"Any reason it's taking so long?"
Anne stirred sugar into her coffee. "I want it to be perfect, that's all."
"The painting?"
"What else?"
"Oh, there's so much else...isn't there?" Stephen drank down a small cup of black coffee and shuddered a little. He was probably hung over again. "The seduction, for one thing."
"Seduction?"
"You want it to be perfect too, I suppose—though I can't imagine why you bother. You ought to just fuck that girl and get it over with. The rest of the painting will go easily after that."
"Stephen!" Anne blushed deeply.
"Sorry dear. I don't mean to be crass. Well, perhaps I do. But perhaps you need a dose of reality. These models—that's their sideline, you know."
"Not this model." Anne knew she ought to be angry, ought to defend Claudine. But she was quiet, embarrassed for herself, because if Stephen had Claudine wrong, he had Anne right. She wanted it all—the perfect seduction ending in the perfect...well, what Stephen had said.
"Think about it, Anne. It might not be such a bad thing if it happened, would it? You aren't a cad. You would be the perfect gentleman, I'm sure."
Then he actually winked at her, rose and walked upstairs to his room.
***
"Enough," Anne told Claudine. "It's no use without natural light." The sun had long gone, but she had been desperate to keep working. The picture needed the late afternoon light from the window and the lamps had not been sufficient. She'd made no real progress for an hour.
She took out her watch, more to buy time than to check it. Then she dared. "Shall we go down to the café?"
Claudine picked up a green velveteen robe from a chair nearby and wrapped it around her shoulders. She ran her hand through her loose hair and shook her head. Then she walked to the bag she'd thrown in the corner of the studio and rifled through it, bringing out a bottle of amber liquid and smiling.
"Pas ce soir."
She held the bottle up to Anne, "tu as des verres?" she asked. Anne nodded, turned to a table behind her and produced two glasses from a jumble of brushes and tubes. Claudine took the glasses and poured the drinks. She handed one to Anne, then sat on a low prop couch in the corner of the studio, half hidden in a shadow. The robe was not fastened and as she sat, she made no attempt to prevent it from falling open.
Anne put the glass down without tasting its contents, cleaned her brushes and put them carefully away. Then she sat back down on the stool before her canvas and drank. She looked at the picture before her. Maybe it was finally finished. She wanted to see it tomorrow in the morning light before she decided. She ran her hand through her hair and stopped at the base of her neck, squeezing hard. Her shoulders were stiff from sitting and painting for so long.
"Viens," Claudine said in a calm voice and beckoned.
Anne stood and walked to the dim corner where the girl gestured for her to sit at her feet. She rubbed Anne's shoulders with surprising strength and the young artist sighed involuntarily. Claudine took Anne's empty glass and refilled it from the bottle, handing it back to her.
Anne didn't feel the time passing as she drank two more glasses of whatever Claudine was giving her, all while the girl massaged her neck and shoulders. "Est-ce que tu y restes ce soir?" The model asked quietly.
Anne thought maybe she should sleep in the studio after all. It was late now. She wanted to be back at dawn tomorrow to see the painting in the brightest daylight. She was drunk and home—only a mile's walk—seemed far away.
She put her face in her hands, rubbed her eyes and turned to the girl who sat behind her on the couch, half-covered by the velvet robe. She smiled quietly at Anne and asked in a whisper, "Est ce-que tu veux me baiser?
Anne looked at the girl's beckoning eyes. The lie "non" began to form on her lips, but did not leave them before the girl leaned down and kissed her.
Anne reached up into the velvet robe and touched the soft naked breast she had been painting for weeks. It was warm in the summer night. She marveled that she could have rendered it so many times on canvas without ever having felt it with the same hand that held the brush and at once she knew that this touch was exactly what had been missing all these weeks in her art. Anne rose up on her knees, putting her mouth, now on the girl's breast and moving her hands across her body, under the robe. The nipple was hard beneath her tongue, just as she had imagined it on so many wakeful nights since she had begun painting Claudine.
"Mon joli garcon Americain," the model whispered, running her hands through Anne's short hair.
"Non," Anne told her, looking up calmly. She took both of the girl's hands in one of her own and held them away from her body, "m'appelles pas 'ta garcon.'" Then, in English, "I'm not your boy."
She still held the girl's hands, raising them over her head and pinning them there as she climbed up on the sofa and kissed her hard on the mouth.
Veux-tu plus?" she teased. Anne could see plainly that the girl wanted much more.
"Oui..." it was almost a whisper.
"Dis 's'il vous plait, monsieur,'" Anne told her in a low, rough voice.
"S'il vous plait, monsieur," the girl whispered obediently then, "s'il vous plait, s'il vous plait, s'il vous plait..." as Anne let go of her hands and trailed a light tongue from her neck to her breasts, to her belly to those thighs she had longed to open.
She opened them, pushing Claudine's knees back and twisting her fingers into the mound of curls surrounding the hot wet crevasse Anne had dreamed of finding between Salome's legs.
Claudine's legs.
But if Anne had a kingdom...she would give not half but all of it to taste what lay before her now. Claudine offered it freely, begged her to take it in low moans of "monsieur, s'il vous plait to have me, monsieur. S'il vous plait to take me, monsieur..."
Anne took her. She took her first in her mouth, her tongue thrusting inside as far as it could go. Claudine gasped and reached down to hold Anne's shoulders, clinging to them as for life as her own body pitched forward.
Now Anne lifted her head, moved up to Claudine's mouth and kissed her hard again, even as her hand crept up the woman's thigh and plunged into the slick place her tongue had been. She pushed slowly but steadily, past protesting muscle and even Claudine's sharp cry of temporary pain until her whole hand was inside the woman, twisting and plunging until the muscles tightened hard around her fist and Claudine released a long cry of pleasure that trickled off into a murmur.
"Oh monsieur, merci, merci...oh monsieur..."
***
Anne awakened in her clothes to a pounding headache as the morning light streamed in through the studio's enormous southern windows.
She didn't see Claudine at first, but as she sat up, she heard the girl's voice call gently across the room, "tu leves?"
Anne looked up to see her dressed and standing before the easel, looking intently at the picture, a smoking cigarette in her hand. Anne rose and walked towards the girl, who looked away from the canvas now, to smile at the young artist.
"C'est moi," she said. "The others paint what they want me to be," then looked again at the picture, "mais ceci—c'est vraiment moi."
"C'est Salome," Anne objected. How could it "really" be Claudine, when Anne barely knew the girl?
"As you say," the model demurred with a smile.
But as she stepped around to look at her canvas in the morning light, she saw what Claudine saw. The picture was perfect. It was like her dreams. Exactly.
She looked at the model. "I dreamed you," she whispered. "J'ai reve de ceci."
Claudine smiled. "Oui. And I, you."
***
The following month, the American newspaper in Paris reported on the Exhibition des Independents:
"...Salome" by a certain mysterious new painter only known as "M. Hastings" is widely considered to be one of the best in the Independents this season. There is no doubt that the mysterious Mr. Hastings has an interesting career ahead of him, if he eve
r returns to Paris. The rumors say he is in New York with his new wife. While we congratulate him, we hope, for the sake of art, he isn’t too content with married life.
Anne Hastings read the piece—weeks old already, so long had it taken to reach her after Stephen had clipped it and posted it to her new studio in New York—as she waited for breakfast.
But it was not long and breakfast was simple. In only moments Claudine appeared with hot rolls and a pot of tea. "Something good in the news?" she asked. Her English, though still accented, was improving with practice.
"Something very good," Anne assented.
And she smiled as Claudine sat down to join her for the meal.
Side Saddle
New York State 1880
Lucy could never resist an opportunity to fly. She tapped Puck's flank and he tossed his head and snorted before clearing the pasture gate with ten inches to spare. Lucy gave him a little pat of congratulations, but kept him at a gallop as they hit the lane and turned toward the house. She was under strict orders from her father to go through the gate rather than over it when she was riding alone, but she almost always rode alone and she always jumped.
She shouldn't have gone out at all today but had found herself awake before light. The day had dawned clear and warm for the first time in weeks, and she had sent to the stable for a horse. She had been riding for less than an hour, but poor Puck was foaming when she reached home. She'd pushed him hard—pushed herself hard. Her heart pounded as she came to a stop in the stable yard.
She slid to the ground and handed the reins to the head groom. "Thank you, Bill," she said, and stepped briskly back to the house and up to her room. She hoped she had not been missed.
Meg had Lucy halfway out of her riding things when her mother appeared at the door. "Lucinda, you're not going out this morning! You've got to—"
But Lucy cut her off, "I've already been mother, I'm just getting undressed now."
"Oh Lucinda, really!" her mother frowned, but went back up the hall to her own room.
Lucy was down to her corset and chemise. Meg stood by the wardrobe, hanging away the wool riding habit.
"Just my dressing gown, for now, Meg," Lucy said.
The maid took out a robe of pale blue silk and held it as the girl slipped it on.
"You're not going down for breakfast, Miss Lucinda?"
Lucy made a face, "The last thing I want this morning is a lecture from my mother about appropriate behavior for a young lady," she said.
Meg smiled as much as she dared. "I'll bring up a tray, then," she said and stepped into her own small adjoining room and down the service stairs to the kitchen.
Lucy sat on a low couch before the cold cinders of last night's fire and leafed through the novel she'd begun reading the evening before. She had nearly found her page when she was startled by the slam of a shutter banging hard against her window in a gust of spring wind. She put the book aside and stepped quickly across the room.
Her dressing gown slipped over one shoulder as she opened the window and leaned out to fasten the errant shutter. Escaping locks of loosely plaited auburn hair fell in her face and the light dazzled her eyes as she looked out into the brightening day.
When she pulled her hair back, what she saw made her catch her breath.
Just outside her window, not thirty feet away, was the new stable manager, leading a shining red bay mare through the yard below. The bang of the shutter had startled both man and beast and they had turned to the window together.
The breeze in her hair made her giddy. Without thinking, she smiled into the man's eyes as if the morning was a small secret thing they were sharing, hidden in plain view from a world too dull to notice it.
The man smiled back and as he did, the wind blew up and kissed her naked shoulder, reminding Lucy that she wasn't dressed.
She ducked quickly back inside, the spell broken, chastening herself for not waiting for Meg to secure the shutters. Hopefully, no one else had seen her at the window—no one, that is, who might mention it to her mother.
Meg arrived with a breakfast tray and sat it on a little table by the couch, asking if Lucy needed anything more.
"Nothing now. Have breakfast with me?" she invited her maid, gesturing to the chair across from her own seat. Meg smiled and obediently sat for a slice of buttered toast before returning the tray to the kitchen.
***
Mr. Barrett came to lunch again, as he had twice last week and once the week before that. The man gave Lucy no particular offense. He simply held for her, no particular interest either. He was her father's friend, a man in his late thirties with thinning hair and expensive clothes cut in the most conservative fashion. He was neither handsome nor ugly. To Lucy, there was nothing at all remarkable about him; nothing that might bring him to mind once he was out of her immediate company. And it was quite clear to her that he had nothing in common with a girl of eighteen, whose favorite place to be was rambling through the fields and woods of her father's estate, daydreaming about the adventures of girls she read about in serialized novels.
Yet, when Mr. Barrett came to visit, her parents always acted as if Lucy should be especially pleased. Today was no exception. After lunch, Mr. Foster looked up and announced, "Lucinda, it seems that Mr. Barrett has brought you a gift this afternoon. We'll need to step outside to find it." Mr. Foster beamed as if Lucy were a small child and he, Santa Claus.
Lucy had no idea what her father could be talking about, but the mystery was a welcome break in the day's monotony so she followed her parents and Mr. Barrett to the stable yard.
There, waiting for them were the man and the horse she had seen that morning through her bedroom window.
"Well, isn't this a wonderful surprise?" her father said as they all admired the bay mare. And though Lucy had no desire to receive gifts from Mr. Barrett, she had to admit the horse was beautiful. She stepped forward and held her hand to the mare's muzzle while the man stepped aside, murmuring gentle reassurances.
"She is lovely, isn't she?" Lucy asked the stable manager.
"Yes Miss Lucinda, she's a fine animal," he said.
Lucy caught the man's eye and as she did, the certain realization hit her that though she stood before him swathed in satin, hair perfectly coiffed and pinned by Meg, what he saw was a girl leaning out the window with her hair coming down and her dressing gown askew. She blushed and stepped away.
Lucy's father and Mr. Barrett were looking pleased. Her mother was glowing. Lucy wanted to try the new horse immediately. But the stable manager led her away. Lucy watched them go, the long-legged mare gleaming; the man at her side matching her movements with a nearly equine grace of his own.
***
It was still dark the next morning but Lucy rang for Meg. She wanted to try the new mare.
Ten minutes later, she rang again, and began dressing herself. Ten minutes more and the sun was up. Meg arrived at last with the tea tray, looking frazzled.
"Bad night?" asked Lucy, though she was more annoyed with Meg than sympathetic.
"Sorry Miss," apologized the maid, hastening to help Lucy with her stays.
Once laced and dressed, Lucy left the room without another word, the tea tray untouched.
She found the stable manager sitting on a bench in the yard, polishing a bridle in the weak morning sunlight. Spying her, he sprang to his feet and touched his cap.
"Good morning...Mr. Smith?" The man had been at Black Fields for a month, but Lucy had not really met him yet. When she ordered a horse, it was always Bill or Nate who came to the yard and handed her the reins.
"Yes Miss...Sam Smith."
Lucy began again. "Good morning Mr. Smith. I'd like to take the new mare out, please."
"Certainly Miss Lucinda. I'm sorry she's not ready. I didn't get word you wanted her."
"That's because I didn't send word." Lucy smiled. "I don't mind waiting."
She wanted him to smile back, as he had done the morning before.
He didn't.
"Excuse me, Miss," he said instead. "I've got her bridle here, I'll just..." and he touched his hat again and walked through the stable door.
"Bill!" she heard him call, "Tack up Miss Lucinda's new horse—"
A few minutes later, Lucy sat aside the new mare, Sam Smith holding her steady.
"What's her name?" Lucy thought to ask, as she took the reins.
"They called her Dame of Athens," Sam answered.
"Dame of Athens?" Lucy gave a little laugh. "That's a bit grand for every day use, don't you think, Mr. Smith?" then, "'Athena' will suit her better," she reached down, stroking the mare's neck. "Yes?"
Victorian Passions: The Complete Collection of Four Stories under One Cover Page 4