The connection with the plagues is great - super evocative. Not clear (yet, perhaps, since this is just the opener) why Phoebe's friends are the Four Horsepeople of the Apocalypse. (And do they need to be Horsepeople? Couldn't it be Horsemen?) And why are those horsepeople plundering larders? Is that what Phoebe's friends do at lunch? Feels like a metaphor mixed a bit too far to me.

@Rod Cookson Love it. That's a great reason to make them Horsepeople. I wonder if there might be a hint of that resentment as misgendering. Maybe a bit inner dialog about that?

@Issy McCann Good challenge! I hope in the next few paragraphs that happens

@Issy McCann And your challenge has caused me to go back and write a different opener that teases the high stakes. Thanks!

I love the uncertainty about how many siblings she has. It makes me want to know more. The jump to apprenticeship felt like it happened too quickly - I want more about her childhood!

@Juno Baker Reading it again, I can see the assumption was wrong (a girl would not be apprenticed, I assume in that time and place). I guess it was because of the mention of a sister. Nothing else there that would make a reader think that.

Nicola stood back in the shadows of the studio, cleaning brushes, one by one, stretching out the task so he could see the glamour of the moment. He enjoyed watching the woman in the Worth gown struggle to stay standing for the last hour of the day. He could see her neck muscles starting to strain, her hips starting to sway. It was what he looked for in the ring when he fought for gentlemen who came to watch in the East End. His master's back was to him now but he could see the woman starting to take shape on the canvas. Everything but her face. That was the part that was most exciting: when the maestro found the spark, the intangible, the spirit behind the flesh. He had seen other painters try. None succeeded like his master and he would fight to the death anyone who suggested otherwise.

He is a he. And, this is not a scene from the book itself. But I was hoping to give a little window into his thinking.

@Kal Shamir Pithy and fun sounding. Like @Issy McCann I'd love a tiny bit more about how the restructuring has forced local villain to new ways of making ends meet.

In the midst of painting a portrait of an American heiress newly married to an English lord, John Singer Sargent stumbles into a world of intrigue and crime where he must face his own identity as he acknowledges the complexities of truth in art.