Free Ophelia's Muse by Rita Cameron Page B

must forgive my silence. I didn’t want to waste a single moment. Would you like to see the sketches?”
    Lizzie walked over to the easel. Deverell had drawn her in intricate detail, his pencil shading each shadow and tendril of hair. The girl in the picture was at once more beautiful and more serious than what Lizzie saw in her mirror. Could her profile truly be so fine? Or had Deverell been kind? Her chin seemed less pointed, her nose not quite so long as she believed it. She smiled.
    â€œAre you pleased?”
    â€œThey’re beautiful drawings. But I hardly recognize the girl in them; surely that girl is not me. She looks quite lovely.”
    Deverell laughed. “Haven’t I made a good likeness?”
    Lizzie knew that she had said the wrong thing—she’d insulted his work when she meant to do the opposite. “Oh, I didn’t mean to imply . . . I only meant that your drawings are so lovely, I fear myself a poor thing in comparison.”
    â€œBut you’re wrong, Miss Siddal. It’s my drawings that suffer by the comparison. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful? I fear myself hardly capable of doing you justice.”
    Lizzie blushed and looked down, but Deverell gently raised her chin and held her eye for a long moment.
    â€œI’m sure you’ll try your best, Walter,” chimed in Mary, bustling over to the pair. “Now, we mustn’t keep Miss Siddal any longer, or she’ll be too tired to sit for you tomorrow.” She put a gentle hand on Lizzie’s arm and led her back to the screen. “Come, dear. I’ll help you with your dress.”
    â€œI leave you in competent hands,” Deverell called after them. “And I look forward to tomorrow.”
    â€œAs do I,” Lizzie said, and it was the first time in as long as she could remember that she had something to which she could truly look forward.
    Â 
    â€œGentlemen!” Deverell cried out, bursting through the door of Holman Hunt’s studio. He slammed the door shut behind him, not noticing that the bang nearly upset a whole table of paints.
    Holman Hunt was standing at his easel, and Dante Rossetti was sitting with his feet on a chair and his arms flung back behind his head, a barely begun canvas forgotten beside him. He waved a lazy greeting to Deverell.
    â€œDeverell!” Hunt barked, glaring at the table of spilled paints. “Watch what you’re doing!”
    â€œI’m sorry.” Deverell righted a few of the bottles and left the rest to lie where they were. He was humming to himself, and he seemed distracted as he walked to the window, flung open the shutters, and leaned out, inhaling deeply. Then he abruptly turned and collapsed into a chair next to Rossetti, leaving the window wide open and the cold air spilling in.
    Hunt shut the window. “What on earth are you doing? There’s a cold wind.”
    â€œIs there?” Deverell asked. “I suppose there is. I hadn’t noticed.”
    Rossetti and Hunt looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
    â€œOut with it, then,” Hunt said. “You look like the cat that got the cream.”
    â€œDo I?” He stared dreamily around the studio. “I suppose that I have got the cream. You fellows won’t believe what a stupendously beautiful creature I’ve found. A stunner, Rossetti, a true stunner, as you would say. She’s like a queen, really. Nothing at all like the usual sort of girl—her features were made for painting, strong and true.”
    Hunt rolled his eyes, but Rossetti looked interested. “Does such a woman exist in London? Is she flesh and blood or goddess?”
    â€œGoddess! A Phidian goddess, come to life,” Deverell declared to laughter from Hunt and Rossetti.
    â€œWe were wondering where you’d gotten yourself off to,” Hunt said. “I haven’t seen you around in weeks. Between you disappearing and Rossetti