The Master & the Muses by Amanda McIntyre

Author:Amanda McIntyre
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Spice
Published: 2010-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

We were lovers. If he wasn’t painting me, he was worshipping me with a passion akin to it. I reveled in this attention, blossomed as a woman beneath his hand, grew in status and acceptance among his closely knit circle of friends—some prominent artists and poets, most with an opinion on everything under the sun. They drew me into their conversations, interested in my thoughts as a woman, as an equal. It was enough to incite my hunger for more. Perhaps I wanted to prove something to myself, or to Deven or my family. Even now, I don’t know what it is that drives me, but I have never been completely at ease with myself.

On a rare occasion, Thomas allowed me to be “borrowed” for a short interval by one of his peers, but he was precise in how long they could keep me.

Thomas loved gathering the boys around him, leaving an open-door policy to the house most of the time. Artists would wander in and out at all hours, seeking his consultation on various matters, or sometimes just to share a drink. When one of them had the good fortune to sell a painting, it was cause for a grand celebration with plenty of food and wine for all.

It was at one of these impromptu soirées that I met a woman named Grace, a former model and longtime friend of Thomas.

I’d discovered, not from Thomas but from Grace herself, that she was currently hired by Thomas to keep the studio clean, although I couldn’t remember ever seeing her except that once on the balcony. This evening she was quiet around me, but chatty with the artists she called “her boys.”

I sensed a tension between us almost immediately. I suspected it had to do with Thomas, but there was something else—a kind of superiority she held over me, as if she was on the inside and I was not, nor ever would be.

I checked the platter of oysters I’d brought from the pub around the corner. They were Thomas’s favorite and he insisted that I buy them for tonight’s celebration. He was bringing home a surprise. With a parting glance at the group, engaged fully in conversation with Grace, who looked like a queen holding her court, I took my glass of wine and stepped out onto the balcony. I leaned against the wall and surveyed the autumn sun descending on the horizon. Below, the gaslights began to glimmer, turned by the lamplighter’s key. My eye caught the shape of a carriage parked down the street, the silhouette of a driver seated atop the bench in dark silence. I sensed he was watching me, and a shiver ran over my shoulders. The sound of another carriage approaching from the opposite direction drew my attention to where it stopped below. When I looked up again, both the first driver and the phantom carriage were gone. I could not shake the feeling that it had been Deven, perhaps alone, or did he have Amelia with him? I’d heard from her only once since I’d left.

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