The Master Finale | manxman | (Book Four: The Master Collection)

III - The Aspirations of a Chaotic Mind

The footman from the coach followed Jasper into the manor when they arrived home. Named Wade Eynesbury after his grandfather, Jasper discovered, he was a young man very much capable of hauling a heavy weighted frame up a winding staircase without struggle.

Glad to help the Master with any chore, Wade kept behind Jasper as the two entered the home and walked directly to the library. A part of Jasper was almost put off by having Wade step foot into his library, especially since it was marked off-limits to all unless permission was given, but still they stepped into the massive room and Wade set the frame down on the shiny wood floor.

With care, he turned the frame over and undid the tiny fixtures that were meant to hold the back piece in place. As he did so, Jasper crossed the room to the stand wielding the portrait of Elijah. He stared into the unmoved emerald eyes gazing directly into his, nearly lost in their genuine life-like appearance before getting a hold of himself.

Taking it down from its stand, Jasper kept his eyes away from the image before him and walked it to where Wade was knelt beside the frame. Softly, the Master placed it faced down as the back piece was placed over and securely latched. When Wade turned the hefty woodwork over, he also appeared at a loss for words about the painting of a man he knew nothing of. "It looks so real," he said to Jasper, "May I ask who this man is, my lord?"

My love, Jasper thought to say, but with that held in, he merely said, "Distant family."

"I see," Wade nodded, "He must have been a true man to have his image portrayed as such."

Swallowing a lump in his throat, the Master gestured to an open space high above the fireplace, the perfect place to have the portrait displayed for Jasper and Jasper alone.

When Wade left the room to grab nails and a hammer, he used the ladder Jasper already had in the room. The Master used it whenever he couldn't reach a book on a shelf far too out of arm's length.

Jasper stood back and watched as Wade aligned and rammed the nails into his wall, flinching internally each time the mallet struck the butt of the nail, forcing it further and further into the wall. His hands began to shake suddenly when Wade finally took the image to secure it, and when the man looked over his shoulder as if to ask for approval, he found that he was the only one left in the library.

The Master had to get out of that room as fast as he could. Those eyes, those emerald eyes that he loved more than anything else in the world, they were like glass windows, a passageway that led to nowhere, and although he thought so highly of the image of the one depicted, that still gaze had driven him out of the library. Elijah's face had always been two things to Jasper after losing him. It was a reminder of the beauty they created during their affair, but it was also a reminder of what could never and would never be again. Jasper was at conflict with the face of his past lover, always in either a state of peace when even a single thought of Elijah crossed his mind, or completely and utterly demolished by it, and there was nothing he could do that ever calmed the storm inside.

It raged on and on and it seemed it always would.

Unnerved and in need of a moment to himself, Jasper climbed the stairwell quickly again to the third floor. When he hastened his pace to his chamber, he shut the door behind him and pressed his back up against it. Resting his head upon the surface, he tried to level his breathing, pausing after every exhale to focus on calming the tension forged inside of him. But just as always, the pain of his woefulness carried deep into his being and the sorrow commenced to drag him to the floor.

Jasper slid down until he was seated on the floor, knees tucked against his chest, and as always he felt seventeen again, small and powerless to touch or save the one he'd loved most. The Master's bright blue eyes burned with tears brimming them, trickling down onto his cheeks as a soft cry shook from his chest. Jasper hated to cry, hated this relentless flood of grief that took him by the reigns. This weakness that came over him whenever Elijah crossed his mind, when he imagined the life they could have had, the love story they could have made, but why, Jasper was desperate to know, why did he have to go, be taken, leave him in this cage he couldn't escape from? "I have been ruined by you," Jasper sobbed, tears rinsing down his face like a river. "Why did he take you from me?"