Ophelia's Muse by Rita Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

what chances do you have to be ruined? I hope that you don’t mind my being blunt, but that is my way. You really only have something to gain.”
    And yet, it seemed beyond foolish to Lizzie to risk what little she did have—her good reputation—on the slim chance for advancement that sitting for an artist might afford her. The thought was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. But Mrs. Tozer was right. If she didn’t make a change now, she would soon have no chances at all, and each day would be just like the one before, with only herself changing: growing older and thinner, fading under the strain of the work. There was no future for her here.
    She slowly nodded to Mrs. Tozer. She would try her luck, then, and see what came of it.
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    That night Mrs. Tozer walked Lizzie home, and for once Lizzie was happy for the company. The old drunk on the bridge had tempered her taste for lonely walks, and there was no chance of being accosted with that formidable lady by her side, parting the crowds with her stout frame, eliciting respectful nods with her sweeping gaze.
    They reached the Siddal house and Mrs. Tozer looked it over with a sharp eye. It was a narrow structure wedged between a greengrocer and a chemist, with a shop downstairs and two perilously settled floors above, where the family made their home. Only the well-scrubbed front step and the window boxes set it apart from the other tired houses lining the street.
    Mrs. Tozer glanced over her shoulder at Lizzie, with a look that asked how a girl who lived above a shop had come by such a fine accent. Lizzie Siddal obviously had designs above her station, much like Mrs. Tozer had at Lizzie’s age. She paused at the door and turned back to Lizzie. “Let me do the talking, dear.”
    Lizzie nodded and showed Mrs. Tozer in, leading her up the narrow steps and into a neatly kept parlor. Lizzie stole a glance at Mrs. Tozer, trying to see what she made of the small house. Lizzie had nothing to be ashamed of—she wouldn’t have been working for Mrs. Tozer, after all, if her family had been in better circumstances. But visitors always made her more aware of the house’s shortcomings.
    The Siddals fell into that class of persons who had gently, and almost without noticing, drifted downward from the comfortable middle class to the hardships of the London tenements. They had, several generations ago, been a family with a respectable income and various property holdings in Derbyshire. But any fortune that the Siddal clan could lay claim to was now long gone, chipped away at by each succeeding generation, with a profusion of claimants to an ever-dwindling stock. The remaining family property, Hope Hall, had gone to a distant cousin who ran it as an inn.
    Mr. Siddal firmly believed himself to be the rightful heir to the Hall, and it had grown in his imagination into something far grander than it was. He often neglected his work as a cutler, making and sharpening knives, to go over the endless details of a lawsuit that he had brought to reclaim the family property. But his efforts had been thwarted by a legion of relatives, all as convinced of their own right to the property as he was of his, and so far the suit had rewarded him with nothing but solicitors’ bills.
    As a child, Lizzie had dreamed alongside him, imagining her triumphant return to the family’s rightful home and all the finery that would entail. But now, at nineteen and almost a woman, the thought of the pointless suit just depressed her, and she would have preferred that her father put his mind, and his meager savings, to something more useful.
    Lizzie glanced around the parlor, hoping that her father was out. He would be sure to talk Mrs. Tozer’s ear off about the lawsuit, and Lizzie didn’t want any gossip about it. She was relieved to see that he was still in the shop. She was about to call out to her mother when two of the younger children, a boy and a girl,