one; in the beginning was the word.
"Am I in a Roman chapel? Or have I somehow stepped foot in Padua, Seville, or Marseilles?" were the first words of the supposed appraisal, spoken by the young noble as he runs a tanned hand through his deep brown hair. "Going by your display here I would never have guessed that you are a painter from Holland, Maestro. Let alone an apprentice of Schoonmaker, the master of the Dordrecht altarpiece. Why, I am in a room of idols!" he laughed at his own joke. Niels Johanssen, the would-be maestro being addressed, merely blinked.
"...Thank you, sir." he said blandly.
Grinning, the noble gestured to the paintings of saints on display — Madonnas draped in blue and scarlet, the infant Christ as chubby as a Dutch baby raised on cheese. "Is there a purpose to all this painted beauty?" he asked, challenging and curious at once.
food on the table, Niels thought involuntarily. a stocked kitchen, a sister's future dowry, a need to no longer see the ribs of one's youngest brother peeking from a tattered shirt.
"The true consequence of beauty is devotion, sir — which, unfortunately for my career, is no longer much sanctioned in my homeland." Indeed, the holy subjects of his paintings would be frowned upon even in Haarlem, or Rotterdam; where secret chapels nestle amid market fairs and papist presence is tolerated, but never embraced.
"Shame," was the succinct reply, the tone all but proclaiming the nobleman didn't find Niels' predicament a shame at all. He continued his examination of the paintings — Annunciations and Lamentations and Nativities, Saints Basil and Stephen and John the Baptist — works finished and unfinished alike. He skimmed through scraps of paper — scratched with silvery ink, studies in form — pinned to the edges of panels.
He stopped before a small, sepia portrait; and Niels clenched his jaw.
"And who is this?" he crowed, delighted. "Saint Alicia, or perhaps Saint Lucy? Do you not fear being dashed into infierno when you paint into sanctified scenes of a saintess' life the face of a woman you love? Do not attempt to deny it; the care that went into the details, here — it tells me all. Such sprezzatura! And look how you capture the way her hair curls, here! Ah, Maestro, such is a painter's life for you, yes?" he exhaled. "In this, I envy you."
Niels almost rolled his eyes. Were all nobles of Aragón so needlessly theatrical? "It is nothing so sacred. It's merely a study in form, of my sister."
The reply seemed to startle his patron. "Your sister?" he looked back and forth between artisan and artwork. "...Mercy." he finally said, the word whooshing out like a breath.
"Quite," Niels replied after a while, his tone flat and noncommittal. He moved closer to the portrait. "One can hardly attend to the flowers I painted, here; mere daisies and columbines and the commonest of weeds. But my sister is clever, as much she is blessed with a comely visage. Our childhood in the Spanish Netherlands have allowed us — her, more than I — to understand the languages spoken in the villages at Leie's banks and the markets of Pamplona, aside from our own mother tongue. Who can know how God chooses to work His way in this world, yes?"
The words spilled out before he registered it, and Niels felt mildly embarrassed at how preening they sounded. His patron, though, seemed to not have noticed.
The painting was of a young woman — youthful and approximately of marriageable age, maybe a little bit more — sitting with meadow-plucked blossoms crowding in her hands and falling into her lap. Her brother had drawn her half-obscured, utilizing techniques of chiaroscuro in imitation of — surpassing, perhaps — da Vinci and Rembrandt. A shaft of light, he painted, had caught her profile — her starched collar, her cheek smudged with a bit of fruit compote, hair falling in gentle waves, the color of winter wheat. Her eyes, downcast, were the color of old, green-gray enamel that one might see in a chapel ornament. Its shine worn off, depthless, as if they have been torn from the inside by little needles.
"Will that be all, sir?" Niels prompted.
The young nobleman did not answer him, choosing instead to tentatively place his fingertips upon the portrait. His digits casted small shadows on the canvas, and he looked upon the painting as a lion cub might have looked upon a fallen dove — closely, curiously, devoid of sympathy. A smidgeon of affection, perhaps, as a mad dog might be affectionate — rumbling with a desire to devour, the threat of sharp teeth ever-present under the surface.
Finally, he said, "Is this dry enough to move in a cart, you think?"
The painter started like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. "Are you not here to look at my paintings, before deciding to commission me?"
But the look spared at him was sharp, and challenging. "I am, I assure you, but this is a very fine piece, and I like what I see. One mustn't fight the tides of change so, life need not be so hard and belligerent. There are fortunes to be made, a recovery from the war between my Spanish homeland and yours of Holland. One must not grasp with such lack of dignity at things better to be let go." Slowly, a smile blossomed — one that exuded not cheer and goodwill, but conceit and pride. "You disagree with me, Maestro?"
"I do not."
"Good. Bring the painting to my house, tomorrow, if the weather be pleasant. Yes," said the young Spaniard. "Bring the painting, and bring your sister as well."
There was a pause. "...Why?" Niels asked warily. "Do you mean to assess my skills by mounting both subject and portrait on a stage, side by side? Because if so, sir—"
"If so, what, exactly," he turned to face him. "Would you do about it, good Maestro?" At the lack of a reply, the young noble sighed, as if greatly put-upon. "My reasons are my own, and it is nothing dishonorable. Decide and answer me. It is no tragedy for me if you decline. I'm sure that there are some of your colleagues more willing to concede to my generous offer." He looked down at the coin-purse tied at his waist meaningfully. "See, it's really quite simple. Tell me: yes, or no."
The effort needed to refrain from throwing this man out of his house, Niels thought, felt extraordinary. "Your name, then, before I graciously..." Here the nobleman's brows lifted — incredulous, comical, mocking. "...accept your offer."
He laughed, a hand trailing down the portrait of Niels' sister. "Antonio Fernández."
.
"And why does this 'Antonio Fernández' want me to go with you, brother?"
"Do you think I wouldn't refuse him, if I knew?" Niels said. "Damn it, I was tempted to refuse him even from the moment he opened his mouth. All I know is what he told me, and it is this: 'As long as you're coming, allow your gracious sister to come with you, well-scrubbed and courteous, and we'll see what happens. It may solve a domestic problem of mine.'"
The sister in question let out a humorless laugh.
"So that's what he wants," she said. "What every man does. I didn't think it was possible for one to instantly grow such an appetite from seeing a mere sketch of yours, of me. Fully-clothed, too, and not the nude figures you draw for practicing anatomy." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "And it's as if this town has a shortage of brothels. Or perhaps it's how it's done in Aragón? Perhaps it's how it's done among the nobility? If so, I mustn't allow you to draw me anymore, brother; lest another unsuspecting patron looking to commission you decide it better to fuck me, instead." Her voice had an edge, then, and became dangerously close to brittle; but she swallowed and forced it down.
"What nonsense you speak," Niels replied, in a tone more forceful than he intended. "Who else do I have willing to stand as a subject of my paintings, allowing me to practice my craft? Should I draw Lucas, maybe, as he is bent over his desk and up to his armpits in the Holy Scriptures? No," he shook his blond head. "No, Lucas's form is terrible, his face even more so."
Bel swatted at him. "Hush, now. Our little brother is working very hard on his studies at the abbey. Besides, what better future can we wish for him than to be betrothed to God? He is content there, and," she exhaled. "We must be content in knowing that he will not starve."
"Such temporal and morbid thoughts that escape from your lips, sister," Niels said, but he did not disagree.
"Well, 'Man doth not live by bread alone.'" his sister quoted duly. "Sometimes I think that the prophets, holy as they are, have never experienced a harsh, Friesland winter. Else they would have extolled other virtues for one to aspire to. Would poverty still be one of them, I wonder?"
She looked at the stalls of the grotemarkt they are passing. Then she looked at her own dress, the neatest one she owned. One of her hands curling the worn, pale-pink fabric upon her thigh.
"...Would chastity?" she asked, almost inaudible.
"I don't know," her brother answered. He took her hand, matching his steps to hers as they stride along the lane to the better district, to the abode of the nobleman from enemy lands of Spain. It was a long while before he spoke again, more quietly, "Forgive me, sis."
"Oh, brother mine." she said simply, but nothing more.
.
The siblings reached the home of their would-be patron — a house spacious enough, reserved enough, to accommodate its' inhabitant who bore the thrice-diluted blood of the extinct Trastámara. The broad-shouldered home had a walled garden beside it. In plum-red brick interrupted by gray lateral stones, the house loomed up two full stories, with a step gable pinching two abbreviated attics. At this late morning hour the sunlight slashed harshly at the front of the house, the windows facing the marketplace like panels of muggy water. The building looked august and — what was it — cautious? Like a house of secrets, Bel thought dimly. Like a cage of smoke.
Her brother rapped briskly at the door.
"Yes, yes, but come in," a muffled voice greeted them, sounding smarted and busy. "I'll send a servant around to help you carry your work, your study of form. Hopefully it won't be knocked in transport."
Bel remembered her face being painted upon the canvas, eyes downcast like the beatific gaze of the Virgin Mary, and thought: oh, be knocked in transport.
"Let yourselves in now, that's it. Don't waste my time. Step right in. Are you well, today?" The question was asked with doubtful sincerity, yet another falsehood embedded within the manners of nobility.
Her brother's patron, this Sir Antonio, bit at the corner of his mouth, his lip faintly glossed with new gentle hairs. A tender start of stubble adorned his chin, and he possessed none of the stoutness that proved the success of greater, older men. Despite herself, Bel felt a small yen to stroke at the early, barely-visible mustache with her fingers, the way she liked to stroke the ears of the cat — at first a stray, now slightly fattened by the care showered from the Johanssen's meager kitchen — when it sat at the sunlight of a doorway.
"This is your sister, then, Maestro?" he asked, voice low, as he stepped forward to meet her eye, twisting his hand upward in a courtly, welcoming manner. "Such loveliness hidden in the homely Low Countries — who would've thought it? Indeed, she is beautiful."
"She is," Niels agreed. Whether it was to the Aragonese's rhetorical question of her identity, or to his remark of her supposedly pleasing features, Bel did not dare to guess.
"You are too kind, sir," she said instead.
"Is this modesty I witness?" said Antonio. "A virtue praised by the Saint Francesco, and by myself. Such an appealing trait! Oh, you are a rare one, my dear. A shame that your brother failed to fully capture all of your exquisite facets in the portrait of you he has shown me. Let's hope that he learns from his mistakes and does my portrait justice."
Niels looked up, protesting and dour. "...Sir, I've barely begun."
"And now you know the expectations I place upon you and your invaluable talent, Maestro. Shall we begin?" Antonio offered, as he began leading them through the salon. "I hope you are content in sitting the presence of gentlemen as we discuss business? And I am not wrong to infer that your brother is agreeable to my offer?"
"We have not yet," Niels said deliberately. "Discussed the matter of my payment."
"It is only money, Maestro," Antonio sighed, plucking a peach from a rounded, polished bowl; then biting into it. "And are you not an artist in need of money? If not, there are others in the Guild of Saint Luke who are eager for work. Master Rubens, after all, owes my family a favor. Or perhaps van Rijn of Amsterdam? His flesh-tones are superior to yours, I think. After all, I have bought the portrait of your lovely sister to hang here upon my walls. Why should I grace you doubly with my patronage, when only by purchasing one work of yours, I have secured that you survive the coming winter?"
Bel watched as a drop of juice ran carelessly from the corner of his mouth down his jaw.
"And was that not the purpose of you asking me to bring my sister here? What has she meant in this negotiation?" replied Niels, bristling. "I'd thought that you might judge my skills by comparing the model and what I have done with her. I'd thought," the young Dutch artisan glanced at his sibling, who had gone as silent as a grave. "That by seeing for yourself, you all but approved of my work—"
"Oh, yes," said Antonio. "Well, your sister. It is no serious matter. You know, good Maestro, that should I commission you, you are to lodge here, in my house? In the interest of practicality, of course. I cannot drop by your studio daily — not when I have plans of my own that necessitates me always remaining within the vicinity of my property. Nor can you be expected to ship your materials to and fro, from your studio to this salon. Your sister is your only family, yes? And so, if I am to have you both living under my roof, so must you both be under my employ," He paused to sit down. "And you will be well-paid."
"But," Bel said. "What services might you require of me, sir?"
When he was at the Johanssen home, Antonio had side-stepped. He hesitated over placing his hand on a table made of cheap wood, and all but wrinkled his nose at the sight of cramped quarters. Here, in his own halls — where well-carved cupboards and oiled chairs stood against walls of patterned Turkish fabric — he slumped luxuriously, yawned and stretched in the sun.
The answering smile he gave her, like everything else about him, was languid, devilish, and bold.
.
There was much to fear, Bel learned, in the sun-splashed house of Fernández; but at the same time there was much to admire. For instance: a bowl sitting on a polished table — from the Orient, she had been told. Upon the surface of the bowl, deepest in, a lace of purple-gray hairline fractures, then covered by an eggshell wash, through which blue painted lines formed blowsy chrysanthemum blossoms. The flowers were suspended in some thin distance of — for lack of a better word — shine. Inside the curve of the bowl, a reflection: a distorted image of herself. Too blurred to be perceived as beauteous, or ugly.
At the end of the hall, her brother kept his room pristine, almost spartan; even as his occupation inevitably demanded that his workplace — his makeshift studio, seemingly out of place in a home decorated ostentatiously by trinkets made of Peruvian silver and Cuban gold — was to be sloppy and discomposed. She saw him step out of the kitchens, a steaming mug of boerenkoffie in his artist hands, and smiled at the sight of him. Her dearest Niels — contemplative, taciturn, stoic. Distant.
But the sound of a dropped or thrown plate crashing on the floor, followed by a yelp, brought her attention back to the subject placed under her care.
"Now, Lovino," she sighed loudly. "Lovino," she called again, biting her lip. Where did he go? It was her job, now, to befriend the temperamental, hot-headed child; to gain his trust, to teach him the languages of Europe.
The boy, just shy of a dozen years, was a relative of Antonio's; sent to be fostered and familiarized with the career of a soldier and the etiquettes of noblemen. Though a common great-great-uncle bound them by blood, little Lovino's Spanish heritage had all but disappeared compared to his Aragonese cousin — Lovino's forefathers had intermarried with the great Roman families and had sired progenies that were scattered throughout the southern parts of the Italian peninsula, from the Papal States to the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. Indeed, Lovino was arguably more Pallavicini, or di Calabria, than Spanish Borgoña.
But the family name attached to the boy's christian one was Vargas, and the grin that his Fernández cousin afforded her was apologetic, if brief. "He is an unusual child, and as family, I am patient with his strange ways," he confided. "You too, must be patient."
Bel shook her head. "No, he is merely sulking because I teased him earlier, about not having yet bathed even when the morning sun is already so high in the sky. Normally he is a wonderful boy, very personable," She looked to the side with mirthful eyes. "Very...ah, charming."
Antonio's eyebrows rose, seeming to be pleasantly surprised at the notion that his whirlwind of a baby cousin, bad-tempered and bellicose, had just been described as 'charming.'
"Oh, is he? This is news to me!" he said.
"Mmm," she hummed. "Most wonderful manners he has. He offers me compliments daily, with a face pinched red with pleasure — so red, it looks like he might explode! He seems pleased to have me as a tutor, and he is enthusiastic in learning the words I teach him," she considered. "Well, one, at least."
"And that is?"
"How to request a favor, from a lady. Specifically, a kiss," she said, laughter bubbling at the thought. "Whomever little Lovino is destined to marry would be very happy, to have such an affectionate, adorable spouse."
Antonio grinned. "And until then, all of his precocious affections are directed towards you."
"I am very lucky," she agreed, only half-joking. Her hand was pressed upon her breast in imitation of a demure housewife. "Now if only I can find him, if only he was more inclined to learn proper words that did not have anything to do with wanting someone to kiss him—" At this, a lidded, furtive glance was spared at her lips, though it went unnoticed. "—and if only he wasn't so moody, I would feel even luckier to have him under my care. Lovino? Lovino, my love? It's almost past eleven, and time to review your lessons. Oh, I do hope you have decided to have a bath, by now."
She stalked off down the halls then, intent on catching his little cousin and resuming her instructions. Antonio's gaze trailed after her long after she left.
.
He had read the story of his namesake a great many times, seen it printed in a thousand little lithographs half the size of his palm — Saint Anthony of Constantinople, canonized in starved bones and hushed prayers — and yet to have one's chambers christened in allegory was now seen as unbecoming. Modernity demanded that the hall of saints that used to grace a respectable home, must be replaced by images of one's self. How Dutch it was, how Flemish, he mused; his thoughts betraying his Spanish blood. To celebrate one's own form instead that of the hallowed santos — how preening, how presumptuous! Such an act of self-love, as though man was god himself.
He exhaled. then again, he thought. imago dei.
Johanssen had been taking sketches of his face for weeks, now, but this is the first time that Antonio had stood for him. It felt strange, to remain so still while in so familiar fabric, sporting a cape with a generous cut and a cap atop his head. A lace collar settled upon his throat like the fingers of a lover, cradling his dark, handsome countenance. He was statue-struck and paralyzed — paralyzing, he should think — in the light that the maestro so approved of.
"Now don't move," the Dutchman muttered, pinched face slowly smoothing as he daubed brush in tempera, rich red and gold. "You must look that way, sir. Look up."
He looked up. He lifted his gaze to the sky and imagined the Holy Ghost staring down on him in return. After all, was not God in the height of Heaven?
"It looks good, Maestro."
Antonio whirled around. "I didn't know you'd be about," he declared, more than a little pleased. "What a pleasant surprise."
The Maestro said nothing, but acknowledged his sister's presence and praise with the barest hint of a smile. "Pleasant indeed."
"Little Lovino has shunned me for the day," she reported self-pityingly. "The lesson to be learned, I suppose, is that my lord's cousin doesn't take well to jokes about his hygiene."
Antonio resumed the pose he struck for the Maestro, even as he chuckled. "I apologize deeply for his poor behavior, then."
"Please, sir, there is no need," she said. "I'm sure he would return to being his well-behaved self by dinnertime, and once again showering me with the loveliest compliments, proclaiming my supposed beauty—" she laughed, and turned to leave. "—but, given my words and how it is now hurting his poor, tender feelings; the boy's sweet words will be entirely undeserved."
"Nonsense!" Antonio whirled again, stopping Bel in her tracks and making Niels groan. "You deserve every compliment on your beauty, cariño, and believe me, I should know. I've seen most of the known world. Dreamless Calvinists of your home Holland, wanting flowers — flowers! — for commerce; bulbous things shaped like onions! Beauty to sell as if it had its own sake. Why, I've set foot in the old castles of Granada, whose rulers used to follow the examples of the Mohammedans in Constantinople — they all rebuke the notion of portraying divinity in anything but Euclidean tiles of blue and gold!"
"I'm drawing your mouth, sir. Close it," Niels gritted. "If you please."
Antonio paid him no mind. "So then," he attempted, flashing a look at the painter's fair sister, who remained hovering uncertainly at her brother's back. "Do you often serve as our maestro's muse?"
She blinked at him. "You must speak plainly with me, sir, I am but a poor peasant girl."
"Well, hopefully one of those qualities can be remedied by my patronage," he replied, flippant.
"Your mouth, sir," Niels interrupted tartly. Then, he addressed his sister. "A muse, sis, is a spirit from the ancient Hellenic religion, a goddess who visits a man embarked upon a creative task, and inspires him."
She laughed. "You think me a goddess, then?"
"And why should we not?" the Aragonese was the one to answer her, with a wide roguish grin. His intentions — filthy as they were, and so unabashedly direct — looked so blatant in Niels' eyes that he almost snapped his brush in half. "I don't hold with goddesses from old pagan religions, but I know the love of those stories has swept painter and patron alike. The Florentines are as like to show us the transformation of Io, the seduction of Europa, the judgment of Paris; as they are to show us Christ and the Virgin, Saints Sebastian and John the Evangelist."
The young noble puffed, helplessness and haughtiness intermingled. "I, for one, do not approve. I say that artists that cater to such requests are only stroking their own vanity."
Niels stopped his brushstrokes, and then deliberately set the tools down. Thinking that a signal of the session's end, Antonio stretched away the tension and stiffness of remaining still for so long — oblivious to the condescension in the young Maestro's pointed actions, or perhaps simply ignoring it. Bel eyed her brother worriedly as he tidied up his belongings, contempt for the Spaniard barely hidden behind a thin veil of professional civility.
"And I say, commerce is commerce. And if a Florentine patron wants from me an image of Venus, then I paint the Mother of God and call her Venus."
Antonio's jaw dropped open as Niels reached the door. "For shame!" he cried; aghast, offended, scandalized.
Bel, too, couldn't help but bristle at this. Propriety be damned. "We eat," she said simply, sharply.
"I'd rather go hungry." The moral superiority of the well-fed.
Bel looked at him for a long time, before following after her brother. "No," she finally said. "You wouldn't."
.
When she saw him again later that evening, in a tiny little chamber meant for solitary reading and meditation, she was almost tempted to avoid him, given the sour exchange of words in the salon.
(He was a nobleman, blessed with blue-blood since his birth, and no doubt never had the misfortune of enduring the gusts of wind billowing through old, patched walls. He must know nothing of poverty, of searching through scraps in hopes of finding stale bread and hard cheese, of approaching brothels and nunneries alike to be able to provide for one's family. Any arrogant actions he displayed, any brutal frankness, must only be the result of well-meaning obliviousness, cultivated by a sheltered Catholic upbringing.)
But his eyes were quicker than her reflexes, and so Bel found herself pinned down by her employer's gaze as he walked purposefully towards her. She averted her eyes, only for them to land on his most recent purchase, a familiar image of a Young Woman with Wildflowers.
"Look at you. Are you admiring your own portrait?" he said. "Are you taking after Narcissus, now?"
Her head titled questioningly, almost birdlike. "Narcissus, sir?"
"What, you don't know Narcissus?"
yes, she thought, trying to keep her temper in check. well-meaning obliviousness, cultivated by a very sheltered upbringing. "I know my letters, but only barely. Only what my father taught me, and from my younger brother, who is studying for the priesthood."
Her father had been a lowly foot-soldier turned equally-lowly provincial officer. A stolid, sober burgher; knowing just enough of reading and writing to get by, and her mother the daughter of a stonemason. She counted it a blessing that what little trickle of artistic inclination their family had — learnt from studying sculptures as well as architectural measurements — went to Niels; while the predilection for thick books and looming ledgers went to Lucas.
And she, the middle-child and only daughter, must make do with what she had. What all women had, Bel thought, as she looked upon her own portrait hanging there, on the wall.
"Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, in the waters of a spring," Antonio explained. Then, suddenly, he asked, "Do you not enjoy being the muse of your brother's paintings, cariño?"
Bel smiled, though it did not reach her eyes. "It is flattering, and of course I want to help my dear brother hone his art in whatever way I can, but — he wants to draw a marble statue. Not a person." not a sister, she supplied in her mind. not me.
Antonio looked at her, his cheekbones stark in the low light.
Bel lifted her head. "And so, I become marble. I become bronze, and glass, and oak. I become whatever he needs me to be, or else," she shrugged. "We starve." This she says so matter-of-factly that Antonio couldn't help but be taken aback.
"He wants a beauty. He wants a saint, a Madonna, an angel in glory. That's what all the world wants. And they are saddled with a hound. So I become beauty, too," she said, soft and wistful. "I make-believe it."
She had dark, sad eyes; he noticed. And though she toiled underneath sunlight filtered through windows, her skin remained deceptively lily-white. He thought back to when he first caught sight of her portrait, and did not blame her brother's desire to capture her features, nor himself for mistaking it as an image of a martyred virgin. Melancholic, sacrosanct, and world-weary.
"If you are to pose as the Madonna," he snatched a cloth of black fabric, seemingly out of thin air. "You must first be veiled."
The way he placed the small cloth upon her head did not match his playful tone — gentle, almost reverent. He tugged at the folds to partly cover her face, and then softly swept it aside so that it framed her better, while the skin at his knuckles brushed her cheek. Their faces were close, almost indecently so, and Bel appraised him with an amateur artist's eye the way her brother had inadvertently taught her. She judged proportions: the length of his lashes, shape of his nose, the curve of his jaw. Most of all, she looked into his eyes — serene, almost disconcertingly angelic, and darkened with something she dared not name.
She thought of the saint Catherine, blonde and chaste and virtuous, married to God Himself. Then she thought of gods, fierce and jealous, king of the heavens disguised as a bull. Kidnapping maidens, and then doing what bulls were well known to do.
"Is this the purpose of you sending for me?" she asked, her heart beating brave blood in a trapped body. "To tend to your cousin, and to dress me in lace?"
"This is the Spanish way," he told her. "In the courts of Aragón, they don't wear ruffs that the ladies of the Low Countries do. Instead, they drape their heads with mantillas, like so. I think it is a good style," he said. "For a face hidden, be it young or old, beautiful or ugly, can't be a masque of iniquity. To cover one's features, even barely, serves to make one seem humble in one's beauty."
Her words turned low and smoky. "And am I beautiful, sir?"
He exhaled, and said in a voice only loud enough to carry between the two of them, "The most I've ever yet seen."
.
.
.
(tbc.)