“I’m not and he’s wrong.”
“Have you a theme for it yet?”
“I do. And I don’t mind if you go to the square without me.” He cupped her derriere and hoisted her so that his cock drove high inside her. “Only promise to always return to me.”
Chapter 12
A few mornings later as they finished breakfast, a courier knocked on the kitchen door. Carré went to answer and returned with a package under his arm. Wrapped in old newsprint, it looked to be oblong and light in weight. He gave it to Andre.
“Finished your cocoa?” he asked her. “Oui? Then come upstairs.”
In his studio, he pointed toward a stool. “I ordered a present for you. Sit there. Close your eyes.”
Dutiful, eager, she perched on the seat and waited.
Andre tore off the paper.
“What are you doing?”
“Put your hands out.”
She did.
Into them, he placed a lightweight box. She slid her hands over the finely sanded, varnished wood.
He strode away and returned. Against her leg, Andre rested a heavy object.
“All right. These are gifts for you. Open your eyes.”
In her lap sat an oblong box, a scribe’s toolbox. Beautifully carved with acanthus leaves, the oaken box had a drawer. She pulled it open and inside was a set of four pencils, black and white chalk, and a dozen or more ink nubs to attach to wooden pens. Each nub was a different thickness. Against her leg rested a folded stool.
She rose to kiss his cheeks. “Everything but the ink. Oh, thank you.”
He grinned at her delight in them, one arm going around her waist. “Not jewels or silks or lace. But what you’d like more than those.”
“I do. Even the stool. For me to use in the square, I presume.”
“Quite.” He strode over to take her wide-brimmed straw hat from the hook and came back to place it on her head and tie the long sashes. “Now, make me four promises.”
He’d demanded so little from her.
“Of course.”
”Promise me to wear this hat so your skin does not burn.”
“Done.”
“Promise to come home each day with one new work you are very proud of.”
She tsked. “A hard task-master.”
“Promise me to take the very best one of all to Montand the day after you return to Rue Haussmann.”
The reference to his agent was not in violation of her own demand of him. But this was the first he’d spoken of their separation that was to come. She’d dared not to think of it before, but now she could barely speak. “I will.”
“Ask him his assessment, but don’t let him badger you into letting him sell it. In fact, ask him for the address of his competitor.” Andre finished tying a huge bow beneath her chin.
“Why?”
“Because you want to hear another dealer tell you what he thinks of your work.”
“Don’t I want another artist to give me their opinion?” she teased him.
“Never!” He turned her toward the door. “Now au revoir, mon amour. Do not return until five.”
“Isn’t that the fifth promise?”
“Out! Out! I must work and you must too!”
An only child, Marianne had always been friendly. But in the square, she was reluctant to be forward. She walked about, found a spot under a shady beech tree and set up her stool to observe. For the first few days, she simply sat and observed others. Not everyone who came to the top of the Butte was an artist. Many Parisians ventured up from the City below to observe the view, the long sweeping panorama topped by the golden dome at the church of Les Invalides. There, Napoleon Bonaparte rested in his porphyry coffin, home, surrounded by reminders of his victories in war and worshiped by his countrymen.
Marianne understood little of French politics. She did not wish to know. In the square, many debated the issues but she was more intrigued by the contours of a Frenchman’s face as he argued with his friend. More enchanted by the jab of his finger or the open handed exclamation of dismay. Less drawn to the men than the women.
The women were a varied lot. Most of them were workers. By their attire, she could tell some tended bar in the cafes. A few, she became acquainted with, took in wash, or mended for their clientele. They tended to be poor themselves. Living in Montmartre near the old walls of the City, the rents were cheap. Buildings were mostly wooden, ramshackle. Indeed, Remy’s sprawling studio upon the crest of the hill was one of the very few that had solidity, style and any ornamentation.
“Bonjour!” A lady who sat painting under an adjacent tree asked her one day. “Comment ça va? Do you not paint?”
Marianne smiled and bent to get a finer view of the woman’s rendering of the red restaurant on the far corner of the square. “Tres bien, merci. I draw. And I like your painting of Le Coq Hardie.”
“You are kind, Madame. I am new at this.” The lady spoke fluent French and yet Marianne thought her manner more carefree, more American. She was red-haired, red-faced and elegantly coiffed. Her gown covered in a white butcher’s apron, she wore the latest style and she had an open manner to her that said she’d lived in Paris a long while.
She wiped her hand absent-mindedly on her apron and offered it to Marianne. “Patricia Farmer from Chicago. And you?” she asked in English.
Marianne shook her hand. “Marianne Roland from Virginia.”
“Wonderful to meet another American who has the urge to be different and join the men! Have you been in Paris long?”
“I arrived with my family last fall, but we’ve traveled since then to England and back. Are you here on vacation?”
“Oh, no.” The woman pushed her straw hat back from her forehead and wiped her brow with a handkerchief. “I live here with my sister in the Rue Clichy. We took a house at my insistence. I like the air of Paris better than Chicago or New York. More freedom for a woman. Especially one who attempts to enter a man’s profession.”
“Have you been painting for a long time?” Marianne asked and hoped she was not being intrusive.
“Since I was a child. And you?”
“Yes, drawing since I was young. During the war, I stopped. No heart for it. No paper, either.”
“Were you in Virginia during the fighting?” Patricia asked her.
“I was.”
“So many battles were fought there. Did you suffer?”
“Our land changed hands too many times to count. So, yes. My home and barns were a skeleton of their former selves by the time I left.”
“Oh, that must have been horrible for you.” Patricia grew still. “To be in the thick of it, I mean.”
“I had both Union and Confederates on my land. What one didn’t trample, the other took. Still, the wounded suffered equally. I nursed them all.” Marianne inhaled, remembering the bleeding men who died on the floor of her parlor. “When the lines permanently passed on south, I was able to leave. I walked north to my uncle and his family.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.” There was no other choice.
“That must have been terrible.”
“All of it was.” It became the defining event of my life. More than my time with Frederick. More than his cruelty and disregard. She sat forward, struck by that truth which she’d not identified before. “I was young. Determined to get out of there. I had a little money.”
“Confederate?” Patricia was surprised. She put down her paint brush and sat, examining Marianne with curiosity.
“No, thank heavens. That was so worthless. Before the war, my husband had hidden a few gold pieces in the bedroom floorboards. When the first Yankee soldiers arrived, I sewed them into the hem of my skirts. Almost two years later, when I had the chance and heard that the lines north were broken, I walked free and used two of them to buy food and lodging.”
“You’re very courageous.”
“Not really.” Marianne demurred. “I prefer to think of it as necessity.”
Patricia nodded toward Marianne’s sketch pad in her lap and her empty easel. “And do you draw what you saw?”
“No.” Never.
“You could make an impression. A woman illustrating war.”
“I lived it. It was terrible enough. I won’t draw it.”
Patricia pursed her lips. “What I hear too often from men about war is all bluster and bravado. How they think war is a game and adventure. It’s not. It’s hideous destruction of bodies and souls.”
Marianne heard in her voice an inkling of her despair. “You lost someone dear to you?”
“My brother. He was sent home, an amputee. But what was missing was his will to live.”
“I’m sorry,” Marianne said.
“Tell me what you do draw,” Patricia said, sitting taller and looking valiant in her attempt to change the subject.
“I am more interested in portraits. Realistic portrayals of people who have no idea how unique they are.”
“Good. Because here?” Patricia lifted a hand to indicate the crowd. “Most give us scenery. Pastorals in the changing light. I’m one of them. And I begin to think there are too many. If you will give us those who walk those lands, that would be refreshing.”
For days afterward, as Marianne became closer friends with Patricia, the American’s words repeated in her head.
She had always drawn people. Those whom she thought intriguing.
If she was more than an amateur artist, if she was to be more than a dilettante, the question she had to answer was who would she draw. Who would she illustrate? To render Andre had been a past time. Part of her desire for him. Her love of him. But she could not, must not continue that. She’d not make a reputation by using his to boost her. She must show others. Others in their element. Others in their habitat, their condition. Others whose portrayals an audience would buy not because the subject was famous. But because the human was a true portrait of his or her life.
He was losing.
Losing her every day. Losing her to her quest to find herself. What irony to aid her in that, only to find he loved her more as he lost his hope of their future. He knew not how to bring her back to him. Logic told him—as did his promise not to influence her—that he should not even try.
That day last week when he’d made her promise to return home to him, he’d let slip the panic that shot through him whenever he glimpsed his life without her. That night as the deep of night fell to dawn, he’d made love to her there in the garden, spreading his robe on the thick grass and loving her amid the fragrances of flowers and the sound of birdsong.
It was as if each new day she became a new incarnation of her self. Oh, still gracious Marianne. Sweet naif that she was, she was also now a fierce practitioner of her work. If she was not lying in his arms or squirming in the tub allowing him to love her to moaning madness, then she was drawing, sketching, irrepressible as a fiend.
Yes, yes. He’d lured her from her past. Unveiled the artist. Presented her with the potential of her fullest self. And she’d met the challenge of self knowledge—and then left him.
Not physically. That was still to come. God help him.
But spiritually, she was gone. Gone to the square. Gone to the rapture of new bliss. Understanding her talents. Acquiring new friends. A female artist whom she brought home with her the other day. Likable, assertive. American, too.
Perhaps he should invite the woman to tea and pry out of her what was the uniqueness of the American animal. Male, female, they were a species unto themselves. Aggressive and naive. Inquisitive and strangely acquisitive. Without the cage of ancient manners, they could be crude or charming. Ferocious beasts to try to tame.
Was that his problem?
He wished to tame Marianne?
Oh, never.
He had endeavored to set her free. And now that she saw the horizon of that land open to her, she rushed toward it. If only she’d want me with her….
He’d never thought he could adore a woman so completely that he’d need her presence to make him feel whole. His art had sufficed. His family—his mother and cousins and friends—had fed his human need for fond companionship. For all his many years, he’d been self-sufficient. Now in a blaze of desire with her, he lived in ecstasy each moment she was near. Could she discover her own delights in her art and still want him?
“Monsieur, pardon e moi,” Carré approached him from the stairs. He bore a letter in his hand. “A visitor is downstairs and this letter has come for you.”
“Who has arrived, Carré?” he asked and reached for the cream parchment. The elegant handwriting told Andre his mother wrote.
“Monsieur Bonnet. You requested he call today, if you remember?”
The man who casted his bronzes. “Ah, oui. Show him up, Carré.”
As Carré fetched the man who took his clay figures to forge them into bronze, Andre tore open the envelope.
His mother wrote regularly of nothing of note. Still her health, fragile as it was, concerned him.
He read her words and smiled. She was well. Her cousin was well. The tenants were well. Very well, indeed, and she asked for news of his progress on his commission.
He shook his head. “Slowly, Maman. Very slowly.”
Then she asked of other news. What were his plans? Would he stay in Paris? Come south perhaps for the harvest? The tenants asked of him. Hoped he might come south and bring his friend. What might he tell her of his plans for that?
By that, she meant his plan to present his lady to her. His plans to keep her. Marry her.
What could he say to her?
“Nothing. Nothing that would please you.”
He crushed the letter.
Carré stood at the door, worry lining his brow. “Bad news?”
“No, no. Where is Bonnet? Ah, there you are, mon ami. Come in. Come in.”
The man who fired his figures in his bronze furnaces was the third generation in his family to have the art. He’d served Andre well now for two years and had cast two of his works in various sizes, bringing in thousands of francs for both of them.
Andre went to grasp the big man’s meaty hands. Nearly as tall as Andre, Michel Bonnet was a bear of a man and was jovial in complement to his size.
“Monsieur le duc, I’m happy to be summoned.”
“Wine and cheese, Carré, for our friend. And three glasses. You will join us.” He met Bonnet’s glance of surprise. “One day you will be casting Carré’s works, I am certain.”
“Oh, no, no.” Carré demurred with a wave of his hand.
Andre tipped his head at Carré, but feigned a grimace at Bonnet. “I have taught him much but not yet have I schooled him in arrogance.”
“Oh, ha!” Bonnet chuckled in his booming bass voice. “Carré, don’t learn that from this oaf. He shows enough for all of us.”
The joke hit Andre like a rock. He’d meant it as a jest, but also a suggestion that in an artist, pride was a vital element to success. Was he too prideful? With his work, for one. But with Marianne for another? Did that warn her off him? Was he wrong to assume that because he loved her totally, she could and should love him with a longing that superseded all else?
He ran two hands through his long hair, smiled at Bonnet and offered him one of his stools at the workbench.
Carré hurried away to the kitchen in search of three glasses, a jug of wine and some Camembert. Bonnet examined the two figures upon the table, both were his best versions of Marianne as Dawn.
“I’m afraid these are the only works I wish to discuss,” he told Bonnet after a minute or more of silence.
“A small number, Monsieur le duc.” Bonnet pursed his lips as he studied them. “Not your usual abundance.”
“I am not at my full capacity, my friend.”
“May I?”
Andre opened his palm.
The caster picked up one. The woman reached for the sky in an elegant arch of her body. “She is quite breath-taking,” he said after many minutes. “Will she emerg
e from that marble as well as my furnace?”
“I think on it,” Andre said, his eyes traveling to the white block. “I hate to commit to it until I can see her more fully. I was too quick with my Diana last year and lived in a private hell for it. I will not bring in my assistant sculptors until I have this view firmly in my mind.”
“But this—and this?” Bonnet put down one and picked up the other clay figure. “They are ready?”
“They are two progressions of the same woman.”
“As I see,” said Bonnet with a reverence to his tone that Andre had caught when he’d shown him the clay model for his Samson.
“I hear what you think of them, Bonnet.” Andre leaned on his elbows and pointed to the facial features of both female figures. “But the expressions. Speak to me of what they tell you.”
The man was a gruff Breton. Big, burly, but at Andre’s request, he blushed. Then he slid one toward Andre. “She can be a young woman awakening from her rest to greet a new bright day.”
Andre nodded.
“Or her lover.”
Just so.
“And this one? The same woman. Clearly. The large eyes, the arched brow, the abundant hair and the perfect breasts.”
Andre watched as his friend swept a fingertip over the allusion of the face, the waves of the hair and touched the full cup of the breasts. Andre’s vision blurred. He could taste her, his Dawn, his Aurora. Taste the silken sweetness of her nipples and the cream of her core as she flowed for him.
“This one,” said the Breton in hallowed tones, “is a woman in the throes of her passion.”
“Is she complete?” he asked her and wondered at the complexity of his question.
“She writhes in her climax, but she looks away from her lover. The hand to her brow, palm up, as if next she will push him away.”
Andre shot from his stool. That’s what he’d known within himself. What he’d not dared to admit. “Do you think her worthy of bronze?”
“Worthy? Oh, Monsieur le duc, she is exquisite.”
Daring Widow: Those Notorious Americans, Book 2 Page 21