The Velvet Hours (11 page)

Paris 1898

C
harles now appeared ghostlike to Marthe. In the three months since she first noticed his illness, he seemed to have transformed from a tall, elegant figure to one shrunken with pain. Even though it was now April, he shuddered from the cold. Marthe had to ask Giselle to keep a fire going in the parlor just to keep him warm.

His complexion was no longer gray or ashen, but yellow. She suspected jaundice, for even the whites of his eyes now also appeared the color of custard. And perhaps even more alarming, he no longer had the appetite to even disrobe and lie in her butterfly bed.

They instead settled into a quiet routine of companionship. He would arrive wrapped in a long coat and hat, his pipe clutched between bone-white hands. Her skin would still be warm from her morning bath as she embraced him, his cheeks cold as she cupped them in her hands.

Despite his illness, Charles's ability to absorb Marthe's beauty had
not diminished. He savored the sight of her in her transparent silks. He inhaled her perfume as though she were his own rose garden.

Sometimes she caught him staring at her in such a way that it reminded her of the way Boldini now studied her.

He had surprised her the last time he visited, when he confided to her that when he was a young boy, his governess had told him he had considerable artistic talent.

“I used to draw birds,” he told her as he threaded her fingers into his own.

“We had so many at the estate. And even though the larger birds, like the pheasants and the hawks, were the most majestic, I always gravitated toward the tinier ones, like the wrens and sparrows. I loved that they were so small you could hold them in your hands.”

She had smiled and closed her eyes, imagining Charles as a little boy with a sketchbook. She envisioned him looking like his son when she had seen him that day outside his home. The thin legs poking out of wool shorts, the white shirt and suspenders. What an endearing image of him sitting cross-legged in the garden of his family estate drawing birds.

“So now you know why I thought of you as my little dove.” His eyes looked at her softly.

It hadn't surprised her that Charles had exhibited artistic talent when he was young. She knew that he had decorated her apartment, the scattering of objets d'art, the mirrors, and the furniture that was upholstered in the softest, most sensual hues. Those were not skills of a banker, but of one with a keenly trained eye.

“Why did you stop drawing if it brought you so much pleasure?” She tightened her fingers around his. They were both so relaxed now, she didn't want him to fall asleep.

He let out a deep sigh and she felt her hand fall with his sinking chest. “My father, I suppose. He started taking me out to shoot. Never the small birds, but the pheasants and the grouse on the property. My
life became less tranquil after that . . .” His voice trailed off. “By the time I was sent off to boarding school, I no longer had the peace of mind to lose myself in drawing.”

“How sad,” she said. “I would have very much liked to have you draw me.”

He laughed. “I've hired the best to do that . . . and a painting, not just a little pencil sketch!”

*   *   *

Now, a week later, he was even more fragile than at his last visit.

“How is the portrait developing? Will I be seeing it anytime soon?”

“Oh, but he's only just begun sketching.” She reached for Charles's hand. “You must get stronger so you can visit his studio. It really is the most marvelous place.”

He smiled. “I would enjoy that. I have the address already.” He patted the pocket of his suit. “There's little difference between bankers and artists. In the end, they're both crystal clear in giving instructions to where you must send the checks.”

She laughed. “Really, Charles, I think you're going to be quite pleased when it's done.”

“I'm sure I will . . . I only hope I can last long enough to see it.”

She realized that he had stopped avoiding any discussion of his health, as he had when he first took ill. He spoke openly of his decline, and even sometimes alluded to his own death.

Their roles had reversed. It was now Marthe who didn't want to speak about the ugliness of his illness, or the painful truth that he would not get better, only worse.

“You will recover, my darling,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Why, it's been a long winter, and spring has only just arrived. By the time you see the first roses in the Bois de Boulogne, you'll be feeling so much better . . . I just know it.”

“I have set my goal not on seeing the flowers, Marthe. But on seeing you within a gilded frame.”

“Stop that . . . you will see it so many times over the years, you'll grow bored with it.” She took her hand and ran it over his hair, then leaned over and kissed him. His once-soft lips were now cracked and dry.

“My dove,” he said, looking at her. His eyes were soft. “To be six years old again, so I could draw you with my own hand.”

She said nothing. She simply rose and walked out the French doors of the parlor to the small side room where she kept her stationery, her notepads, and her pens.

She opened the bottom drawer and searched until she found a pencil. She almost never used the red cedar sticks, but they were helpful when she had to go over the household budget with Giselle.

Marthe returned to the parlor. “Here,” she said, handing him the pad she had found and the pencil stick.

“Master Boldini won't be done for several weeks, so yours will be the first portrait of me.”

He lifted his hand and took the pad and placed it on his lap. Then he took the pencil.

“I can't remember the last time I did this,” he told her.

“I suspect it's not something you lose completely . . .”

‘Well, if my memory serves me correctly, I drew blue wrens, and gray sparrows . . . but never a dove.”

“There is always a first time, my darling.”

“Indeed,” he answered. “Why don't you go stand by the mantel.” He gestured in the direction of the white alabaster fireplace.

“It would be my pleasure . . .” She was happy to oblige him.

He took the pencil and began to sketch her head, the length of her neck. But soon he stopped.

“Please forgive me.” His voice broke into a cough. “I'm getting a bit tired.” He laid down the pad on the sofa. She had only been posing for a few minutes.

When she walked over to sit beside him, she lifted the pad to see what he had drawn.

He had rendered her in profile; the face was half done. He had drawn a few wisps of hair around the curl of her ear.

But still she could see he had talent.

“I should be getting home. Émilienne will be expecting me.”

She nodded, her heart stung at the mention of his wife's name. She placed the pad down on the sofa and walked him to the door. She cupped his cheeks in her hands just as she had greeted him hours before. This time planting a kiss on his dry lips.

He kissed her back. Then, as was the familiar ritual between them, he reached inside his breast pocket and handed her the pocket watch to set with the exact time they were separating.

“Until next time,” he whispered, placing it back in his jacket and kissing her on the cheek.

“I will wait until the hands move again,” she whispered in his ear.

After she saw him to the door, Marthe went over to the sofa to retrieve the unfinished drawing, tearing it off the pad. She went to her desk and placed it amongst the first love letters Charles had written to her. She knew he would never complete it. But she was happy to have herself captured even incompletely by his hand.

Paris 1898

C
harles canceled his visit the following week. And then the week after. A letter arrived, which read that as much as he longed to see her, he was having trouble getting out of bed. Émilienne had insisted he convalesce at their estate in the country, where she thought the air was better for him.

The following week, Marthe awakened to an ominous sign. As she walked down the hallway, passing the pedestal table where she always kept Fauchon, she discovered the little bird lying at the bottom of his gilded wire cage, his legs pointing upward. When she peered closer, she noticed his eyes were like two hard, black stones.

Giselle tried to soothe Marthe, wrapping the dead bird in some waste silk, telling her that the bird had lived far longer than most, and promising her mistress that she'd make sure he was properly buried in the park.

“He was one of Charles's first gifts to me,” Marthe lamented as she
watched her maid tuck the bird in its makeshift shroud into a biscuit tin. “He bought him to keep me company, to provide me with birdsong.”

But what disturbed her more than Fauchon's unfortunate passing was the feeling that it foreshadowed something terrible to come. She tried to push it out of her mind, but a dark cloud engulfed her. She feared Charles's death would be next.

*   *   *

With Charles away from Paris and little else to distract her, Marthe looked forward to her visits to Boldini's studio more than ever. Charles's illness had reduced him to such a frail state that she yearned to be in the company of someone who had as much energy as she did. She soon learned that he not only shared her love of Asian porcelains, but also of Venice.

Early on in her sittings, he had asked her about her name. “De Florian?” He raised one of his eyebrows as he appraised her for one of the early sketches. “Is it French?”

“I wouldn't say that,” she answered coquettishly.

“What would you say, then?”

“Venetian.”

“You mean like the café in San Marco?”

“Exactly.”

His eyes came alive again.

“
Bellissimo
.” She knew he was Italian, but to hear him suddenly switch into that language instantly delighted her.

“I fell in love there. So I took the name.”

“And your real name?”

She hesitated. “Beaugiron.”

He made a face. “Yes, you were right,
carissima
. De Florian is much better.”

“I thought Venice was the most magical place. The water. The light. The palazzos with those beautiful colors . . . I felt as though I
reached the end of the world, where there was only beauty . . . and the impulse to make love.”

He laughed and placed his sketchbook down.

“You always speak of colors. I'm thinking I should give you your own set of paints.”

She smiled, her skin warming beneath her dress, its yards of organza and chiffon now felt too tightly wrapped around her. She wished she could instead be free of her corset and in her robe de chambre, reclining on one of Boldini's divans.

She arched her back slightly to relieve a cramp. “It's not easy to hold a pose for so long . . . I would rather be like you, moving about and clasping a stick of charcoal in my hand.”

“I think you'd find that it's too dusty,” he laughed. “It's easier to imagine you with a palette.”

“I would like that . . . to mix paints, create colors,” she mused. But I'd also like to go back to Venice . . .” She closed her eyes and spoke as if dreaming aloud. “To walk down the serpentine streets, and gaze at the palazzos with their tall windows and pastel facades . . .”

She could still hear his charcoal against the paper. “To lift my head in those dark churches and see the splendor painted above.”

“Your heart beats like an Italian.” He looked up from the pad and smiled from beneath his mustache. “Perhaps one day we will make a trip there together, and I can show you my beloved Ferrara.”

Her mind leapt. Charles had never mentioned another trip again after Venice. It had been the grand seduction, the place where they first tested out their arrangement. Even if the artist wasn't serious, the suggestion of making a journey excited her. “Ferrara?” she cooed. “Is it close to Venice?”

“Not too far. A simple enough trip to make.” He pulled slightly at his mustache, his eyes still firmly planted on her. “Less than a day's journey.”

“And do you go back often?”

“Not often at all. Rarely, as a matter of fact. Italy's a place of the past for me. Just like you did on your trip to Venice, I've reinvented myself here in Paris.” He motioned to her that she no longer needed to keep the pose.

Marthe, relieved to no longer be forced to remain in one position, softened immediately against the velvet upholstery of the settee.

“When I left Ferrara, I felt . . . How should I say? Free . . .”

The artist reached for a pipe and struck a match. Marthe detected the scent of oak leaves as she breathed it in—a far earthier fragrance compared to the Oriental flavor of the one Charles preferred. There was something intoxicating about the perfume as it laced the air. She closed her eyes and savored Boldini's words.

“For the first time in my life, I felt liberated from my father's shadow. I was no longer the son of Antonio Boldini, the great religious painter of angels and saints.”

He puffed a few more clouds of smoke in her direction. “Perhaps I was
un piccolo diavolo
, a little devil,” he laughed. “I preferred to paint a beautiful, real woman over God.

“That isn't to say I wasn't grateful for all the training my father gave me . . . In some ways, those early lessons on painting the human form made me years ahead of my fellow students at the academy. And my fondest childhood memories are those I spent in his studio. The smell of turpentine and sawdust. Unfinished canvases leaning against the walls . . .”

“A little like here?” She took a light finger and playfully stroked her pearls.

“It was more cluttered. More rustic . . . Imagine wooden crossbeams exposed like an old barn . . .” Boldini pointed to the ceiling. “And imagine ten times more canvases in a far smaller space. One thing I learned early on was to be a better businessman, though. It pained my father to ask for money, no doubt because he dealt with the church. I make a point to get most of my money up front.”

“So my Charles has paid you handsomely already,” she laughed.

“Indeed,” he said.

“I would expect no less from him. Always the perfect gentleman . . .”

Boldini leaned forward. “And I am always the perfect rogue.”

She let out a little squeal. “You really are far more entertaining than I ever imagined! You've made this hour holding a torturous pose a pleasure!”

“And you, my dear, are a magnificent model. I've filled my sketchbook with enough drawings to start the portrait.”

“So my work here is done?” Her voice lilted ever so slightly. Marthe had missed playing the coquette and, as much as she loved Charles, the attention Boldini showered upon her soothed her.

“Hardly. I will need a few weeks to start the preliminary bones of the painting . . . Then you will have to return for another sitting.” He closed his sketchbook. “May I write to you when I've managed to create something worthy of your approval?”

She flushed. “I would like that very much.”

“Then that's another thing we have in common, Madame de Florian.”

*   *   *

She left Boldini's studio flooded with excitement. The artist also considered himself reinvented. Instead of judging her as an imposter of sorts, he had revealed his own vulnerability. As her coach pulled through the bustling Paris streets, she felt a need to thank him for this gift of kindness.

“Thirty-one Rue de Seine,” she ordered the driver. It was the address of Ichiro's store.

She hadn't visited in several weeks, but she knew it would be the perfect place to purchase something to show Boldini her appreciation, as well as cement their friendship.
A gift of beauty
, she thought to herself, something that would communicate her feelings far beyond a simple note card filled with a few polite words.