Inamorata by Megan Chance Page A

nearly sixty, but in those days neither Madeleine nor I shirked from age. He had a gnarled face, but it was not unpleasant, and his eyes were sharp. I found him reading his poetry at a small supper, and I knew the moment I heard him that he was touched with genius, though I think no one else at the gathering noticed. They chatted through his reading, laughing among themselves, paying no attention, and I could tell by his sighs that he was discouraged at the end of it.
    Afterward, I brought him a glass of sherry to ease the rasp in his voice. I think he was surprised I deigned to notice him. I was still beautiful, after all, and he was not a man used to such attention. I said, “Come with me. There is someone I would like you to meet.”
    I took him to Madeleine’s. When I brought him through the door, she raised her eyebrow and I said, “Trust me.”
    He was struck immediately, as they all were. When she invited him to have wine with her, he stayed. I left them with a smug sense of satisfaction. Because I was right about him. His poetry still is lauded, though he went mad soon after Madeleine left him. It was a small price to pay, I thought then. I think it now.
    Although Madeleine was grateful for what I’d done, something changed after that. I often caught her watching me when she thought I wasn’t looking, and the expression on her face made me uneasy.
    One day, as we strolled the halls of a private art exhibition, Madeleine stopped short, as if arrested, before a portrait of a young man. He was dressed in velvet finery; his hair hanging in dark curls to his shoulders, his eyes so black they were only pools of opacity.
    Madeleine shuddered. “Those eyes.”
    I frowned. “What of them?”
    “How they follow me. They seem . . .” She let the words fall away as if she could not wrangle them.
    I glanced at the portrait. The eyes were badly done, with no depth, and I saw no real reason for them to have so affected her. I started to move on. She touched my arm to stop me. Her gaze had not left the portrait.
    “What do you know of demons, Odilé?”
    It was the painting, I knew. It was obvious that it troubled her. “It’s only that the artist did a poor job of capturing dark eyes. I hardly think him a demon.”
    “How little you know of the world.”
    That stung—it was unlike Madeleine to be so dismissive. “I’m hardly an innocent.”
    “No, but there is so much you don’t know. You’re like everyone else, believing things because you’ve never questioned them.”
    “Why would you say such a thing to me?”
    “Because it’s true.” She seemed hardly aware that she’d offended me. “You talk as if you would know a demon if you saw it.”
    “I believe I would,” I said coldly, thinking of the man who’d taken my virginity and left me bleeding on the floor. “One rarely mistakes malice and cruelty.”
    “And you think those things the province of demons alone.”
    “No, of course not. But I think it is how you know when you are dealing with one. The man who ruined me had a demon’s eyes. I see them in my nightmares.”
    “And yet, had it not been for him, you would be a common whore like your mother, instead of one of the preeminent courtesans in Paris.”
    “No longer preeminent,” I said softly, feeling the pinch of it.
    “But you are better off than you would have been otherwise, are you not? He forced you to do what you had only dreamed of before. He was not your ruin, but your savior.”
    “I hardly think of it so rosily.”
    “No, you are like everyone else. You would like to think that things are easily categorized. Mankind likes little boxes. Everything in its place. And yet . . .” She moved close to the painting, reaching out, pointing to the boy’s painted eyes. “You say the artist hasn’t the skill to paint dark eyes. I say you are not looking closely enough.”
    She laid a finger upon the eyes. I looked, and suddenly those blank painted orbs sprung to life. They seemed