The Master & the Muses (17 page)

“It's settled, then, to celebrate your new position, I'm going to take you to a special place—one of London's premiere theaters. I promise, it is like nothing you have ever seen.” His eyes danced with excitement.

“Now? At his hour?” I was accustomed to an early bedtime and early mornings.

“The night is still young, Sara. Come.” He grabbed my jacket and held it for me as I put it back on. I tried to take his sudden whim in stride. After all, I was embarking on a new life, why should I not embrace it?

 

The air was thick with cigar smoke, stinging my eyes, as I followed Rodin through the crowded room. Private tables set within red-curtained alcoves catered to the elite, dressed in their finest clothes. They drank their champagne and toyed with the table servers. I passed by one as she was taking a bottle of wine to a table of men. She was dressed, as all the women servers were, in long stockings, tall ankle boots and short trousers. The ensemble was topped by a tightly cinched red corset that thrust her pale breasts into full view.

Thomas wove me through the tables of boisterous men. At one table, they were passing one of the servers around lap to lap, sampling her kisses and teasing her breasts. It was a different world. Dark, decadent, a place Aunt Perdy would call a “den of sinfulness.”

“Over here, Sara.” He tugged on my hand just as a drunken sot reached for my waist.

“Sit here,” Thomas directed, pulling out a chair for me. Three men seated at the table stood.

“Gentlemen, this is the stunner I told you about. Isn't she a peach?”

I sat with my hands folded in my lap, assuring myself that I'd not just made the worst mistake of my life.

A red-haired gent with a neatly trimmed beard leaned over the table, his hand stuck out in greeting. “Watts, milady. You can call me George. We weren't sure that you weren't a product of Thomas's imagination. Sort of a ghost of the opera house.” He shook my hand enthusiastically.

“Woolner's the name. It's a pleasure, Miss Cartwright.” A clean-shaven young man with dark shoulder-length hair greeted me.

Thomas flung his arm over the back of my chair, letting his fingers brush lightly against the back of my shoulder.

“Where's Hunt?” he shouted over the din of the crowd. There was no question from the noise level of the mostly male crowd that the drinks flowed freely in this place.

“Can I offer you something?” I turned toward the voice and my gaze locked onto the firm, round breasts of our table server. I heard a low rumble of laughter from the man named Watts seated to my left. Mr. Rodin leaned forward and grinned. I think he rather enjoyed that the situation might challenge my level of comfort.

“Are you thirsty, my muse?” He glanced at the woman's ample offerings. Perhaps because I was from a farm, he thought I would not catch his not-so-subtle innuendo. He was testing me, to see how shocked I might be by his bawdy choice in lifestyle. I would not be run off quite so easily. “A glass of port, please,” I replied, eyeing a silver piercing on the woman's dark cherry-colored nipple.

“Did it hurt?” I asked politely.

“This?” She touched herself and I noted the entire table of men went silent, focused intently on our conversation.

“Not so much this one,” she said, flipping the ring with a long red fingernail. “But this little imp, he gave me trouble.” She turned to face me, pushing her other breast in my face as she leaned down and flicked the other glimmering silver ring.

“This one is still a bit sensitive with the gents. Now and again a chap will get a mite too curious, if you know what I mean?”

She gave me a wink.

“Oh, but not our Mr. Rodin.” She wrapped her free arm around Thomas's neck and hugged him to her bosom. “This one's a gentleman, he is.” She stood up, thrusting her chest out as she scanned the glasses on the table. “Anything else right now for you gents…and the lady?” She smiled down at me. She was completely unaware how the men at the table were blatantly staring at her. With a nod, she leaned down and kissed Thomas on the cheek, then rubbed off the residual red mark left by her painted lips.

Thomas glanced down at the table, a hint of a smile creating a deep crevice in his angular jaw. Were I to guess, he looked a trifle embarrassed. He slanted me a look, catching my curious expression, and smiled.

“So, Thomas, you brought me to a burlesque theater,” I said, trying to show him that his choice of entertainment had not shocked me as much as he'd thought it would. “What were you thinking?”

He laughed good-naturedly and shrugged. “I had no motive other than to show you some of the more interesting sights of London.”

“Oh, interesting, indeed. We've covered the female anatomy—when shall we address the male?” I held tight my smile, challenging him that if he thought he could shock me into running back to the farm, he was gravely mistaken.

He leaned toward me, his arm across the back of my chair, and whispered in my ear, “I like your spirit, Sara Cartwright.” His breath blew hot against my temple.

I turned to face him, his mouth inches from mine. “What else do you intend to try to shock me with, Thomas?” My gaze dropped to the fullness of his lower lip, imagining how practiced he probably was in seducing women.

“Here's the port for the lady and the whiskey for Mr. Rodin.” The server placed the glasses in front of us.

Thomas leaned back slowly, letting a full smile emerge on his face. “I think you will work out fine, Sara, just fine.”

He raised his glass. “To a long, sweaty and prosperous union.” His brothers in art joined him, raising their glasses in kind.

I smiled and lifted my glass, having passed muster on the first—I had a strange feeling—of many such tests, no longer afraid of Mr. Thomas Rodin, his friends, or the choice I'd made.

THOMAS WAS HAVING TROUBLE GETTING THE RIGHT
shade of pink for my mouth. “Damnation!” He flung another paintbrush over his shoulder—the third one this morning.

It was my third week living at the studio and the second day sitting for his current project. In the first week, he'd taken me to the Royal Academy gallery, noting his one painting and several of his peers'. He introduced me to a number of obscure burlesque theaters, featuring a new art form called “Poses Plastiques,” a scandalous form of statue-style posing of mythological deities and stories that left little to the imagination. He was tireless in his quest to try new exotic venues, especially those ridiculed by the upper-crust critics of London's art world. And though I enjoyed the excitement of accompanying him on his adventures into his dark worlds, I much preferred spending time alone with him at the studio, sequestered together in the place where I could experience the totality of his artistic passion.

I'd sat unmoving since first light, maybe four or five hours ago, positioned to his liking on a backless chair, dressed in a blue silk gown that looked as though it had come from the trunk of a Renaissance theater troupe. My back was stiff, and I had no feeling in my calves.

“What in blazes can be so difficult about finding the right shade for a woman's mouth?” he muttered angrily as he scooped up a glob of red paint and slapped it on his palette. His gaze jumped from chopping and mixing the colors to the canvas and back to me.

I'd quickly learned two things about Thomas Rodin. First, he was meticulous when it came to his work, and second, his work was his life. Already he'd shirked from the ornately embellished hunter-green gentleman's jacket that he usually wore. I'd grown used to his flamboyant style with his velvet coats and billowy silk shirts. He rarely wore a cravat, unless going out, and preferred his hair long, although the styles for men were becoming shorter. I would often hear him quoting Shakespeare as he painted.

Today, he'd turned back his sleeves, rolling them to his elbows, revealing the sinewy flesh of his arms and his hands—hands that possessed character, not only in how they held a brush, but by virtue of the skill they possessed.

He paced back and forth, glancing at the canvas, standing at the window, standing across the room and staring for long intervals of time at me.

“Let me try something.”

He dropped the palette on the table, walked over and dropped to his knee in front of me. The gesture sent the first tingle up my spine that I'd felt in hours.

“I need to kiss you,” he stated simply. “To see how your lips change color.”

I raised my eyebrows, trying not to break my pose. “Couldn't I just bite them and achieve the same purpose?”

His eyes sparkled with my subtle teasing, before he pushed his wayward curls over his ears and smiled at me. By God, he was a handsome man, with a smooth-shaven face, a firm jaw and a mouth that was the call to sin. His vest lay open, as did the top of his shirt revealing a tempting smattering of dark hair on his chest. I could not tell if I was merely infatuated with him, or if I was developing stronger feelings for him. I knew only that I had
the need to be as close as I could to the passion and zest for life that lay behind those teal-colored eyes.

“I beg you, Sara.”

His plea, waxing desperate, was impossible to ignore, even if I'd wanted to, which I did not. “If you think it will help, Thomas,” I replied.

I'd no sooner said the words than he grabbed my face and pressed his lips hard against mine. The moment was not at all what I'd envisioned and in the next instant he rocked back on his heels, his eyes scrutinizing my lips.

“Once more,” he offered quietly before capturing my mouth again, this time more insistent, hungry.

He broke the kiss but did not move away, his breath coming in short, raspy pants. “Sara,” he whispered, teasing, coaxing, sampling my lips until in dizzying surrender, I returned his kiss.

Liquid heat pooled between my thighs. I heard sighs in the back of my brain and realized they were mine. I wanted his hands on me, touching, caressing, stroking. He stopped without warning, leaned back and a slow smile crept across his face.

“There it is.” He jumped to his feet, grabbed a brush as he made his way back to the canvas, and began painting with furious glee. “Yes!” he cried, the expression as he turned his face heavenward one of utter joy. “That's what I needed.”

I swallowed, feeling the dampness between my legs. I was nowhere close to what I needed. “May I take a break? I need to lie down for a few moments.”

He glanced up at me with a patronizing scowl.

“Of course, I've got to work on your mouth. I'll come fetch you when I need you again.”

That was what concerned me. On unsteady legs, I held my palm against the flocked hallway wall and found my room. I opened the window to allow in the mid-afternoon breeze. After splashing my face with water from the basin, I stripped down to my thin cotton chemise and pantaloons and stretched out on my bed, letting my eyes drift shut.

I was not certain how long I slept, but I awoke with a start and realized the sun had passed around the other side of the house.

“There's not enough light left in the day, Sara. We'll start fresh tomorrow.” Thomas's voice issued from a chair in the corner to my right. I clamped my hand over my heart, pushing myself upright in the bed.

“How long have you been here?” I asked breathlessly.

He looked relaxed, leaning back with his arms draped over the chair, his long legs stretched out before him. He uncrossed his ankles.

“An hour or two, maybe. I think I might have dozed.”

His eyes raked over me.

“You are quite fascinating when you sleep.” He leaned forward and grinned. “You make these funny little sounds, barely audible, but exquisitely erotic.” He leaned his elbows on his knees. “I got hard just listening to you.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath to steady my nerves and looked back at him.

“Does that shock you?” he asked, easing back into the chair, his gaze fixed on me.

I gathered my wits, determined that if this was another of his tests, I was going to pass. “That seems to be your quest, Thomas, to shock me. Did it occur to you that I might be dreaming?”

His eyebrows rose. “I like that thought. About what? Do you remember?”

“Maybe I dreamed of being in the burlesque, of wearing a corset and carrying a whip. Maybe I dreamed of having my nipples pierced. Would that shock
you,
Thomas?”

“Interestingly, that can be arranged, if you like. For the record, that woman you met has several other piercings. Would you like me to tell you where they are?” He grinned.

I sighed and conceded to his wit. “Very well, Thomas, you've succeeded. I withdraw.”

“Oh, no, not when we were just getting started, Sara.”

He moved over to sit beside me on the bed, glancing down at where the camisole had slipped off my shoulder.

“So beautiful—a woman's shoulder,” he said quietly, tracing his fingers light along my skin.

My breasts tightened. I twisted the sheeting between my fingers, fighting the desire inside me, not wanting to appear too desperate, though a yearning had been building inside me since the moment we'd met at the theater.

His hand touched my chin, lifting my face to meet his eyes. My heart thrummed madly in my chest, waiting, hoping.

“You are a lovely woman, Sara. Desirable, determined, a most lethal combination for any man. You and I both know that kiss was not nearly enough.”

He leaned forward, teasing his mouth against mine, making me work for the kiss he knew I wanted more than air.

His hand brushed over my covered breast as his lips paid artful attention to the curve of my neck. I watched the curtains flutter in the evening breeze as he caressed me, drawing a sigh from my lips.

Prompted by his smile, I lifted my arms and allowed him to peel off my top as he eased me to my back. He held my hands captive, pinned above my head as he leaned down, lavishing one breast and then the other until they were tight with arousal.

“You've wanted this, haven't you? You needed me to touch you like this.”

One piece at a time, the encumbrance of our clothing was removed and we lay wrapped in the sheets, blissfully sampling each other's bodies.

“Haven't you wanted this, as well, Thomas?” I asked, running my palms up his rippled stomach, flicking his taut nipple with my tongue. I knew he expected nothing more from me than the carnal pleasure we shared. The freedom of that, with no strings to tie me down, encouraged my boldness.

“You are exquisite, my muse.” He sighed. “From the moment I saw you in that dark theater, I have wanted you. Can you
imagine my torture? Watching and worshipping you from afar each day, wanting to please you—wanting you to please me.”

His words of adoration were empowering, heady. “I had no idea that I'd tortured you so, Thomas.” He handed me his cravat.

“What is this for?” I asked. “You don't wear one.”

He lifted his hands to the bed rail and smiled. “They ought to be good for something, then. I am yours, my muse, to do with as you wish.”

I held his eyes as I realized what he wanted me to do. Lifting my leg to straddle his hips, I leaned forward and wrapped his wrists, securing them then to the bed railing. He rose up and caught one of my breasts, drawing the tip through his teeth. The short stab of pain sent a delicious jolt to my core.

“To be tortured by a woman of such divine beauty is my pleasure,” he uttered as he lay beneath me. I leaned down and cupped his face in a searing kiss, letting my hands glide over him in unabashed exploration. To watch his eyes drift shut and hear the suffering moans from his throat empowered me in a way I'd never known. Desperate need coiled deep inside me and I reached between us, guiding his cock to my drenched opening.

“That's good, my muse,” he whispered, and a quiet groan escaped from his throat as I eased onto him.

I braced my hands on his chest, allowing my body to welcome him in glorious fullness.

“The problem most people have with sex is that they don't see the artistic beauty of it.” He jerked his hips upward, causing me to gasp openly.

He grinned and repeated the motion. “You should see how beautiful you are with me deep—” he thrust his hips again “—inside you.”

I was transported from the limited borders of reality to a state of carnal ecstasy—it was magical, euphoric. Closing my eyes, I leaned back, rocking my hips, feeling my body tighten. I cradled my arms over my head, in full control of my body's pleasure until at last, I came undone and felt my muscles con
tracting around him. He pushed his hips against mine and emptied his hot seed.

“Untie me,” he instructed in a fierce whisper, and as soon as I had he had me on my back, capturing my mouth in a long kiss.

Just as quickly, he leaped from the bed, grabbed his pants and tossed me my dressing robe. “Come with me. This moment is precious.”

“But my dress.” I pointed to the gown I'd worn before.

“Never mind the dress, Sara. This is kismet. Come, we must hurry.”

I had not yet tied my robe before he grabbed my hand and, half-naked, we ran back to the studio down the hall. I prayed no one else was home.

He grabbed a sketchpad as I finished dressing and guided me to the fainting couch. As if arranging a curtain, he positioned me, loosening my robe slightly so only a glimpse of my breast was visible, and then he stood back to observe his work.

“Absolutely perfect,” he stated. “You're a goddess.” He leaned down and kissed me tenderly.

I rested my cheek in my hand, feeling utterly satisfied, and offered him a smile of pure contentment as he sat in his chair and began furiously sketching.

 

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. She'd written to say that Aunt Perdy and Uncle Marcus would not allow her to have anything more to do with me. For all intents and purposes, they told her, she no longer had a cousin. I wondered why Deven and Amelia would come this far and not contact me. Despite how my relatives felt about me, I hoped that all was well at home.