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Chapter Eight
It is the paint that does it, or so they say. It makes you sick, brings on the visions of darkness and
death.
And she knows that he is almost there. That he has almost crossed that thin pale border which
separates sanity from madness. He does not sleep. He does not eat. He drinks and paces and rails
against his latest girl – that pale and ineffectual Anne.
It is the white paint that will take him the rest of the way. It is not an easy thing to obtain in London,
where they are wise enough to fear it, so she was forced to journey to Calais and learn the technique
in a French school. It involved soaking lead plates in Mercury – dreadful stuff – and then flaking off
bits to brew the white pigment. It makes you drunk, forgetful, and foolish. It brings on “the artist’s
disease.” They claim it is what drove Van Gogh insane, prompted him to cut off his ear and present it
to a whore.
And so shall it work its white magic on LaRusse.
She mixes the paint at two parts white and one part blue, far more than what is prudent. Far more
than the ratio which is recommended at the art school where she learned. It might even be enough to
kill him if she tried, but she doesn’t want him dead. At least not now. Not quite yet. She wants him
to suffer. To remember.
Night after night, she rises from her bed. Puts on her white cloak and runs across the meadow to the
gatehouse with a lantern in one hand and her paints in another. And night after night she finds the
portrait, his Angel of Hever Castle, waiting on the easel. Anne’s arms and shoulders, Anne’s breasts
and hands. And yes, even Anne’s face, at least at first. But she has always been quick with a brush
and within minutes, the angel of Hever is transformed. She is no longer Anne. She is Rose.
How many more mornings until he loses his tenuous grip on reality? No man can exist forever on
rum and fear and poisonous fumes. No man can pose one woman obediently naked before him and
paint her in perfect detail – and yet return to his easel every morning to find another waiting for him.
Her eyes wide and accusing. His baby on her lap.
But she is prepared to stay here, no matter how many nights it takes until her vengeance is complete.
LaRusse will never be allowed to forget what he did to Rose, no matter how many other women may
have been in his bed or on his canvases. He must remember her face even if he forgets all the others.
She must haunt him unto death.