Page 34 of The Velvet Hours
“Well, let us begin, then,” she said as her eyes sparkled like two brightly colored stones.
***
“Why don’t you sit down?” Boldini suggested as he guided Marthe to a less crowded spot within the studio. In the corner, she noticed a pale taupe-colored love seat with scrolled white edges. A matching chair was positioned just across from it.
“I don’t have a servant to fetch us some tea, but I am capable of boiling water.”
“You are what they call a man of the modern age, then...” She laughed, then turned around to face the few bits of furniture. The light streamed from the tall windows that flanked one side of the room. Marthe could feel his eyes on her as she moved. She knew the fabric would play with the light as she walked.
“And you’d be equally welcome at home in any era, madame. It was obvious that it was that artistic eye of yours that led you to choose a fabric so evocative... The color shifts with each footstep.”
“Does it now?” she said, her voice feigning surprise at his remark.She paused by the love seat before reaching for skirt and train. She deftly shifted the abundant material to the side, so she wouldn’t be encumbered by the fullness.
“Should weevenhave tea?” He stopped himself for a moment. “Do we need such a formality between us? It would only be wasting time...”
He sat down across from her and leaned in. “What I reallywantto do is begin sketching you in that dress...” He raised both eyebrows. “Would that be quite wrong?”
“I think you already know, Monsieur Boldini, that I’m quite happy to forgo tea.”
A smile flashed over his face.
“I do believe it’s better we spend our time on the portrait than idly sipping tea.”
“You are a great sport, madame. Sacrificing the niceties for the sake of a painter’s insatiable appetite. Let me get my sketchbook.”
She watched as he proceeded to the far corner of the room where, amidst lots of papers, a stack of sketchbooks in varying sizes was piled high. He took one of the larger portfolios and a few stems of vine charcoal out from a long slender tin.
As Boldini walked back to where she was sitting, Marthe could feel her adrenaline escalating. He sat down and opened the pad on his lap.
“Turn your head to the left, please,” he instructed.
As she turned, the ruffles of her sleeves fell beneath her shoulders, and she could feel the cool air of the room strike her breasts.
He had not yet put the charcoal to paper. Instead, his head remained lifted slightly above the sketchbook, and he studied her as though he were making an appraisal of something of considerable value.
She lifted her chin to ensure the lines of her profile were as sharp as a knife’s edge. But instead of the expected sound of his charcoalhitting the paper, she heard him placing his sketchbook down on the floor.
He stood up. “I just need to make a few adjustments.” He came closer to her and she could feel his hands adjust her necklace. He slid its clasp to the back of her neck and then pressed his hands on the ruffles of her sleeves, pulling them deeper over her arms and revealing more of her bare shoulders.
“There,” he said as he placed a finger underneath her chin. His hand felt like a lit match. “That’s much better.”
He went back to his chair, opened his sketchbook, and began drawing. The sound of the charcoal finally moving along the paper was thrilling to her—like the wings of a bird first taking flight.
16.
Marthe
Paris 1898
Charles 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 hadnot 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.
