Page 52 of The Velvet Hours
Charles laughed. “Not like that.” He patted her hand. “I’m fully aware your devotion to me has always been as pure as snow.”
She smiled.
“I can’t wait for you to see it. I do feel that if there was ever a painter to capture me in canvas and paint, it is Boldini. You chose the right artist, darling Charles, and I’m forever grateful.”
What she didn’t tell Charles was how much she had enjoyed her time with the artist. It gave her the opportunity to once again make herself beautiful for a man, and it buoyed her spirits. She was a woman who savored preparing herself to meet a gentleman. She loved the baths, the creams that made her skin soft and supple, and the spray of perfume that left a hint of her in the air, even after she’d departed from the room. She enjoyed the clothes, the application of her makeup, the arrangement of her coiffure. She even relished the laces of her corset being tightened through the metal grommets. All of these rituals were part of the feminine world she so cherished.
She knew, like any great actress or dancer, which audience wouldappreciate her most. And Boldini befitted that role, a man who loved and appreciated beauty as much as she did.
The few times she had appeared at his studio, she had seen how excited he was as he brought her to the divan to pose for him. She had delighted in his wit, his flirtations. It was the same titillating sense of pleasure she had first experienced with Charles. And yet, she and Boldini had hardly even touched.
She would never confide to Charles that his desire to see her painted by one of Paris’s most celebrated portraitists had given her a well-needed distraction during his illness.
But perhaps Charles, who she believed knew her better than anyone else, had done this on purpose. That this was yet another one of his gifts to her.
***
“I can hardly contain my excitement!” Marthe remarked as the men brought the painting inside.
“Take it inside the parlor,” she said, bringing her fingertips up to her lips. “We can unpack it in there.”
She turned to Charles, who had remained on the sofa waiting for the painting’s unveiling, and rushed back to him. “Just a few minutes, darling, and then we will finally see it!”
Marthe had not even seen the finished portrait herself. She had asked Boldini if she could visit his studio and see the final rendering first, but he had insisted he wanted her, too, to be surprised.
Once inside the parlor, the men cut the string around the portrait and began to tear off the brown paper and then removed the protective cotton sheet. While the packing paper had sounded like fireworks to Marthe’s ear, the fall of the white sheet had hardly made a sound.
But what was finally revealed underneath took her breath away. For a second she forgot it was her own image she was looking at,and instead sensed that she was experiencing that flicker of astonishment a man must feel the first time he witnesses a beautiful woman disrobe.
There, in the middle of her living room parlor, she emerged through Boldini’s brushwork like a starburst. The curve of her body and the length of her neck all contributed to the swanlike sensation of the pose. Even the exuberant ruffles on her sleeves, pulled down to reveal her glimmering white shoulders, looked like feathers.
But it was the contrast in colors, the sharp relief of her profile against the sunset of pale hues in the background, that made her feel as though he had captured more than just her figure and her features.
She turned back and looked at Charles, who had used all of his strength to lean forward and look more closely at the painting being held up at each corner by the two men.
His eyes traveled across each inch of the canvas. He began at the top of her head. The pile of auburn hair, then down along her profile. The aquiline nose, the proud chin. The sensual mouth, painted in a red as deep as a ruby.
She watched as his eyes grew even wider as he came upon the white of her throat and the delicate rendering of her priceless strand of pearls, each one painted like an opalescent tear.
Boldini, like a provocation, had painted her bodice precipitously low, as if its silk had dropped any lower, the nipples of her breasts would be bared.
But there were no traces of her pink rosebuds that Charles had once kissed so often. It was simply the expanse of her broad, white bosom, its creamy flesh an unblemished landscape all its own.
His eyes softened as they came upon the dress. The panel of lace over the bodice, the silk skirt that hugged her hips, and the satin belt with its embellishment of sparkling crystal beads.
“My God,” he whispered as he turned to her. “It’s as though you’rebreathing right in front of me. Your flesh, your radiance, it’s all there pulsing beneath the paint.”
***
She sat next to Charles, her fingers clasped around his, as the men took down the mirror that had been above the fireplace and replaced it with the portrait of Marthe.
“Is it as beautiful as you were expecting?” she said, turning and then gently nesting her cheek against Charles.
“More so than I was expecting.” She could sense he didn’t want to speak, as his eyes still focused firmly on the painting now hanging above the mantel.
“Are we done, madame?” the larger of the two deliverymen asked.
“Yes. Thank you.” She stood up and walked them toward the door.
