SHE CAPTIVATED HIM. She, of the clear brown eyes, eyebrows like the faintest of his brushstrokes, demurely folded hands that he ached to explore. She, of the pearl-encrusted cap, of the crimson velvet gown and gold brocade bodice, of the twenty-three gemstones set in silver flowers around the low square-shaped neckline. She, of the sweet and lovely figure he would conjure with oil onto parchment.
She, whom his patron Henry the Eighth, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and of the Church of England, would admire in oil on parchment and agree to marry. She, whom his prideful patron would misuse and denounce as ugly as “a Flanders mare” in mere months.
She captivated him in a way few of his portrait subjects ever had, or ever would. And when she caught him by surprise late one afternoon in his studio, standing at the height of a finger on his special painting scaffold and wielding a tiny brush for his famed miniature works, it was he who captivated her.
Duchess Anne of Cleves was either destined to marry an obscure Lutheran lordling to serve her father’s Protestant cause, or become the fourth queen of Henry’s England. The deciding variable in the mathematics of His Royal Highness’ choice of bride was, unfortunately, her beauty—as depicted by the King’s Miniaturist, Hans Holbein the Younger, famous for his brilliant portraiture and skill with extraordinary detail.
Simply contemplating the weight of the decision resting on this painting made Hans’ entire body shake with the effort of maintaining the right and proper height of a man.
He’d met Duchess Anne briefly upon arrival at Castle Düren, and had given her much thought while painting her more severe sister, Duchess Amalia. The moment Anne had taken a seat in his temporary studio, he had glowed in the reflected light of her eyes. He stayed late that very first day just to commune with his first chalk sketch, and again and again as the painting took shape. Wishing to be small with her, and not merely her likeness.
Duchess Anne didn't step into the room so much as radiate into it, the way sudden sunlight could illuminate all other details and become the soul of an artwork.
Her eyes on him. Her eyes illuminating him. His secret, his truth. His tiny brush clattered to the slats of his scaffold at his feet.
"Duchess," Hans breathed, first in courtly English, and then again in the comfort of their shared mother tongue. "Herzogin." His knuckles tightened on the thin wooden railing.
"Please, I beg your discretion," he continued in German. His small voice rang out into the empty space between them, clearer and more confident by far than he could claim in this moment. The sound absorbed into the voluminous red velvet of her gown and the clattering jangles of her bejeweled cap as she glided closer. Cautious, curious. Captivated.
"Wondrous," she murmured. It was a measure of her awe that her eyes did not stray from him, even with the temptation of a painting of herself above and behind him.
He was accustomed to being the observer. The keeper of details and minutiae, not the one worthy of observation. Her scrutiny unsettled him as she bent forward to examine him more closely. Oh, but her scent! He breathed in the aroma of rosewater and womanly body and breath, intoxicating notes of humanity among the metallic pigments that usually overwhelmed him as he worked.
She was now close enough that he could have bridged the distance to her lips with a single standard brush, had he been a right and proper man.
Hans was not a right or proper man. He was the height of her longest finger, and as she reached for him, his whole body vibrated with the glow of her presence.
He forced himself to stand braced and strong, though he wanted to shudder and fold in on himself like a cowardly creature. The fingers of the duchess were soft and warm on his skin as she touched the side of his face and trailed down his bare right shoulder and arm. He did shudder, then, but it was with rare pleasure.
Not once in the years of this secret practice, not even when he was learning the limner's magic in France years before, had he ever been touched. He was a man in his prime and by no means virginal, but he had always communed at this size with paintings. Not people. The secret of his trade was too precious, and the vulnerability of his diminutive personage too profound, for him to ever allow another to lay eyes on him this way. Let alone lay hands on his body.
And yet, Anne's fingers on his skin left a mark of fire in his soul, as if she trailed rose-hued paint in a blush down his cheek and bicep. First touch. First brush stroke on an untouched canvas. He shivered in the cool winter of the room and ached for her summer warmth to reach him again.
She pinched the gauzy linen that he had bound around himself in the fashion of the ancient Greeks, draped over his left shoulder and cinched around his waist with a thread. He wished absurdly that it was finer fabric, or that it wasn't dusted and blotched with the evidence of his trade. He met her eyes, feeling as nude as a model hired from a brothel for charcoal studies.
"And here, I thought 'Miniaturist' referred to your skill with tiny portraiture, Herr Holbein," she said.
“It does, Your Grace,” he said. “Please, my lady, will not your chaperone be alarmed?” Had he been his true height, he would now be ushering the duchess out the door with skills honed over years of painting the obstinate courtiers of King Henry.
How could he hope to make her leave, without standing at his own height? Returning to himself required concentration and care. Even if he succeeded, he’d shatter the scaffolding and possibly injure the precious painting, a risk he would take only to save his own life—especially considering that ruining the portrait might place his life in peril, back across the Channel.
Not to mention, he’d be genuinely nude. The thought of baring his body before her in that way deepened the blush from her touch.
Anne gestured to a small square of fabric, fallen below the chair she had vacated that afternoon. “My chaperone and I believed the studio to be empty. She waits in the room beyond, secure in the knowledge that I’ve returned to retrieve my handkerchief and steal a look at the painting that shall decide my fate.”
Her eyes lifted from him, finally, drawing up to the painting. Hans felt his spirits lift with hers. To witness this moment, from this vantage!
Anne of Cleves beheld herself, and her lips parted with awe. “Glory,” she whispered. She leaned close to peer at his painstaking efforts, and he gasped as her skirts grazed the wicker scaffold. Her bosom sloped huge and round above him and he felt the warmth of her like an ache.
“Please!” he said urgently, before she caused permanent damage to either his work tools or his work, or himself.
“Is it dry?” she murmured, reaching to touch the portrait's face. Alarmed, Hans again considered growing in a bid to protect the painting.
“Yes, but—my lady—do not touch the hands!” he managed at last.
Anne pulled back and looked down at him with the same clear intensity she had shown during the long hours of sitting for the painting.
He gestured to the fresh paint he’d been working on and continued with somewhat more dignity. “Please. I am sure you will still agree that this is most improper. Your Grace.” The chill of the room crept back into the space between them, and he felt it acutely.
“It’s true I’ve never been alone with a man outside my family,” she said finally. Her mouth twitched into a smile. “And yet, one could argue that you are no man. Perhaps you are a toy. Or a spirit.”
“I am a man,” Hans said, his pride stinging.
"A miniature man."
He gathered his dignity and his paint-stained smock and frowned up at her. “A man wise enough to not spend an evening alone with the potential bride of his powerful patron. I should think a lady seeking to follow in the footsteps of Anne of Boleyn might tread more lightly as well.”
The light in her eyes clouded with fear. She looked down at her gown, smoothing her hands over enough pearls to buy half the city beyond the castle walls. Then she looked up at the painting and her demeanor shifted as if swayed by the elegance he had captured there. “You have seen me like no other has seen me,” she said softly. “You make me bold.”
Even through the layers of fabric, his artist’s eyes caught the shift of her hips. Closer to him again. Not heedless of him, as before. Deliberate.
“If you’re indeed a man,” she murmured, “prove it.”
She reached for him again, her fingers trailing up from his cold bare feet, up his shins and into the folds of his makeshift Greek costume. He groaned as she explored up his thighs. Put his hands on her wide palm, intending to push her away. “Please,” he said.
He did not push her away.
Her fingertip found his manhood and he sank to his knees, groaning deeply. Soft, huge fingers curled around his legs and buttocks. He craned his head back, all the way back to see both Anne of Cleves in painting, and Anne of Cleves in the flesh, mirrored together at the extreme perspective. He had longed to be small with her in this way, but it had been a flight of fancy, something to grant life to hours of detail work. “Your Grace, please…”
She lifted him. Easily, quickly, as he moaned.
Hans cried out as the duchess pressed him firmly against the painting. Disoriented, he twisted his head to see where—by God, let it not be the hands! With surreal relief, he realized she had him pinned against the dried paint of her own face. Mouth. Lips. He looked forward and saw the reality approaching. Held in place by her will as much as her hands.
She of the clear brown eyes. She of the womanly body and breath. She of the summer warmth so rich and profound that as she pulled the cloth from his body he shivered, not from cold, but from the way her presence enveloped him.
She of the sunlight that filled the room, that filled his eyes with every aching detail, before pressing her lips to his tiny body. His hands and face buried in her smooth cheek as she turned her head in the borrowed likeness of a true kiss.
Her mouth was tender on his face, but inexorable, her curiosity undeniable. Her mouth, riotous as she kissed his shoulders, his chest, his stomach. Rapturous, then ravenous. He groaned.
Her lips throbbed with glorious sensation as she tasted, explored, demanded everything his body could give to her glistening tongue. “Your Grace—” he panted, his body quivering, rising up to meet her. Relentless, she kissed and suckled him, pressed harder, her own breath coming in gusts and tremendous sighs curling with heat around him. The rough oil brushstrokes at his back only made her softnesses richer, more luscious.
Hans cried out at the limits of his pleasure. Ecstasy washed through him like ink spreading through paper, changing everything it touched.
“Thank you for making me bold, Herr Holbein,” she murmured as she returned him to his scaffold. “For seeing me.”
Hans stayed late that night, packing the entire studio. Before rolling the parchment for travel, he touched her lips in the candlelight, and remembered warmth.