Nocturne

No one in the castle of Nachtfels has seen his own face in centuries.Vivienne Laroche has painted dukes, a cardinal and a queen, and she has never once been asked to paint a man who could not check her work in a mirror afterward. Then a letter arrives sealed in black wax, offering a fortune for a double portrait by candlelight, and she climbs the snowbound pass with her easel in her arms and her long golden waves under her hood, while the valley drivers refuse to go anywhere near the door.Lord Aurelien is four centuries old, pale as moonlight, with long silver-white hair and a short silver-grey beard, a man who listens with his whole body and smiles perhaps once a decade. Cassius is his lover of two hundred years, deep brown skin, short black curls, a neat black beard and a body carved for sin, utterly incapable of holding still, a man who flirts the way other men breathe. Night after night they stand for her in front of the great arched window, shirtless in the moonlight, and let her look as no one has looked at them in living memory.And night after night they watch her back, then glance at each other, then cross to the far side of the room.They are very careful. They are also very hungry. And they have sworn that nothing will happen in their house that she does not ask for, clearly, out loud, with her eyes open and her own terms on the table.Vivienne has spent her whole life telling people exactly how to stand, where to look and when to hold still. She has never once been the one who was looked at. Not like this. Not in midnight-blue velvet, with a neckline her dressmaker crossed herself over.One winter of candlelit nights. Two immortal lovers who have forgotten their own faces. A painter who is about to learn what it feels like to be their masterpiece.