Immortal Pursuit

By Daphne Coleridge

When Anthea is commissioned by the mysterious Cyro Smith to paint his portrait, she finds herself quickly overwhelmed by his passion. She is further confused by a series of dreams about Cyro which seem to show that his past is more extraordinary than she could have imagined. His talk of gods and myths confuses her still further. Will a god pursue his lost love across eternity? A novella.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daphne Coleridge
• Release date: Jun 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310856020

Book preview

Immortal Pursuit

Daphne Coleridge

Editor: Emily Nemchick

Copyright © Daphne Coleridge 2013

When Anthea picked up her letters out of the post-box that summer’s morning, one envelope immediately stood out from the others. It was made from cream-coloured paper vellum, which was pleasant to the touch and quite unlike the cheap, thin brown of the other envelopes which undoubtedly contained bills. When she re-entered her studio she pushed the other letters onto a side table, which already had an accumulation of neglected documents on it, and concentrated on the interesting one. Opening it revealed a piece of card with an embossed address and a brief message in stylish, curving script. The address caught Anthea’s eye before she attempted to decipher the handwriting. It was a Mayfair address and Anthea knew that the houses in that area were the preserve of the fabulously rich. The properties there might not have been so distant from her scruffy, live-in studio in terms of miles, but in every other meaningful way they were a world apart. The card read:

"Please meet 10.30 am today re: my portrait. Cyro Smith"

It was already nine o’clock. Anthea turned the card over a few times to see if it provided any other clues. There was no date anywhere on it, so she had to assume that the writer meant that very morning and intended his home address as the venue. Anthea paused for a moment. There was something about the name that seemed incongruous to her. Cyro sounded foreign – maybe Greek – but the name of Smith was as bog standard British as you could get. If you wanted a common surname and did an internet search, you would probably come up with Smith. And how had this man come across her address? It was true that she was a portrait artist, but hardly a well known one. Most of her commissions came via her website, and she was mostly asked to paint portraits of pets from photographs. In the last year she had painted two portraits of people – both friends of friends. She would have imagined that a man with an address that indicated he was a multi-millionaire would have access to the best and most famous society portraitists – why contact her? On the other hand, she wasn’t exactly in a position to choose to ignore the sort of opportunity a contact like this might mean to her. If she really did paint the portrait of one wealthy man, other wealthy clients might follow. She glanced at the heap of brown envelopes: no! – she really couldn’t afford to ignore this opportunity.

If there had been more than a short time for Anthea to prepare herself for her visit to the Mayfair mansion she was already imagining, she might have checked out the name on the card on the internet to see what it revealed about Cyro Smith’s profession or his family connections. A picture would have been nice. As it was, she only had time to take a shower, dress in a pair of cream linen trousers and white blouse which flattered her slim figure, and grab a bag with her camera and sketch pad in it in case she needed to do any preliminary drawings. She also took a compact portfolio which contained photographs of some of her best paintings in case the gentleman wanted to see examples of her past work or assess whether or not he liked her style.

Her destination proved to be only a stone’s throw away from Hyde Park; a terraced, Georgian house with cream stucco frontage and black iron railings. Anthea reckoned the building consisted of six storeys, including a lower ground floor. For a moment she felt quite intimidated and had to do a mental check of her credentials before she could approach the imposing front door. Her golden brown hair was tied in a neat ponytail, her linen trousers were without stain from oil paint or marks from charcoal: this was as good as it was going to get. Wondering vaguely if the door would be answered by a butler, Anthea rang the bell. She had to wait for just a moment longer than was comfortable and then the door was opened and Anthea found herself facing a stockily built man of middle height with thick dark hair and intense dark eyes. She felt an immediate and extraordinary sense of déjà-vu which left her temporarily speechless. Fortunately the man at the door seemed to know his manners and invited her in with a gesture saying,

You must be Anthea Brown. My name is Cyro – please do come in.

The entrance hall into which Anthea stepped was enough to distract her for a moment. The floor was tiled in black and white and the space was occupied by a mixture of statues and exotic ferns. The elegance of the statues was slightly compromised by the profusion – as if the owner was a man of taste but also an over-enthusiastic collector. A better effect could have been produced by fewer statues and a more minimalist style, but what Anthea saw still left her breathless. The statues included pieces in marble and bronze. There were female figures of smooth perfection and lustrous curves, and more dynamic male figures. One bronze depicted a Greek athlete, and several things about this struck Anthea immediately. The first was the sheer antiquity of the statue – was it really from ancient Greece? Was this a work from hundreds of years BC? But of course it could be a clever replica. The second thing that struck her was that the muscular form captured in contrapposto was strikingly like the figure of Cyro Smith, who seemed to be watching her as she made her brief appraisal of the work. But before she could become too absorbed by this statue, another caught her eye. She was very familiar with the wonderful sculpture of Apollo and Daphne by Bernini. She had travelled to Rome just to see it. And this was – what? A perfect replica in the finest marble? A duplicate?

Somehow Anthea couldn’t resist the urge to reach out her hand and touch the sensuous curves of the statue which towered before her. Here was the beautiful Daphne, her soft flesh transforming into bark so that she could escape the unwanted attentions of Apollo. And here was the god, forever reaching towards the woman he desired so passionately, but forever denied, as her warm physical form