The Muse

by Lauren Blakely

  Julien takes my hand, brushing his thumb over my bare wrist. “How did it work? She took them off, just like that?”

  “Just like that,” I confirm, smiling with delight at his touch. With delight at being here with him. “Took them off and put them on her own wrists.”

  “So, all the paintings you inspired? They’ll be okay?”

  I nod. “Thalia will hold them up now. She’s taken over my duty, and now here I am. Look . . .” I flick my fingers—no silver dust comes out.

  Only one thing could make me happier in this moment, and that’s to tell him everything this means. I’m here to stay. No magic in the world can make me fall out of love with him again.

  “Julien, will you have me back?” I reach for his hand and hold it between mine. “I want to be in your life because you are in my heart. I’m back for good because I’m in love with you.”

  “You are?” His face lights with happiness.

  “I am. I feel it all. Everything I ever felt for you, only bigger and brighter.” I trace a jagged line across his palm and whisper, “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story. Of a new way back to you.”

  My heart is full to bursting, and Julien looks the same.

  “Really? You really . . .?”

  I take his other hand and tug him closer. “I feel like I’m dancing at the Moulin Rouge, like I’m on the beach in the South of France, like I’m floating under a starry night. I want to spend all my days with you.”

  My voice breaks as I’m overcome. I am overwhelmed with all I want becoming real. I am overjoyed that I’m here with him, on the other side, and he holds my face, brushes the hair from my cheek, and presses a soft kiss to my lips.

  Oh, have I missed this and yet it’s fresh and new.

  It feels like a first kiss, and a promise.

  It feels like all the starry nights and all the sunlit days I want to spend with him.

  And then it turns deeper, longer, and we don’t stop.

  Because in our kiss, I can taste forever. A forever that’s real, here in Paris together, Julien and me.

  We break the kiss, and I’m laughing with happiness, and so is he. We kiss through our laughter, and when we pull apart again, I cup his cheeks and say, “I feel so much. But more than anything, I feel like a woman in love with a man.”

  And it feels like freedom. I’m free from the chains that bound me for centuries. Free from the only life I’ve ever known.

  I’m free to forge a whole new one with this man. One full of love.

  “And I’m still insanely in love with you,” he says.

  “Good. I was worried.”

  He scoffs like that’s absurd. “Why would you worry about that?”

  “Because once I started to feel love again, I felt how much I missed you. How painful it was to be parted. All I wanted was to make my way back to you.” I squeeze him tight. “That’s still all I want—just you, Julien.”

  “You have me,” he says. “You don’t have to question that at all.”

  He runs his thumbs along my naked wrists.

  “You look so good without bracelets,” he says, his eyes traveling lovingly over my face. “You look so good in the daylight.”

  I am so glad that anyone can see us now as we kiss on the bridge over the river outside the Louvre. Anyone can see us now, but no one pays attention, because this is Paris. We’re just another pair of young lovers becoming another set of ornaments in this city.

  We are not darting in and out of paintings after midnight. We do what anyone can do.

  And today, we spend the morning kissing and strolling, but eventually, we have to speak of practical matters.

  “So what do we do now?” Julien asks. “What do you want to do? Where are you going to live?”

  “I don’t know,” I say with a laugh. “I haven’t thought that far.”

  He raises a playful brow. “I have room. It’s a little flat—”

  “Yes!” The word bursts from me. I won’t let that chance pass me by. “Yes. Yes. Yes. I want that.”

  “But I share the flat with my sister,” he says, laughing.

  “Oh.” Had he not been asking what I thought?

  “It’s all right. It’s a big flat, with our rooms on opposite sides. Adaline won’t mind, but maybe you would.”

  “I don’t care. It’s with you.” I feel weightless and buoyant, like the world is new and everything is possible. “Don’t you see? You’re the reason why I’m not a Muse anymore. I wanted to be with you. I want to be with you outside of the gardens. I want this city to be ours.”

  He slides his hands around my waist and pulls me close. “It will be. We’ll walk around Paris, see everything. All the art—it’s everywhere, and it’s incredible. And you’ll meet my friends.” He gives a rueful laugh. “They’ll certainly be dying to meet you.”

  It sounds amazing to me.

  I loop my arms around his neck, and I can’t stop smiling either. “I can’t wait. And I think I might try my hand at painting. I have quite a good eye, and lots of ideas about what to make,” I say, and slant a sly smile up at him. “The only thing missing is . . . a muse. Maybe you can fit me into your schedule?”

  “Yes, I think I could work you in.” He kisses my forehead, and when I close my eyes in happiness, he drops kisses onto my eyelids, my cheeks, my lips. “It’s exclusive though. You can’t have any other muse.”

  I shake my head, still smiling. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

  That leads to more kissing, and after a while, we continue our walk. “Are you hungry?” Julien asks. “Because I could really go for a chocolate croissant. Funny thing—I know this great bakery, and I’d love to take you there.”

  “Take me there, Julien.”

  We amble along the river to the best bakery in Paris, together, outside the museum and free from the curse.

  Free to be together.

  Free to do what any other man and woman in this city might do.

  Kiss.

  And touch.

  And laugh.

  And love.

  It’s a wonderful world, this one. Full of art and love and food and friends and a new kind of magic.

  The kind that love makes possible.

  Epilogue

  December 25—Four months later

  * * *

  Clio

  * * *

  “Christmas is my new favorite thing,” I say between deep inhales of spicy-sweet steam curling up from the mug of mulled cider cradled in my hands. I’m bundled up in flannel pajamas, a thick sweater of Julien’s, and fluffy wool socks, and tucked into the corner of the sofa for warmth.

  “You say that about everything,” Julien teases, mirroring me in the opposite corner.

  “Not about wintertime,” I reply. Perpetual summer in Monet’s garden has thinned my blood.

  “Me? I have only one favorite thing.” He sips his cider, slanting a mischievous look at me from under his lashes. “My favorite thing never changes, because my favorite thing is you.”

  “Oh, Julien,” I say, my heart melting, “that is the sweetest, cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  He wiggles his ice-cold foot into my bundle of blankets and finds bare skin, and I shriek, trying to wiggle away without spilling my drink.

  “Incoming!” Adaline calls from the hall. “Should I avert my eyes?”

  “No need,” says Julien, but his grin promises we’ll be scandalous later, and thinking about later warms me as much as the cider.

  His sister ducks into the kitchen and comes out with her own drink.

  It’s rare that all three of us are home at the same time, between the hours Adaline puts in at the museum, the hours Julien puts in at the museum, plus his graduate classes and the occasional summons to troubleshoot a misbehaving painting, and the hours I put in at school.

  I don’t go to school.

  I teach now.

  Painting mostly. But drawing classes, too, at an art school in Montmartre.

&nb
sp; I thought I’d become a painter, and while I do love creating, I find I love teaching even more. So much more that it feels like this was what I was always meant to do. I suppose in some ways that’s true.

  Perhaps in most ways.

  Guiding others in their passion, helping them see the way through creation, is my new joy.

  I’m, quite simply, happy as an art teacher.

  Julien is happy too.

  And together we squeeze so much life and love into every moment we’re together. Also, there are practical matters to attend to. Things like protection, and we use it now, since I suspect I can conceive now that I’m human. But there will be time for babies down the road. Of that I’m sure.

  For now, it’s been good for me to discover who I am, beyond art, in this modern human world. I don’t just mean learning to use the Metro or the time I exploded the microwave.

  I’m learning what I love besides art and Julien.

  I love meeting Remy and his husband, Rafe, in the park and playing with their new puppy, Rosa. Rafe brings me homemade pastries, and Remy occasionally brings regards from my sisters. They are happy for me and wish me well, even if they cannot fathom my choice. But having never experienced the kind of love I have with Julien, of course, they don’t understand the despair of facing an eternity without it. Remy and Rafe get it – they have that love. Simon and Lucy understand too. They are wrapped up in each other.

  Love…it makes us all human.

  And so many of us love art, in so many forms.

  Sophie and I are taking tap-dancing classes together. I had no idea what tap dancing was or that it would be so much fun, and for a while, that was my new favorite thing. The thing before that was the online video game Simon and Lucy taught me. (I play as a powerful healer, of course, indispensable on raids.)

  Julien and I like to go to the ballet—on our first visit, the lights came up at intermission and he found me teary-eyed and sniffling.

  “What’s wrong?” He’d put his arm around my shoulders, his thumb brushing soothing circles on my skin. “Does this make you miss being a Muse?”

  I’d shaken my head in vehement denial.

  “It’s just so beautiful,” I’d said, wiping tears from my cheeks.

  I told his friend Emilie the same thing when we met her after the performance. Like many in Julien’s circle, she seemed puzzled when we first met, as if trying to come up with why I looked familiar. Most accept at face value the story that Renoir’s model for Woman Wandering in the Irises is my ancestor. Though I still catch Adaline studying me with speculation every now and then.

  Whatever she’s thinking, she’s been welcoming almost since the day I walked into the flat with Julien on that summer afternoon four months ago.

  First, she had to recover from the shock of Julien bringing a girlfriend home “out of thin air”—a phrase more appropriate than anyone knows.

  “Join us, Adaline?” I ask now, and nod to the empty chair.

  She raises her mug in a sort of toast and points toward her side of the flat. “Thank you, but I have a video date.”

  “On Christmas?” Julien asks, but his sister is already gone.

  “Love knows no season,” I tell him sagely.

  His brows climb into his tousled hair. “Love? You think?”

  “I don’t just think. I know.”

  Adaline, as an expert and curator of such a large collection of Renoirs, consulted on an international forgery investigation, resulting in the capture of an infamous father-daughter forger duo who had come out of seclusion to flog what a London newspaper called “the most convincing Renoir forgeries that experts had ever seen.”

  When Oliver and Cass Middleton were arrested, Julien and Simon bought a round at our usual pub to celebrate. Julien suspected they’d taken what they’d learned from the spirit of Renoir and painted some new “lost” masterpieces.

  The authorities theorized that they’d been inspired by the recent rediscovery of Woman Wandering in the Irises, and had overplayed their hand.

  I’d toasted to them being jailed because Cass was the one who’d dealt my man all the bumps and bruises I had soothed that night under Van Gogh’s starry sky.

  And Adaline has been dating the Interpol agent in charge ever since.

  Even as a Muse, I couldn’t have inspired a result that had made so many people happy.

  Funny that Renoir brought about so many good things by trying to keep good things from happening to humankind. He’d trapped me in the painting because he wanted to hoard inspiration and beauty—and love, in a way—for himself and those like him. He tried to stop an age of human enlightenment, and instead his actions brought Julien and I together to fall in love.

  A love large enough to uphold a world full of art.

  Wide enough to span the globe and bridge the gulf between everything eternal and everything mortal.

  Strong enough to let me choose who and what I wanted to be.

  Strong enough to bring me back to Julien.

  Loving him has fundamentally changed me. We’ve changed each other.

  Maybe our love will change the world, or maybe it will just change our small piece of it. I just know that it deserves to be nurtured and tended. That I want to see it reach its potential. That I will pour myself into making us thrive.

  But I’m not a Muse anymore, and Julien, while beautiful to me, is not a painting.

  And I’m so glad about both of those things.

  Because when I pour my love into Julien . . . I get so much love in return.

  And kisses. Lots and lots of kisses.

  Like now. With his sister in the other room, I set down my mug, then his, and I loop my arms around his neck.

  “Kiss me, my muse,” I demand playfully.

  “Anytime,” he says, all too happy to oblige.

  As he brushes his lips to mine, all thoughts of art and paintings fade away.

  I am all woman, and I love this brave new life.

  Epilogue

  Julien

  * * *

  When the ballerinas first danced for me, I was shocked. When the cat leaped out of the painting, I was amazed.

  When the good doctor repaired the woman I love, I was overjoyed.

  And yet all of that wonder, all of that awe, pales in comparison to this.

  To love.

  To love staying, to love lasting, and to love changing you.

  And to the everyday beauty in being with the person you adore.

  I’ve traveled the world by painted bridge, I’ve escaped inside a cathedral, I’ve made love to this woman under Van Gogh’s stars . . . and this right here feels like the truest magic—staying.

  She is staying.

  Every day, that amazes me.

  And I love every day of it.

  * * *

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  Author’s Note

  While some aspects of the history of art were altered for the purposes of this novel, many are rooted in fact. The following information is based on research into art and history.

  • All the paintings cited in the story as hanging in the Musée d’Orsay do hang in the Musée d’Orsay, such as Van Gogh’s The Portrait of Dr. Gachet, Manet’s Olympia, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Dance at the Moulin-Rouge, Cézanne’s The Bay of Marseille Seen from L’Estaque, Renoir’s The Swing, as well as all the other Monets and Renoirs mentioned.

  • All the paintings in the Musée d’Orsay, Louvre, Hermitage, Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and National Gallery in London are actual paintings and are described accurately, and the dates and descriptions surrounding these paintings and their history are descri
bed accurately. There are two exceptions to this. The first is the missing Renoir, known as Woman Wandering in the Irises. This painting was made up for the story. The second is the character of Emmanuelle. While she is based on a Degas painting that hangs in the Musée d’Orsay, her heritage and relationship to the dancer Emilie is made up.

  • All the details Julien imparts on his tours as to the history surrounding certain paintings, the prices they have commanded at auctions, and the style and technique of certain paintings are accurate. This includes Julien’s description of Renoir’s hands near the end of the artist’s life.

  • Suzanne Valadon was the first female painter admitted into the École des Beaux-Arts. She and Renoir were contemporaries, and she appeared as a model in three of his paintings. Whether they agreed or not on the future of art is up for debate.

  • The artist Rosa Bonheur dressed in men’s clothes when she painted The Horse Fair. She also kept a pet goat on her balcony.

  • During the Nazi era, Nazis looted countless pieces of art across Europe. Today, reputable museums and dealers are expected to research and know the provenance of European paintings that changed hands during this time to ensure that restitution of any once-looted ones has been made.

  • Renoir reportedly likened female painters to five-legged calves in a quote attributed to him as “I consider women writers, lawyers, and politicians as monsters and nothing but five-legged calves. The woman artist is merely ridiculous . . .”

  • As for paintings that come alive, well, that is for you to decide.

  •Finally, museums are wonderful. We hope you delight in them as much as we do.

  Also by Lauren Blakely

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