"True to Life" by Brightknightie (PG-13, Gen) Part 02/02
Because of LJ post size limits, this story comes in two posts. Please see the first post for the header information. Please see the endnote for disclaimers, credits, and all that good stuff.
( True to Life, Part One )
"True to Life", a Forever Knight fanfiction
~~~
Continued from the first post...
Thursday
"I heard that the warming battery broke."
"Well, that would explain why it's nearly as cold inside as out. That's what you get with these needless mechanical contraptions. A good masonry fireplace, now . . ."
"How long do you think it will take them to fix it?"
As Nick swiftly scouted the Panopticon's ground floor, the only people not talking about the broken warming battery were those standing alone. Every couple and group had at least one person holding forth on how the heating device should be fixed.
"Ready?" Janette took Nick's arm when they met at the fountain. She had taken the ascending carriage to the top of the building, and then quickly scanned the gallery floors on her way down. The trim on her black dress was lavender this time, the most conservative and proper shade for her supposed stage of mourning, and therefore the least conspicuous. The décolletage was as low as a ball gown's, but in deference to the winter temperatures, she covered up with her heavy Indian shawl.
"Point him out to me as soon as you see him," Nick murmured, steering her through the gathering crowd toward the hall reserved for the event.
"No."
"Janette--"
"I said no, Nicolas. I can take care of this myself; that's why we arranged for him to come here tonight, after all. Besides, if I do need a rescue in the end, I would rather have you on the outside to provide it than inside with me wishing for it."
He frowned at her as they passed into the hall, then paused in delight to appreciate the bright gas lighting over the well-spaced paintings lining the walls, most of them at eye level.
"Our hanging committee did rather a better job than the Royal Academy's, don't you think, Nick?" a bluff, bearded man asked, clasping Nick's hand.
"Aren't you the entire hanging committee yourself, Ford?" Nick returned the handshake and added a pat on the back. "May I present my cousin, Madame Ducharme? Janette, this is Mr. Ford Madox Brown, the painter, and also the sole, energetic organizer of this exhibition."
"Someone had to do it." Madox Brown bowed over Janette's gloved hand. "Getting Gabriel to exhibit is worse than pulling teeth -- amputating would be more like -- and as many people as see Millais and Hunt's work, can they really understand it out of all context, slapped up on the line at the RA between overglazed cherubs and the squire's favorite hound?"
"This will be important for the movement," Nick assured him. "The newspapermen will have a chance of really understanding now. Being able to see for themselves will make a difference."
"No more need to just parrot what Ruskin tells them to see," Madox Brown sighed. "Not that Ruskin is wrong, exactly, but . . . never mind. Nick, Madame Ducharme, thank you for coming. As you know, everything here by Millais and Hunt is on loan from private owners, but most of the works by the rest of us are for sale. If you know someone with good taste and a drawer full of cash, you know where to find me."
Janette laughed as Madox Brown winked and moved on to another cluster of people. "He's charming, in a crusty way. Let's look at his paintings."
"Let's look for your contact, first." Nick stepped toward the center of the room and revolved slowly, letting his gaze slip by the small paintings in columns and the large ones by themselves, focusing on the ladies and gentlemen in front of them. But even trying to stay one step ahead of the Enforcers, it was impossible not to linger a moment on Millais's magnificent Ophelia at the far end of the room, a canopy and rope fence around it for its own protection. Nick dragged his eyes and attention back to Janette. "Is he here yet?"
"That's not the plan, Nicolas." Janette had looked around the room herself. "If he is here, I don't choose to tell you so yet." She stepped up to a column of smaller paintings, stacked from one above Nick's head to one even with her knees. "These are interesting. Whose are they?"
"I don't know." Nick looked at the bright watercolors of people in pseudo-medieval clothes, the thick pigment applied with an almost dry brush. Janette was examining one of a young woman opening a door as an older women pleaded with her on bended knee. Nick had never seen them before. "Deverell's, I suppose?"
A movement at the edge of his vision caught Nick's attention. He turned his head just in time to see Miss Siddal, the red-haired model encountered on Rossetti's steps, frowning in his direction before she walked away.
"No," Janette corrected him. "The card says these are by a lady artist, a Miss Elizabeth Siddal."
"Ah, who just overheard my mistaken guess. How do I apologize for that?"
"You buy me this painting. When our other business is taken care of."
Nick looked around again. A man would probably need a bag or case for Janette's daguerreotypes, though a woman could suspend them under her skirts.
"Now, this one is by your friend, Mr. Madox Brown." Janette nodded at An English Autumn Afternoon. "How modern! It's curious, isn't it, how this artistic movement mixes revival and revolution, medieval and modern, in their subjects as well as their techniques? It's no wonder you're so comfortable with them." She leaned closer to inspect the brushwork. "I admit I'm surprised that you have the patience for this level of detail, though, Nicolas."
"I can be patient."
"Of course you can." Janette patted his arm. "And that's why you're coiled like an overwound clock spring about the daguerreotypes. I told you, he thinks that the glow is a chemical trick of some sort, and the fangs artificial. He wants to know the technique and patent the process. There's no reason to think that they have an interest in this."
"Yet."
When they reached the end of the hall, Nick found a corner where he could shield his back, glance over the exhibition attendees, and still gape at Millais's Ophelia. About four feet wide and three feet high, the image of Shakespeare's mad girl drowning slowly in a reedy slough had a horrific beauty that called intimately to his own guilt. If her lover, or brother, or father had just thought of her before themselves . . . well, the play would not have been what it was, and there would have been no painting. Instead, one genius had fed the next.
The artist's The Order of Release a few years ago had been the first painting in history to require a guard to defend it from its own admirers.
"Is it getting hot in here?" asked a matron standing as close to Ophelia as the rope fence and her crinoline allowed.
"Perhaps they've fixed the warming battery," Nick offered.
"They seem to have overdone it all at once." She slipped her shawl off her shoulders and folded it over her arms. "I don't think I would want to look at this painting very often, grand though it is. Can you imagine Ophelia drowning over your dining table? Would anyone ever eat again?"
"That's one way of looking at it. But the idea--"
The woman screamed and backed away.
Nick's first thought was to raise a hand to his own teeth, but no, his fangs had not dropped, and he was still seeing the world through human-blue irises. He followed the woman's gaze up to the thin canopy above and beside the painting, and gasped himself. Other screams rang out, and a rush for the doors began.
"Fire!" Flames engulfed one side of the canopy, probably ignited by a bubble bursting from the gas line into the lights. The fire licked down the frame and the glass, picking up the rope fence just where the woman had been standing a moment before.
Nick strode to the far corner for the pails of water kept for just this emergency. He found them frozen solid. Two other men had had the same idea; they looked at each other and Nick helplessly. Some people were carrying out the other paintings, and the fire brigade would come in time for the building, but Ophelia? One of the men shook his head, lifted a nearby work, and started for the exit.
"Here." Janette appeared at Nick's side; with one hand, she pressed her heavy, voluminous shawl at the human man who had not left. Understanding immediately, he used her shawl to smother the flames attacking one side of the painting.
Nick ripped down the rest of the canopy to stop the spread of the fire, but before he could do anything more to help, found his arm in Janette's grip. She towed him out around the crowd with her left hand hand, tucking her right in to her side. "What are you doing?"
"Besides sacrificing an extremely expensive shawl that I will have to go to Bengal to replace," Janette nudged Nick toward the exit, "and pining to sink my teeth into someone, I am getting us out of here before the authorities arrive this time."
"What about your contact?"
"Oh, he came. And he doesn't think the glow is a photographic trick anymore." Janette pulled out her right hand and set it on Nick's arm. Her little and ring fingers were charred like the frame of the painting, her glove burned away around them. "You will not believe how this fire started."
~~~
Nick sat on Janette's bed and watched her brush out her hair at the vanity table. Every room of his house was set up for doing, none for talking. He had not noticed that until Janette had come to give him someone to talk to, and until their problems had mounted up into nothing to do but talk.
"How long were you out of my sight?" He lay back on the bed, carefully keeping his shoes over the end, away from the white quilted coverlet.
"Minutes. Perhaps six, seven." Janette set down her brush and began a plait, pausing now and then to untangle her just-healed fingers from strands of twisting hair. She had exchanged her evening gown for a blue and black exhibition of the Bloomer 'rational dress' costume, and Nick could only be glad she had not been wearing it when she walked in on his class, no matter his private appreciation of women in trousers. "It wasn't many words between telling me that he had found his mother's letters from me, and telling me that he wanted to be a vampire."
"If he is fool enough to let you put your fangs in his mortal neck, why didn't you take him off to the cloakroom then and there and be done with it?"
"I want my daguerreotypes. And letters." She tied a ribbon at the end of her braid. "He claims that he has hidden them, and I will never find them without his help. I believe him. So I will arrange the trade; he will think he is buying his conversion. And even if he tries to deceive me, I will take the knowledge when I take his blood, and go retrieve what is mine without the company of Scotland Yard, the fire brigade, and the insurance inspectors. It's all very simple and straightforward."
Nick rolled his head off the pillow and looked at her sideways. "Janette, he waited his moment, took you by surprise, and pushed your hand into a light fixture to jolt the vampire to the surface and confirm his suspicions. He's brutal. He's not stupid. And he's liable to bring down the Enforcers. Why are you trying to convince me otherwise?"
"I'm not." Janette came and curled up on the bed at his right side, so that she could rest her injured right hand on his chest. "I've dealt with the brutal and not-stupid since long before I had you to defend me, Nicolas. I'm glad to have you on my side, but you must let me handle this."
"Just as long as you handle it soon."
"Oh, I will."
Nick gently stroked the uninjured side of her hand. Her plan did not add up as simply and straightforwardly as she claimed; she could have taken the man's life and knowledge in the confusion following the fire without that much risk. "Is this about your friend? His mother?"
Janette was silent. After a quiet moment, she pulled her hand away and sat up. Her braid swung forward over her shoulder. "May I use your desk? My fingers are fine again, and I need to write some letters."
~~~
"How much will your urchins charge to post these for me?" Janette asked, stretching as she stood up from his desk.
"I usually give them six pence. It keeps them coming back." Nick set down his pencil and stretched himself, unhooking his feet from the rungs of the stool he had pulled over to his worktable to study his museum notes and sketches. "Did you find the stamps? Do you want me to take your letters out for you?"
"Yes to stamps, no to courier service." She brushed the blotting sand from her fingers. "Isn't it nearly time for you to check the windows?"
Nick looked from her to the wall clock and blinked. His internal sense of the rising sun confirmed that he had lost track of time, submerged in revelations of the new Assyrian dig and an intriguing reference to a 'book of miracles.' Nick wondered whether he should mention this discovery to Doctor Spense in Germany, or whether the old Silk Road was too far from the man's interest in the European occult.
Nick heard Janette step out through the kitchen and call over the lurking neighborhood boys. He also heard one astonished whistle at her bloomers.
Starting in the bedrooms and spiraling down to his back-garden window in his studio, Nick checked all the shutters and drapes for safety against the burning sun, and then turned around to find Janette standing over his notes.
"What's so interesting about old, broken pots from Persia? They make new pots there, too, you know."
"What's interesting about Troy or Atlantis?" Nick shrugged and came over to pick up his papers. He slipped the most important ones, in which his hobby became his hope, into the inconspicuous middle of the stack. "Lost cities, forgotten science, art, culture. The origins and definition of . . . humanity."
"If you want to know about the past, why don't you just ask Lacroix? He would be happy to tell you."
"He would be happy to tell me what he wants me to believe." Nick tied the papers together and set them on a shelf above Janette's head. He sat backwards on the piano bench and leaned forward, his arms on his knees. "You know how far from the truth that can be."
Janette joined him on the bench. "Does the distant truth matter so much? A near truth is that life is easy when Lacroix is happy, and anything but easy when he is not. Your company makes him happy, Nicolas -- although this animal blood fetish is not going to go over smoothly, I warn you. Modern convenience is all very well, but--"
"It's not just convenience. You know that." Nick took her right hand, the injured one, and looked at it carefully from each angle before folding his fingers with hers. She had an ink smudge where her skin had been stiff and charred when he had left her to make her own way home, those last few blocks. She had arrived on his doorstep healed and whole, with glowing cheeks, and no questions asked about the fresh corpse doubtless not far behind her. Until Janette came, Nick had thought he was managing it, the vampire. He had thought he was in control. But now his helpless hypocrisy sickened him more than any taste of cow blood. "Do you remember the very first thing I asked of Lacroix, all those centuries ago?"
"The very first . . . no, what?"
"I asked him to put me back, to make me human again."
She pressed his hand sympathetically. "You were new. You didn't know any better."
"Lacroix said it was impossible, that there was no going back. I believed him. I . . . adapted. I've been making accommodations ever since to what he said then. But what if what he said then is just what he wants me to believe?"
Janette took a second to untangle that thought. Then she dropped his hand. "You think you could become mortal again? Madness!"
"Have you ever even thought of the question before, Janette? Why should it be that the door opens only in one direction?"
"That is how hinges work, Nicolas." She stood and faced him, but did not meet his eyes. "If it were possible to lose our vampirism, Lacroix would have warned us against it. This is ridiculous. Don't waste your effort worrying about it."
"I'm not worried." He watched her face for a long moment. She was not pulling away. Nick cast caution to the winds, leaned forward and whispered against her ear. "I'm hopeful."
Janette pushed him back, her brow furrowed. "Oh, my Nicolas, what has happened to you?" She stroked his cheek sympathetically, then walked to the foyer door, crossing her arms. At the bottom of the stairs she paused and stared back at him.
Nick had been prepared for an argument, not for pity.
After a long moment, Janette laughed. Then she ran up the stairs
~~~
Friday
Janette went out right after sunset without a word.
With a cup of cow blood at his elbow, Nick quickly answered Rossetti's letters from the day before, adding his gratitude and some pound bills to the latter's plans for Saturday's gathering. Rossetti was energetically willing to play expert guide to what he was now convinced was Nick's social inexperience, and Nick decided not to try to untangle that nuance. With dusk so early, Nick easily found a boy willing to deliver the letter and bring an answer for nine pence.
Nick lay out his paints and brushes to continue his moonlit winter oak, which would be the background for a human figure currently sketched only lightly, to be completed later, when the weather had turned and the real oak had leafed out again, leaving the painting behind.
Before picking up a brush, though, Nick went upstairs to Janette's dressing room and carried down the plush, cream-colored divan. He set it between his desk and his easel.
When Janette returned, she looked around the studio, vanished, and returned again to settle on the divan with a book and a pillow. She read; Nick painted. He did not ask her about her plans for dealing with her friend's son and retrieving the incriminating daguerreotypes. She did not ask him about his hopes for becoming human. Toward dawn, Nick washed his brushes and moved from his easel to his worktable, where he sketched her in pencil, her skirts draped down the curved center, her head leaning against her hand, her elbow on the divan's arm, her book on the pillow in her lap.
Before sunrise, Janette closed her book and came to look at Nick's drawing of her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leaned her cheek against his. After several moments of scrutiny, she said, "I like how I look through your eyes."
Nick felt forgiven.
He just wasn't sure what for.
~~~
Saturday
"I will not stay upstairs like a punished child, Nicolas."
"It's for your own good!"
"Hope I'm not interrupting?"
The entrance by the kitchen was covered, so Nick could have answered his door before sunset with minimal danger. Instead, the knock escaped his attention as he argued with Janette, and Rossetti walked right in. In his favorite purple velvet waistcoat and a flowing yellow scarf, he might have looked dashing and bohemian, if he had not been overburdened with two baskets in one hand and a peculiar metal and ceramic contraption in the other.
"Not at all." Nick frowned at Janette and relived Rossetti of the baskets, which reeked -- to vampire sensibilities -- of fresh baked goods. "Thanks for coming, Gabriel. What on earth is that device?"
"Oh, it's an old toy: a self-concocting coffee pot that Hunt and I picked up on the continent. Hardly been used." Rossetti set it on the worktable in the center of the kitchen, and coughed delicately. He raised an eyebrow at Nick and jerked his head toward Janette, who made only a token attempt to suppress her grin.
"My colleague, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. My cousin, Madame Ducharme."
"And I am indeed charmed," Rossetti bowed elaborately over Janette's hand. "My envy for Nick knows no bounds, now that I have seen you in person, madam. Would it be terribly forward to ask you to sit for me? Escorted and unremunerated, of course, nothing improper."
Janette withdrew her hand and continued smiling. She wore the same black and red day gown in which she had stunned Nick's class, but her hair was pulled back only by a thin red ribbon at her nape; Rossetti could not take his eyes off it. "And why is it that modeling for free is proper, Mr. Rossetti, while doing so for pay tarnishes one's reputation?"
"I'm sure I don't know." Rossetti accepted one of the baskets back from Nick, who had the other, and followed him into the studio. "But as an artist always in want of a little tin, I'll admit gratitude for any loophole that makes relatives and friends sit for free."
Nick had cleared his worktable, spread it with a tablecloth, and set out the rest of his dishware -- the cups and saucers never used with blood. They unloaded the baskets' treats onto platters, and Janette set out some serviettes.
"Inspired by your forward invitation, I would like to ask a daring question, too. May I?"
"Of course."
"Does the College pay its instructors poorly, that you're often in want of 'tin'?"
Rossetti fell silent, heat rising on his cheeks. He looked at Nick.
"Janette, all instructors at the College are volunteers." Nick found the subject almost as uncomfortable as Rossetti did. He hated politics with a revulsion that stretched all the way back to Gwyneth's murder in Wales, when he still walked in the sun. But addressing real needs and legitimate grievances often smudged the line between selfish politics and social justice. "It's a kind of contribution to the cause."
"Bah, causes." Rossetti sniffed, still blushing. "Let's leave that to Ruskin and Ford and worry about your party, yeah?" A knocking came from the front. "I'll play doorman."
Nick opened his mouth to again order Janette upstairs.
"Kitchen," she said, laying a finger against his lips. "I will be in the kitchen. I shall make the coffee and tea -- I can so -- and listen to all the things I would not be able to hear if I were one of them instead of one of us."
In short order, half of Nick's class arrived, several bearing regrets from those who had other obligations. Rossetti had been right; while the conversation returned often to Nick's paintings and how he had set up his studio, not to mention the sensation of the fire at the exhibition -- all the paintings had been saved, Ophelia needing the barest repair -- talk also rambled happily over the whole of creation, and the men split into clusters around specific interests.
"Mr. White!" Rossetti greeted the young butcher. "Still wasting your time on algebra?"
"I intend to take the examination in it," White replied. "Numbers are very beautiful in their own way, Mr. Rossetti, and are also a kind of art representing nature, if you don't mind my saying so."
"Hadn't thought of it like that." Rossetti clapped him on the back. "Well, good for you!"
One student asked Rossetti which of two premium paint brands he preferred; Rossetti claimed that he always bought whatever was cheapest, which Nick doubted was entirely true, but it made a worthy point. Skill was not for sale.
Explaining his nightscape color choices to his student the cartwright, Nick was surprised to find Ruskin one step behind them, examining the unfinished canvas on his easel.
"This is rather good, Mr. Thomas."
"Thank you, Mr. Ruskin. And thank you for coming."
"A little more notice would have been appreciated, but I can't very well chide you for carrying out my suggestion with all haste. That the College has its life beyond the classroom is very important in fulfilling its mission." Ruskin picked up a biscuit from the table. "Is your cousin still visiting you?"
"Yes."
"Hmmm." Ruskin looked around the room. "Ah, Mr. White. And how is your wife?"
"Very well, sir, thank you."
"I trust she has not sold any more of your paintings," Ruskin joked.
White stood up straighter. "In fact, Mr. Ruskin, I've accepted a little commission to paint a portrait of our pastor. I think that I'll be able to give satisfaction -- thanks to you, and Mr. Rossetti, and Mr. Thomas."
"Well, congratulations. That's very . . . congratulations." Ruskin blinked. "I trust you won't let it interfere with your secure employment."
"No, of course not, sir."
Ruskin strolled off, and Nick clasped White's hand. "That's magnificent! Your first commission."
"It isn't much, Mr. Thomas."
"That's not the point at all." Nick beamed. "I would get out some wine and propose a general toast to your success, but I don't want to distress Mr. Ruskin by giving everyone delusions of grandeur. Maybe after he leaves."
White swallowed a laugh. "I'm not much for wine, I admit, but I would enjoy some more of this coffee."
Nick looked into the carafe on the table and found it empty. He reached to pick it up, but White's fingers closed on the handle first.
"Let me. I know where your kitchen is. Would I be correct in guessing this would give me an opportunity to pay my respects to your cousin?"
Nick nodded and waved White on his way. White more than deserved an accolade, and Janette would doubtless be delighted by the company. Rossetti had been popping back there every few minutes to flirt with her, until he noticed Ruskin's arrival; now, the men were chatting together, paging back through the old and unsold canvases Nick had left leaning against the wall. Nick decided to join them, nerving himself for just criticism of his work.
"You told me to put away any paintings I didn't want discussed, Gabriel. I should have listened!"
"Surely, Mr. Thomas, you're professional enough that--"
A thunderous crack and tidal crash drowned Ruskin's words. Dust rose like a dry fog from the ground . . . from the kitchen.
If Nick's feet did not touch the floor in his rush, no one ever mentioned it.
The ceiling had collapsed. The furniture from Nick's bedroom above dangled between the beams supporting the second story, where it had not fallen entirely through. Nick tore past the wreckage, picking his direction on instinct, and found Janette half-protected under the wooden worktable, which could easily have staked her if it had splintered in the other direction. In her lap, she cradled White's head. His neck was broken, his body crushed. As her anguished eyes met Nick's, he knew she had tried and failed to protect his student.
The mangled corpse next to them was another story.
"You were right," Janette whispered for Nick's ears alone. "They came."
When Nick's guests reached the kitchen in a mass behind him, Janette pretended to faint.
~~~
Nick sat behind Janette on her bed in his guest room. She leaned against him, looking at the one daguerreotype she had decided to keep. The others, all those showing extended fangs and glowing eyes, as well as the ordinary portraits captioned with her name, had been destroyed, as well as the letters, each re-read before she placed it in the fire with her own hand. Her friend had been a photographer; everything else, Janette still kept to herself.
The remaining image was an artistic fancy, like a painting, with props and costumes. "Artemis and Companion," Nick read from the frame. There was Janette, clearly the Greek goddess of the hunt and the moon, and there was another woman kneeling by her side, perhaps as a nymph, holding the leash of a hound that had somehow been persuaded to lie still for the whole exposure, blurred only where its ears and tail had twitched.
"Well, I have what I came for," she sighed. "For what it has cost you, Nicolas, I am sorry."
Speaking of cost, Nick thought, the Enforcers had not wanted Janette dead, or she would be. He hugged her to him, listening for the rare beat of her heart. She had been taking care of the implied threat to their secret when the Enforcers came upon her, so they had let her go, and yet they had taken no care to preserve her life, either. Whether alerted by a witness to the incident at the exhibition, or by loose talk by the now dead son of Janette's friend, they had simply been sweeping up a mess. Janette and White were equally so much debris in the way of their mandate. No question of innocence or guilt, mercy or justice. All in service of the lies that hid vampire existence, and the endless concessions that composed that existence.
Nick felt so tired of it, so trapped by his need for blood.
So alone, even with Janette in his arms.
"Would you like to stay with me in Paris while you have your house repaired?" she asked.
"Thank you, but I've been thinking about going to Germany, to meet . . . an author of some scientific papers." Nick had not been ready to take Spense into his confidence. A few letters and articles were in no way enough to risk confiding the vampires' secret to a mortal, as the Enforcers had just vividly reminded them. And yet, Nick just could not be this anymore. "This would be a good time for that trip." Nick paused. "That is, after poor White's funeral."
Janette picked up her daguerreotype. "Do you think this would hurt less, if you were mortal? Not that I am saying such a thing is possible, mind." It was the first time she had acknowledged his hope.
Nick rested his chin on her shoulder. "No. I think it might hurt even more."
"Then why, Nicolas? Why?" She twisted in his arms and pulled back, clutching her framed picture. "So you can get old and ill and die? So I can lose you, too?"
"So I can find myself." Reluctantly, Nick let Janette go. "No more compromises."
---
End
Endnote
( True to Life, Part One )
"True to Life", a Forever Knight fanfiction
~~~
Continued from the first post...
Thursday
"I heard that the warming battery broke."
"Well, that would explain why it's nearly as cold inside as out. That's what you get with these needless mechanical contraptions. A good masonry fireplace, now . . ."
"How long do you think it will take them to fix it?"
As Nick swiftly scouted the Panopticon's ground floor, the only people not talking about the broken warming battery were those standing alone. Every couple and group had at least one person holding forth on how the heating device should be fixed.
"Ready?" Janette took Nick's arm when they met at the fountain. She had taken the ascending carriage to the top of the building, and then quickly scanned the gallery floors on her way down. The trim on her black dress was lavender this time, the most conservative and proper shade for her supposed stage of mourning, and therefore the least conspicuous. The décolletage was as low as a ball gown's, but in deference to the winter temperatures, she covered up with her heavy Indian shawl.
"Point him out to me as soon as you see him," Nick murmured, steering her through the gathering crowd toward the hall reserved for the event.
"No."
"Janette--"
"I said no, Nicolas. I can take care of this myself; that's why we arranged for him to come here tonight, after all. Besides, if I do need a rescue in the end, I would rather have you on the outside to provide it than inside with me wishing for it."
He frowned at her as they passed into the hall, then paused in delight to appreciate the bright gas lighting over the well-spaced paintings lining the walls, most of them at eye level.
"Our hanging committee did rather a better job than the Royal Academy's, don't you think, Nick?" a bluff, bearded man asked, clasping Nick's hand.
"Aren't you the entire hanging committee yourself, Ford?" Nick returned the handshake and added a pat on the back. "May I present my cousin, Madame Ducharme? Janette, this is Mr. Ford Madox Brown, the painter, and also the sole, energetic organizer of this exhibition."
"Someone had to do it." Madox Brown bowed over Janette's gloved hand. "Getting Gabriel to exhibit is worse than pulling teeth -- amputating would be more like -- and as many people as see Millais and Hunt's work, can they really understand it out of all context, slapped up on the line at the RA between overglazed cherubs and the squire's favorite hound?"
"This will be important for the movement," Nick assured him. "The newspapermen will have a chance of really understanding now. Being able to see for themselves will make a difference."
"No more need to just parrot what Ruskin tells them to see," Madox Brown sighed. "Not that Ruskin is wrong, exactly, but . . . never mind. Nick, Madame Ducharme, thank you for coming. As you know, everything here by Millais and Hunt is on loan from private owners, but most of the works by the rest of us are for sale. If you know someone with good taste and a drawer full of cash, you know where to find me."
Janette laughed as Madox Brown winked and moved on to another cluster of people. "He's charming, in a crusty way. Let's look at his paintings."
"Let's look for your contact, first." Nick stepped toward the center of the room and revolved slowly, letting his gaze slip by the small paintings in columns and the large ones by themselves, focusing on the ladies and gentlemen in front of them. But even trying to stay one step ahead of the Enforcers, it was impossible not to linger a moment on Millais's magnificent Ophelia at the far end of the room, a canopy and rope fence around it for its own protection. Nick dragged his eyes and attention back to Janette. "Is he here yet?"
"That's not the plan, Nicolas." Janette had looked around the room herself. "If he is here, I don't choose to tell you so yet." She stepped up to a column of smaller paintings, stacked from one above Nick's head to one even with her knees. "These are interesting. Whose are they?"
"I don't know." Nick looked at the bright watercolors of people in pseudo-medieval clothes, the thick pigment applied with an almost dry brush. Janette was examining one of a young woman opening a door as an older women pleaded with her on bended knee. Nick had never seen them before. "Deverell's, I suppose?"
A movement at the edge of his vision caught Nick's attention. He turned his head just in time to see Miss Siddal, the red-haired model encountered on Rossetti's steps, frowning in his direction before she walked away.
"No," Janette corrected him. "The card says these are by a lady artist, a Miss Elizabeth Siddal."
"Ah, who just overheard my mistaken guess. How do I apologize for that?"
"You buy me this painting. When our other business is taken care of."
Nick looked around again. A man would probably need a bag or case for Janette's daguerreotypes, though a woman could suspend them under her skirts.
"Now, this one is by your friend, Mr. Madox Brown." Janette nodded at An English Autumn Afternoon. "How modern! It's curious, isn't it, how this artistic movement mixes revival and revolution, medieval and modern, in their subjects as well as their techniques? It's no wonder you're so comfortable with them." She leaned closer to inspect the brushwork. "I admit I'm surprised that you have the patience for this level of detail, though, Nicolas."
"I can be patient."
"Of course you can." Janette patted his arm. "And that's why you're coiled like an overwound clock spring about the daguerreotypes. I told you, he thinks that the glow is a chemical trick of some sort, and the fangs artificial. He wants to know the technique and patent the process. There's no reason to think that they have an interest in this."
"Yet."
When they reached the end of the hall, Nick found a corner where he could shield his back, glance over the exhibition attendees, and still gape at Millais's Ophelia. About four feet wide and three feet high, the image of Shakespeare's mad girl drowning slowly in a reedy slough had a horrific beauty that called intimately to his own guilt. If her lover, or brother, or father had just thought of her before themselves . . . well, the play would not have been what it was, and there would have been no painting. Instead, one genius had fed the next.
The artist's The Order of Release a few years ago had been the first painting in history to require a guard to defend it from its own admirers.
"Is it getting hot in here?" asked a matron standing as close to Ophelia as the rope fence and her crinoline allowed.
"Perhaps they've fixed the warming battery," Nick offered.
"They seem to have overdone it all at once." She slipped her shawl off her shoulders and folded it over her arms. "I don't think I would want to look at this painting very often, grand though it is. Can you imagine Ophelia drowning over your dining table? Would anyone ever eat again?"
"That's one way of looking at it. But the idea--"
The woman screamed and backed away.
Nick's first thought was to raise a hand to his own teeth, but no, his fangs had not dropped, and he was still seeing the world through human-blue irises. He followed the woman's gaze up to the thin canopy above and beside the painting, and gasped himself. Other screams rang out, and a rush for the doors began.
"Fire!" Flames engulfed one side of the canopy, probably ignited by a bubble bursting from the gas line into the lights. The fire licked down the frame and the glass, picking up the rope fence just where the woman had been standing a moment before.
Nick strode to the far corner for the pails of water kept for just this emergency. He found them frozen solid. Two other men had had the same idea; they looked at each other and Nick helplessly. Some people were carrying out the other paintings, and the fire brigade would come in time for the building, but Ophelia? One of the men shook his head, lifted a nearby work, and started for the exit.
"Here." Janette appeared at Nick's side; with one hand, she pressed her heavy, voluminous shawl at the human man who had not left. Understanding immediately, he used her shawl to smother the flames attacking one side of the painting.
Nick ripped down the rest of the canopy to stop the spread of the fire, but before he could do anything more to help, found his arm in Janette's grip. She towed him out around the crowd with her left hand hand, tucking her right in to her side. "What are you doing?"
"Besides sacrificing an extremely expensive shawl that I will have to go to Bengal to replace," Janette nudged Nick toward the exit, "and pining to sink my teeth into someone, I am getting us out of here before the authorities arrive this time."
"What about your contact?"
"Oh, he came. And he doesn't think the glow is a photographic trick anymore." Janette pulled out her right hand and set it on Nick's arm. Her little and ring fingers were charred like the frame of the painting, her glove burned away around them. "You will not believe how this fire started."
~~~
Nick sat on Janette's bed and watched her brush out her hair at the vanity table. Every room of his house was set up for doing, none for talking. He had not noticed that until Janette had come to give him someone to talk to, and until their problems had mounted up into nothing to do but talk.
"How long were you out of my sight?" He lay back on the bed, carefully keeping his shoes over the end, away from the white quilted coverlet.
"Minutes. Perhaps six, seven." Janette set down her brush and began a plait, pausing now and then to untangle her just-healed fingers from strands of twisting hair. She had exchanged her evening gown for a blue and black exhibition of the Bloomer 'rational dress' costume, and Nick could only be glad she had not been wearing it when she walked in on his class, no matter his private appreciation of women in trousers. "It wasn't many words between telling me that he had found his mother's letters from me, and telling me that he wanted to be a vampire."
"If he is fool enough to let you put your fangs in his mortal neck, why didn't you take him off to the cloakroom then and there and be done with it?"
"I want my daguerreotypes. And letters." She tied a ribbon at the end of her braid. "He claims that he has hidden them, and I will never find them without his help. I believe him. So I will arrange the trade; he will think he is buying his conversion. And even if he tries to deceive me, I will take the knowledge when I take his blood, and go retrieve what is mine without the company of Scotland Yard, the fire brigade, and the insurance inspectors. It's all very simple and straightforward."
Nick rolled his head off the pillow and looked at her sideways. "Janette, he waited his moment, took you by surprise, and pushed your hand into a light fixture to jolt the vampire to the surface and confirm his suspicions. He's brutal. He's not stupid. And he's liable to bring down the Enforcers. Why are you trying to convince me otherwise?"
"I'm not." Janette came and curled up on the bed at his right side, so that she could rest her injured right hand on his chest. "I've dealt with the brutal and not-stupid since long before I had you to defend me, Nicolas. I'm glad to have you on my side, but you must let me handle this."
"Just as long as you handle it soon."
"Oh, I will."
Nick gently stroked the uninjured side of her hand. Her plan did not add up as simply and straightforwardly as she claimed; she could have taken the man's life and knowledge in the confusion following the fire without that much risk. "Is this about your friend? His mother?"
Janette was silent. After a quiet moment, she pulled her hand away and sat up. Her braid swung forward over her shoulder. "May I use your desk? My fingers are fine again, and I need to write some letters."
~~~
"How much will your urchins charge to post these for me?" Janette asked, stretching as she stood up from his desk.
"I usually give them six pence. It keeps them coming back." Nick set down his pencil and stretched himself, unhooking his feet from the rungs of the stool he had pulled over to his worktable to study his museum notes and sketches. "Did you find the stamps? Do you want me to take your letters out for you?"
"Yes to stamps, no to courier service." She brushed the blotting sand from her fingers. "Isn't it nearly time for you to check the windows?"
Nick looked from her to the wall clock and blinked. His internal sense of the rising sun confirmed that he had lost track of time, submerged in revelations of the new Assyrian dig and an intriguing reference to a 'book of miracles.' Nick wondered whether he should mention this discovery to Doctor Spense in Germany, or whether the old Silk Road was too far from the man's interest in the European occult.
Nick heard Janette step out through the kitchen and call over the lurking neighborhood boys. He also heard one astonished whistle at her bloomers.
Starting in the bedrooms and spiraling down to his back-garden window in his studio, Nick checked all the shutters and drapes for safety against the burning sun, and then turned around to find Janette standing over his notes.
"What's so interesting about old, broken pots from Persia? They make new pots there, too, you know."
"What's interesting about Troy or Atlantis?" Nick shrugged and came over to pick up his papers. He slipped the most important ones, in which his hobby became his hope, into the inconspicuous middle of the stack. "Lost cities, forgotten science, art, culture. The origins and definition of . . . humanity."
"If you want to know about the past, why don't you just ask Lacroix? He would be happy to tell you."
"He would be happy to tell me what he wants me to believe." Nick tied the papers together and set them on a shelf above Janette's head. He sat backwards on the piano bench and leaned forward, his arms on his knees. "You know how far from the truth that can be."
Janette joined him on the bench. "Does the distant truth matter so much? A near truth is that life is easy when Lacroix is happy, and anything but easy when he is not. Your company makes him happy, Nicolas -- although this animal blood fetish is not going to go over smoothly, I warn you. Modern convenience is all very well, but--"
"It's not just convenience. You know that." Nick took her right hand, the injured one, and looked at it carefully from each angle before folding his fingers with hers. She had an ink smudge where her skin had been stiff and charred when he had left her to make her own way home, those last few blocks. She had arrived on his doorstep healed and whole, with glowing cheeks, and no questions asked about the fresh corpse doubtless not far behind her. Until Janette came, Nick had thought he was managing it, the vampire. He had thought he was in control. But now his helpless hypocrisy sickened him more than any taste of cow blood. "Do you remember the very first thing I asked of Lacroix, all those centuries ago?"
"The very first . . . no, what?"
"I asked him to put me back, to make me human again."
She pressed his hand sympathetically. "You were new. You didn't know any better."
"Lacroix said it was impossible, that there was no going back. I believed him. I . . . adapted. I've been making accommodations ever since to what he said then. But what if what he said then is just what he wants me to believe?"
Janette took a second to untangle that thought. Then she dropped his hand. "You think you could become mortal again? Madness!"
"Have you ever even thought of the question before, Janette? Why should it be that the door opens only in one direction?"
"That is how hinges work, Nicolas." She stood and faced him, but did not meet his eyes. "If it were possible to lose our vampirism, Lacroix would have warned us against it. This is ridiculous. Don't waste your effort worrying about it."
"I'm not worried." He watched her face for a long moment. She was not pulling away. Nick cast caution to the winds, leaned forward and whispered against her ear. "I'm hopeful."
Janette pushed him back, her brow furrowed. "Oh, my Nicolas, what has happened to you?" She stroked his cheek sympathetically, then walked to the foyer door, crossing her arms. At the bottom of the stairs she paused and stared back at him.
Nick had been prepared for an argument, not for pity.
After a long moment, Janette laughed. Then she ran up the stairs
~~~
Friday
Janette went out right after sunset without a word.
With a cup of cow blood at his elbow, Nick quickly answered Rossetti's letters from the day before, adding his gratitude and some pound bills to the latter's plans for Saturday's gathering. Rossetti was energetically willing to play expert guide to what he was now convinced was Nick's social inexperience, and Nick decided not to try to untangle that nuance. With dusk so early, Nick easily found a boy willing to deliver the letter and bring an answer for nine pence.
Nick lay out his paints and brushes to continue his moonlit winter oak, which would be the background for a human figure currently sketched only lightly, to be completed later, when the weather had turned and the real oak had leafed out again, leaving the painting behind.
Before picking up a brush, though, Nick went upstairs to Janette's dressing room and carried down the plush, cream-colored divan. He set it between his desk and his easel.
When Janette returned, she looked around the studio, vanished, and returned again to settle on the divan with a book and a pillow. She read; Nick painted. He did not ask her about her plans for dealing with her friend's son and retrieving the incriminating daguerreotypes. She did not ask him about his hopes for becoming human. Toward dawn, Nick washed his brushes and moved from his easel to his worktable, where he sketched her in pencil, her skirts draped down the curved center, her head leaning against her hand, her elbow on the divan's arm, her book on the pillow in her lap.
Before sunrise, Janette closed her book and came to look at Nick's drawing of her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leaned her cheek against his. After several moments of scrutiny, she said, "I like how I look through your eyes."
Nick felt forgiven.
He just wasn't sure what for.
~~~
Saturday
"I will not stay upstairs like a punished child, Nicolas."
"It's for your own good!"
"Hope I'm not interrupting?"
The entrance by the kitchen was covered, so Nick could have answered his door before sunset with minimal danger. Instead, the knock escaped his attention as he argued with Janette, and Rossetti walked right in. In his favorite purple velvet waistcoat and a flowing yellow scarf, he might have looked dashing and bohemian, if he had not been overburdened with two baskets in one hand and a peculiar metal and ceramic contraption in the other.
"Not at all." Nick frowned at Janette and relived Rossetti of the baskets, which reeked -- to vampire sensibilities -- of fresh baked goods. "Thanks for coming, Gabriel. What on earth is that device?"
"Oh, it's an old toy: a self-concocting coffee pot that Hunt and I picked up on the continent. Hardly been used." Rossetti set it on the worktable in the center of the kitchen, and coughed delicately. He raised an eyebrow at Nick and jerked his head toward Janette, who made only a token attempt to suppress her grin.
"My colleague, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. My cousin, Madame Ducharme."
"And I am indeed charmed," Rossetti bowed elaborately over Janette's hand. "My envy for Nick knows no bounds, now that I have seen you in person, madam. Would it be terribly forward to ask you to sit for me? Escorted and unremunerated, of course, nothing improper."
Janette withdrew her hand and continued smiling. She wore the same black and red day gown in which she had stunned Nick's class, but her hair was pulled back only by a thin red ribbon at her nape; Rossetti could not take his eyes off it. "And why is it that modeling for free is proper, Mr. Rossetti, while doing so for pay tarnishes one's reputation?"
"I'm sure I don't know." Rossetti accepted one of the baskets back from Nick, who had the other, and followed him into the studio. "But as an artist always in want of a little tin, I'll admit gratitude for any loophole that makes relatives and friends sit for free."
Nick had cleared his worktable, spread it with a tablecloth, and set out the rest of his dishware -- the cups and saucers never used with blood. They unloaded the baskets' treats onto platters, and Janette set out some serviettes.
"Inspired by your forward invitation, I would like to ask a daring question, too. May I?"
"Of course."
"Does the College pay its instructors poorly, that you're often in want of 'tin'?"
Rossetti fell silent, heat rising on his cheeks. He looked at Nick.
"Janette, all instructors at the College are volunteers." Nick found the subject almost as uncomfortable as Rossetti did. He hated politics with a revulsion that stretched all the way back to Gwyneth's murder in Wales, when he still walked in the sun. But addressing real needs and legitimate grievances often smudged the line between selfish politics and social justice. "It's a kind of contribution to the cause."
"Bah, causes." Rossetti sniffed, still blushing. "Let's leave that to Ruskin and Ford and worry about your party, yeah?" A knocking came from the front. "I'll play doorman."
Nick opened his mouth to again order Janette upstairs.
"Kitchen," she said, laying a finger against his lips. "I will be in the kitchen. I shall make the coffee and tea -- I can so -- and listen to all the things I would not be able to hear if I were one of them instead of one of us."
In short order, half of Nick's class arrived, several bearing regrets from those who had other obligations. Rossetti had been right; while the conversation returned often to Nick's paintings and how he had set up his studio, not to mention the sensation of the fire at the exhibition -- all the paintings had been saved, Ophelia needing the barest repair -- talk also rambled happily over the whole of creation, and the men split into clusters around specific interests.
"Mr. White!" Rossetti greeted the young butcher. "Still wasting your time on algebra?"
"I intend to take the examination in it," White replied. "Numbers are very beautiful in their own way, Mr. Rossetti, and are also a kind of art representing nature, if you don't mind my saying so."
"Hadn't thought of it like that." Rossetti clapped him on the back. "Well, good for you!"
One student asked Rossetti which of two premium paint brands he preferred; Rossetti claimed that he always bought whatever was cheapest, which Nick doubted was entirely true, but it made a worthy point. Skill was not for sale.
Explaining his nightscape color choices to his student the cartwright, Nick was surprised to find Ruskin one step behind them, examining the unfinished canvas on his easel.
"This is rather good, Mr. Thomas."
"Thank you, Mr. Ruskin. And thank you for coming."
"A little more notice would have been appreciated, but I can't very well chide you for carrying out my suggestion with all haste. That the College has its life beyond the classroom is very important in fulfilling its mission." Ruskin picked up a biscuit from the table. "Is your cousin still visiting you?"
"Yes."
"Hmmm." Ruskin looked around the room. "Ah, Mr. White. And how is your wife?"
"Very well, sir, thank you."
"I trust she has not sold any more of your paintings," Ruskin joked.
White stood up straighter. "In fact, Mr. Ruskin, I've accepted a little commission to paint a portrait of our pastor. I think that I'll be able to give satisfaction -- thanks to you, and Mr. Rossetti, and Mr. Thomas."
"Well, congratulations. That's very . . . congratulations." Ruskin blinked. "I trust you won't let it interfere with your secure employment."
"No, of course not, sir."
Ruskin strolled off, and Nick clasped White's hand. "That's magnificent! Your first commission."
"It isn't much, Mr. Thomas."
"That's not the point at all." Nick beamed. "I would get out some wine and propose a general toast to your success, but I don't want to distress Mr. Ruskin by giving everyone delusions of grandeur. Maybe after he leaves."
White swallowed a laugh. "I'm not much for wine, I admit, but I would enjoy some more of this coffee."
Nick looked into the carafe on the table and found it empty. He reached to pick it up, but White's fingers closed on the handle first.
"Let me. I know where your kitchen is. Would I be correct in guessing this would give me an opportunity to pay my respects to your cousin?"
Nick nodded and waved White on his way. White more than deserved an accolade, and Janette would doubtless be delighted by the company. Rossetti had been popping back there every few minutes to flirt with her, until he noticed Ruskin's arrival; now, the men were chatting together, paging back through the old and unsold canvases Nick had left leaning against the wall. Nick decided to join them, nerving himself for just criticism of his work.
"You told me to put away any paintings I didn't want discussed, Gabriel. I should have listened!"
"Surely, Mr. Thomas, you're professional enough that--"
A thunderous crack and tidal crash drowned Ruskin's words. Dust rose like a dry fog from the ground . . . from the kitchen.
If Nick's feet did not touch the floor in his rush, no one ever mentioned it.
The ceiling had collapsed. The furniture from Nick's bedroom above dangled between the beams supporting the second story, where it had not fallen entirely through. Nick tore past the wreckage, picking his direction on instinct, and found Janette half-protected under the wooden worktable, which could easily have staked her if it had splintered in the other direction. In her lap, she cradled White's head. His neck was broken, his body crushed. As her anguished eyes met Nick's, he knew she had tried and failed to protect his student.
The mangled corpse next to them was another story.
"You were right," Janette whispered for Nick's ears alone. "They came."
When Nick's guests reached the kitchen in a mass behind him, Janette pretended to faint.
~~~
Nick sat behind Janette on her bed in his guest room. She leaned against him, looking at the one daguerreotype she had decided to keep. The others, all those showing extended fangs and glowing eyes, as well as the ordinary portraits captioned with her name, had been destroyed, as well as the letters, each re-read before she placed it in the fire with her own hand. Her friend had been a photographer; everything else, Janette still kept to herself.
The remaining image was an artistic fancy, like a painting, with props and costumes. "Artemis and Companion," Nick read from the frame. There was Janette, clearly the Greek goddess of the hunt and the moon, and there was another woman kneeling by her side, perhaps as a nymph, holding the leash of a hound that had somehow been persuaded to lie still for the whole exposure, blurred only where its ears and tail had twitched.
"Well, I have what I came for," she sighed. "For what it has cost you, Nicolas, I am sorry."
Speaking of cost, Nick thought, the Enforcers had not wanted Janette dead, or she would be. He hugged her to him, listening for the rare beat of her heart. She had been taking care of the implied threat to their secret when the Enforcers came upon her, so they had let her go, and yet they had taken no care to preserve her life, either. Whether alerted by a witness to the incident at the exhibition, or by loose talk by the now dead son of Janette's friend, they had simply been sweeping up a mess. Janette and White were equally so much debris in the way of their mandate. No question of innocence or guilt, mercy or justice. All in service of the lies that hid vampire existence, and the endless concessions that composed that existence.
Nick felt so tired of it, so trapped by his need for blood.
So alone, even with Janette in his arms.
"Would you like to stay with me in Paris while you have your house repaired?" she asked.
"Thank you, but I've been thinking about going to Germany, to meet . . . an author of some scientific papers." Nick had not been ready to take Spense into his confidence. A few letters and articles were in no way enough to risk confiding the vampires' secret to a mortal, as the Enforcers had just vividly reminded them. And yet, Nick just could not be this anymore. "This would be a good time for that trip." Nick paused. "That is, after poor White's funeral."
Janette picked up her daguerreotype. "Do you think this would hurt less, if you were mortal? Not that I am saying such a thing is possible, mind." It was the first time she had acknowledged his hope.
Nick rested his chin on her shoulder. "No. I think it might hurt even more."
"Then why, Nicolas? Why?" She twisted in his arms and pulled back, clutching her framed picture. "So you can get old and ill and die? So I can lose you, too?"
"So I can find myself." Reluctantly, Nick let Janette go. "No more compromises."
---
End
Endnote
- Disclaimers. Mr. Parriot and Mr. Cohen created Forever Knight. The Sony Corporation owns it. I intend no infringement by this fantasy fan story. Buy what they sell so that they can make more! Naturally, except for the famous historical figures and their activities, all characters and situations depicted here are entirely fictional. (Vampires don't exist. The Working Men's College does, though.)
- Canon. This story is set after the flashbacks of "Let No Man Tear Asunder" (with Hans, Nick's scientist friend in Geneva) and "Night in Question" (with Lacroix in the Crimea pledging to let Nick go off on his own), and before those of "The Fix" (with Spense, the "resurrection doctor" in Germany). Assyrian archaeology hints at the Abbarratt from "1966." Nick asking Lacroix to undo his vampirism immediately after his conversion is in "Dark Knight, The Second Chapter" and "I Will Repay." Nick as a painter is in many episodes, notably "Dead Issue" and "Feeding the Beast." Janette's portrait by Leonardo is in "Partners of the Month." Nick as archaeologist is in several episodes, notably "Spin Doctor" and "Dark Knight." The Enforcers, and the inability to mesmerize people who possess evidence of vampirism, are in "Unreality TV."
- Sources. There are more volumes (and years) of Victorianist geekitude behind this story than I can count. However, the most immediate references were: Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Painter and Poet by Jan Marsh (1999), The Pre-Raphaelites at Home by Pamela Todd (2001), The Working Men's College 1854-1904 edited by J. Llewelyn Davies (1904), Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose (1984), and My Grandfather, His Wives and Loves by Diana Holman-Hunt (1969). I highly recommend them all.
- Real History. Except for Mr. White, every named character in this story is either a canonical Forever Knight character or a real historical figure. Ruskin and Rossetti taught at the Working Men's College for free. Madox Ford organized the first Pre-Raphaelite exhibition (not at the Panopticon, not in the winter). There was a Panopticon (it became the Alhambra). There was a fire at a winter exhibition, and a lady's shawl was used to save Hunt's The Finding of Christ in the Temple. There was a ceiling collapse (at the Burne-Jones home). Rossetti and Hunt bought a "self-concocting coffee pot." Rossetti once failed to introduce Siddal to a friend on their own doorstep, and Hunt once mistook Siddal's work for Deverell's. The Victorians used the penny post rather like we use email. The Ethnology Society was a precursor of archaeological associations.
- Inspiration. Thank you to Wiliqueen for the prompt! What a life you set me to building for Nick!
- Beta-Readers. My thanks to Havocthecat and Natmerc for tackling this story's draft on the very weekend of the deadline. The story is stronger for their perceptive questions! And thank you to those who chatted with me about writing FK fanfic when I was struggling to find the plot -- you know who you are. (The remaining errors are of course all my own.)
- No Outside Archiving. This story will make it to fkfic-l (as multiple posts) and my own fansite (in a single file) after the ficathon ends. You're welcome to link to it here or there. Please don't lift it and put it elsewhere.
- Thank you for reading!