I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter
With her mother dead of the plague, and her brother moved away, Cornelia van Rijn finds herself without a friend or confidante–save her difficult father. Out of favor with Amsterdam’s elite, Rembrandt van Rijn is now teetering on the brink of madness, and Cornelia alone must care for him. But she herself is haunted by secrets and scandal, and her only happiness comes in stolen meetings with Carel, the son of a wealthy shipping magnate. And then there is Neel, her father’s last remaining pupil, whose steadfast devotion to Rembrandt both baffles and touches her.
I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter is a powerful account, based on fact, of a young woman’s coming of age and the larger-than-life father who threatens to eclipse her dreams.
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Excerpt:
“This is how I will paint you, when you look like this,” he says.
My insides are aflame. They push at my very flesh, seeking to burst outside.
I look into his eyes, then at the pink-brown swell of his lips. I nearly swoon as their fullness compacts into a pucker.
“I–”
“Shhhh,” he whispers. The gentle pressure of his finger on my lips stuns me into silence.
“How am I to capture you?” His eyes caress me with their warmth. Something inside me strains toward him, frightening me with its insistence.
My throat is so swollen with emotion I can barely swallow. “I should go,” I whisper.
I fumble into a turn and run, not feeling the bricks under my feet. Carel Bruyningh touched me. He likes me! Carel Bruyningh. Oh, dear God!
“Cornelia!” he calls after me. “May I see you again?”
I cast a look over my shoulder as he stands beneath the green-sprigged linden, his golden brows raised in hope. It is the best moment in my life.
“Yes!”