Staff Feature: Sheri Yutzy
My studio smelled of linseed oil and lavender. With a steady hand, I dabbed one, two, three drops of earthy brown paint onto the palette beside my stool. The door flew open and I jerked, paint splattering.
I glared as a man in a disheveled waistcoat and alarmingly crooked cravat burst through it. He spent a moment leaning on the doorframe panting before he noticed me. I took the time to study the planes of his face, the way his shadow beard softened his sharp jawline. Disturbing though his presence was, he’d be lovely to paint.
“Oh. Your pardon. I was, eh…” He waved a hand toward the hall.
“Entering uninvited?” I asked crisply.
His mouth worked a few times. “I assure you, I was simply in a hurry to—”
A shrill, unfamiliar voice rumbled downstairs, and the man froze.
I took stock of him again. He cut a fine figure, wrinkled coat or not. One of the wealthier tourists from the mainland.
Two pairs of footsteps, one of them in heels, sounded on the wooden stairs, and he staggered forward, fumbling the door closed. He messed with the lock as the steps reached the landing, and I finally took pity and locked it for him.
“You’re free to look around as you like.” The door only partly muffled the chilly voice of Mrs. Auber, my family’s housekeeper.
The visitor sighed heavily, her heels clicking the other way down the hall. “He’s most likely hiding in a closet in one of these rooms.”
The voice faded and the man sighed with relief, his breath tickling the hair around my ear. My neck tingled.
I stepped back toward my easel, clearing my throat. “So, a runaway?”
He scowled. “It’s unendurable, the things she requires of me. Do you know what it’s like to have your sleeves constantly patted by little…” He waved a hand.
I laughed and sank back into my chair. “Unlock that door, would you?”
Terror whisked across his face. “Are you sure?”
“Mrs. Auber already knows you’re here. She can see if the door is locked. I only lock the door when I have a particularly interesting model sitting for me.”
His eyebrows shot up, and he undid the lock. “She’s not worried you’ve been accosted by a strange man?” His devastating grin as he turned back did make my stomach flip, I’ll admit, but I held my cool and pulled out my sharpest palette knife instead.
“Mrs. Auber doesn’t worry about me.” I wiped the blade carefully on my cloth. “I paint all sorts of people here.”
The sounds of closing doors and heeled footsteps moved closer, and he lost his grin. “She’ll look in here?”
I nodded. “Undoubtedly. Sit down.” I pointed my knife at the white velvet model’s chair.
“Sit—I need to hide, not sit in plain sight.”
The door two doors down banged shut. “I’m not an ordinary artist, sir. Sit down.”
I don’t know if it was my authoritative voice—he surely wasn’t used to women in paint-spattered smocks giving him orders—or the knife in my hand, but he sat. Gingerly, as if the white velvet would smear his suit.
The canvas on my easel was still bright and new. I snatched it up and held it out to him. “Kiss this.”
“What?”
I fought the urge to smack his face with it and held it closer instead. “Kiss it. I’m a Bardian artist. I need a trace of your saliva in order for my magic to work. Unless you’d prefer to spit?”
He watched me through narrowed eyes as he pressed his lips to the canvas. My, they were lovely lips. Chiseled, yet soft, edged in scruff just this side of elegant.
Lovely for painting, of course.
I snatched the canvas back, nearly bonking his nose, and slid it onto the easel. In a few strokes of rich brown, I rendered the basic shape of his face, his jaw, that curious tilt to his eyes.
A rattle at the door came as I pressed my thumb to the edge of his portrait chin and let my magical gift swirl through my skin. I closed my eyes, shaping his face into one more like the last client I’d painted. The one with a doughy chin and too-sharp eyes. Mrs. Auber stepped inside in the same moment I looked up and saw my own creation in the flesh, perched frozen on the white velvet chair.
A woman with a nest of blonde hair piled on her head and jewels sewn into her skirt stepped past Mrs. Auber’s crisply ironed shoulder.
“Pardon the interruption, Miss Titiana,” the housekeeper said. “Our visitor is looking for someone.”
The blonde woman took in the man’s face and flicked her hand. “Not him. Pardon.” She spun and clicked out.
Mrs. Auber gave me a prim smile, but her eyes danced. “Enjoy your model, Miss Titiana.”
“I will certainly try,” I said drily.
The man slowly released his death grip on the chair’s arms as the door shut. “What did you do to me? Why didn’t my mother know me?”
I smiled and gestured to the mirror hanging near the door. “See for yourself.” I watched him study his own reflection, waiting for the gasp of horror, the disgust, the threats that some rich clients had tossed at me when I used my gift to make them less attractive than they thought they should be.
I didn’t usually do it on purpose.
He touched his cheek. “And how long does it last?”
Was that admiration in his voice? Interesting. “About an hour. Unless I paint the entire portrait. The longest I can do is two days.”
“Fascinating.” He spun back to face me. “For one hour, I am free.” He held out his hand. “Come with me to the magic market? You can show me the best of everything.”
I tilted my head, remembering the lines of his jaw, his chiseled lips. Of course I wanted to spend more time studying such a perfect model. Because…painting. I untied my smock and draped it over my stool, revealing a neat linen overdress underneath. “I don’t even know your name.”
His true grin broke through the disguise for a moment. “Call me Gregorio.”
We grinned at each other like conspirators as we swept arm-in-arm down the hall.
Her writing has won multiple awards, appeared in Casting Call, a Havok Publishing anthology, and House Between the Branches, an anthology from Nightshade Publishing. When she’s not writing, she’s reading to her three children, tending her cottage garden, or planning a family hike.
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