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“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.”
Saskia put a bit of butter on her croissant and let it melt into the bread while she ate her eggs.
“And Saskia?”
“Yes, Master?”
“Please do not disturb Marcus like that again in the mornings. He works long hours and needs to be rested to properly care for you at night.”
Had one of the servants told him? Maybe she hadn’t been as sneaky as she’d thought. Or perhaps he had a tiny screen upon which he watched and tracked her every movement.
She expected some punishment to be announced. But he simply drank his coffee and waited for her to finish the food on her plate.
After breakfast, Quill took her back to the gallery. Unexpectedly, he picked Saskia up and sat her on top of the cage she’d slept in. He unbuckled the straps on the gold shoes and slipped them off her feet.
“You can’t paint in these.”
Saskia may have fantasized about being in Joseph Quill’s bed—of being his muse—but if she were honest, she’d fantasized even more about being taught by him in a studio.
The latter had felt sillier and somehow more embarrassing because of its unlikelihood. She could imagine him fucking her, even painting her. But the idea that he’d take her artistic ambitions seriously enough to waste precious hours of his time teaching her seemed absurd.
He helped her off the cage and led her to the studio. “Stay here. And don’t touch anything until I return.”
Saskia took a moment to fully appreciate the space. The last times she’d been in this room she’d been too consumed with anxiety to fully absorb it all.
The evergreens outside stood like distant sentinels. The trees were a narrower fir that didn’t bush out unnecessarily. Even so, they were far enough away not to cast shadow directly into the studio. Except for a few trailing vines that grew over parts of the glass walls and ceiling, it was full, unobstructed natural light on the southern-most end of the property. Quill must have liked to paint in the mornings. This was the best time to get the cleanest light from this angle.
The wall that connected with the rest of the building had a large stainless steel sink. There were endless rows of brushes and tubes of paint and sticks of charcoal of varying hardness. All of it was kept in containers, coded by color.
She couldn’t believe how organized he was. She’d always been a messier painter.
The small room in her apartment she’d used to paint in stayed a disaster as if a powerful storm had just blown through. She probably spent more time hunting for a tube of cadmium red than she did putting the damned pigment on the canvas.
Quill returned with a brush and a hair elastic. “Turn around.”
When she turned, he brushed her hair and pulled it back into a low ponytail. He set the brush down on an island counter that was built into the floor near one of the glass walls. He retrieved an artist’s smock from a hook in the corner.
It was huge—made for a man. It was already covered in paint, and she found herself wondering if she’d seen any of the paintings that had been brought into the world while leaving all these stains. Despite how organized and clean he kept his studio when not in use, he wasn’t nearly so pristine in the act of creation. That made her feel a little better about things.
Quill helped her into the long white shirt and buttoned it up, concealing her sundress beneath it. “Now you’re all safe,” he said, smoothing the fabric, his hands lingering over her breasts.
If only.
“Where are the turps?” Saskia asked, wondering about the absence of the turpentine. Something had felt off about this room. The distinctive odor she’d come to associate so strongly with oil painting wasn’t there. Maybe he used odorless mineral spirits or had exceptionally good ventilation. Now that she thought of it, she hadn’t noticed the smell in the gallery while he’d been painting her, either.
Quill began to lay out paints and brushes. “I don’t use turpentine or other harsh solvents. I’m going to teach you to paint solvent-free so you can still breathe when you’re ninety.”
“But you can’t paint without solvents,” Saskia said, starting to doubt her own knowledge even as she said it. After all, if he painted that way, it was clearly possible. She’d seen his work.
He laughed. “It’s true, you do need something to thin your paint and to clean your brushes, but you can do it in a less harmful way. These harsh chemical solvents are a solution looking for a problem if you ask me. We’ll use linseed oil, sometimes walnut oil or a little spike lavender oil. Though you won’t need very much. I use very high quality paints with high pigment loads. You’ll find, the higher quality your paints, the less you have to mess with them to get the desired effect. You can use walnut oil and artist soap to clean your brushes. And we’ll use palette paper. I find the mess of palettes completely ridiculous.”
Once all the paints and brushes were out, he took a clean canvas from one corner of the room. It wasn’t pre-stretched, Saskia could tell by looking at it. He’d stretched and prepared the canvas himself.
“Won’t it hurt the brushes to clean them that way?” Saskia asked, still not sure she could wrap her mind around his methods, even if they did make sense, and shewouldlike to breathe clean air while she painted. It was the only thing she’d hated about oils.
Quill raised an eyebrow. “Really? You think turpentine is gentle on brushes? And no, it won’t hurt them. But even if it would, brushes are cheap in comparison to your health. You can always buy more brushes.”
