wheels on a concrete floor, and a muttered oath. Then Oskar appears from behind a large easel set in front of the windows, his face a thundercloud.
I hold his gaze but brace myself against the instinct to retreat. It’s not his size I find intimidating. For a Sondish man, he’s not tall, and though his shoulders are level and well-proportioned, his build is more like a runner than a rugby player. It’s that he carries himself like the lord and ruler of every room he walks into.
I begin a cold-blooded assessment to determine why this is so. Rik called him Pavi, and he has the same lightly tanned skin as my brother and father. His hair is dead black, the color of a 17th-century Sondish merchant’s best coat, and his expression resembles some of those competent, hard-eyed, self-made men.
If only I found this combination unappealing. That I don’t is a large part of my irritation about him. A reclusive art restorer should have whiskers and be unkempt. He should have elbow patches on his suit coat. He should look like Roland.
Instead of this comfortable image, Oskar wears a white shirt, cuffs rolled up his corded forearms, suit pants, and a close-fitting vest. These are covered by a canvas apron with leather fastenings, daubed down the front with small, tidy dots of paint. Over his heart, a pen and sliding ruler are held in a leather loop, and when he reaches behind his back to undo the ties, I watch the stretch of his muscled shoulders. So neat. So orderly. The man is begging for disarrangement.
He hangs the apron on a hook and takes his sleeves down, buttoning the cuffs one at a time. Then he reaches past me for a tie, pulling it from a hanger.
I lean slightly away and inhale, scenting the nutmeg and lemons of his aftershave chased by the sweet, piney smell of turpentine.What did I tell Ella he smelled of? Paint fumes? Lies.
Flipping up his collar, he lays the tie across the back of his neck.
I never would have let our friction go on so long if he looked like Roland. I would have tried to win him around somehow.
“The department heads need to elect a temporary director,” I explain. I take a step back, seceding some ground, but planting myself firmly. This isn’t a social call. I’m mad. I must remember I’m mad. “They’ve been calling. The least you could do is answer.”
A dark eyebrow lifts and he opens a drawer, withdrawing his phone. He looks at me as he presses the power button. Then he reaches for his jacket and shrugs it on. The jacket does have elbow patches, but they fail to give him Roland’s quality of avuncular coziness. I can’t imagine him carrying caramels in his pockets.
Then he tugs the door open for me. “After you, Your Royal Highness,” he says, as though he works in the palace and says it every day of his life.
I brush past him, chin high. His pace is unhurried as he follows. All the while he is knotting his tie, the swish of Italian silk whispering down the hall.
5
Personal Vendetta
OSKAR
People ask about my work. “An art restorer,” they repeat, pleased by the novelty, as though I’ve ticked a box on a scavenger hunt.
They stuff the bare job description with romantic notions about antiquity and Hollywood heist movies. People have the idea that I work in a tuxedo, that I’m a great artist myself, or an egotist, daring to touch works a thousand years old. People assume I must be in a near-constant state of amazement.
People are wrong.
Five minutes ago, I was restoring a Dutch interior. Despite surviving the War of Spanish Succession and the Nazi occupation, the artwork was nearly destroyed during the conscious uncoupling of a pair of 21st-century Sondish socialites. Though the delicate canvas is more than three hundred years old, any sense of enchantment vanished when the work became a series of tasks to be checked off.
