Page 60 of Ravishing Camille
Oh, if you ever learn who I’ve chosen, you will be apoplectic!“I may surprise you one day,” she said and handed over her bouquet.
“I hope so!” Marianne lifted the flowers to her nose and inhaled. “Marvelous.Merci.Remy will love them. They are his favorites.”
“Be serious. Every flower is his favorite.” The man—the most renowned sculptor in Europe—loved everything that drew sun and water and air. Peonies, roses or weeds, robins, swans or grubs, his children—Bertrand and Corinne—and especially, his wife.
“At the moment, only one man is Remy’s ideal. A famous man and dead, too. Remy works on restoring him to his glory. A new commission, you know. For the City of Rouen—and Remy is obsessed.”
“I want to see it. Where does he work on this one? In Montmartre or the estate?” Remy owned a large home and garden up on the Butte of Montmartre. There, beneath the clouds and rising white pillars of the new church ofSacre Coeur, he sculpted many of his famous works. His estates, a combination of his family’s acquisitions from both Bourbons and Bonapartes, lay to the south of Paris. There, he and Marianne lived most of the year in a rambling chateau that Louis the Fourteenth had coveted for its pristine architecture.
“Montmartre. He decided to do it there as it will be easier when it’s finished to transport it north to Rouen.”
They emerged from the wide glass front doors to the boulevard where hundreds of carriages and omnibuses of every size and caliber circled, gaining and discharging passengers in a cacophonous melee. Marianne craned her neck to find her coach. “George must have gone round in the traffic. That’s fine. It will give the porter a chance to catch us. We have wine and water in the cab for you.”
“I will have both. What does Remy sculpt?” She had to keep herself thinking and in the moment, her mind off any sudden anxiety.
“The famous Norman king Rollo.” Her green eyes danced.
“Rollo! The Viking king of Normandy!” Camille opened her large black and white checkered parasol to shield them both from the harsh August sunlight. “Remy must be pleased.”
Marianne chuckled. “To fashion his ancestor? Yes and no!”
“Why not? He can call on his instinct to recreate the man.”
“Or his guts. Remy says he read an old Frenchchansonthat says the marauder was as vicious as they come. Remy declared he was inclined to fashion him with a murderous dirk in one hand and a spear in the other. Alas, not so now.”
“No? Why not?”
“When Remy showed the town fathers his first sketches, they went away and returned to politely ask for something a little more…shall we say…beneficent? Remy did not like their advice and threatened to return their advance. He believes art must tell the true story. But the powers that be are more interested in inspiring people to honor the past.”
“So did they compromise?”
“Of course. The townfolk would rise in revolt if their leaders fired the illustrious Remy. So, now Rollo holds his spearandwears a scowl. But in his left hand is a plough.”
Camille grinned. “Peaceful. Inspiring cultivation of the fields.”
“And of the admiration of schoolchildren.” Marianne snorted. “But Rollo stands on a pile of broken shields. Remy’s idea, not theirs. They agreed. They have not seen that Remy marks the final form with shields marred by blood and supported by broken bones. He says the town commissioners will not refuse it when it’s done.”
“The piece is a statement against war.”
“Indeed. But as a balance of the vicious Norseman’s character, Remy will put a tattoo of the wild poppy on Rollo’s right arm in the sign of his love for his wife.”
“What a smart man your husband is.”
Marianne rolled her eyes. “Never tell an artist what he must create. He’ll find a way to foil you.”
A little mustachioed man in a blue serge uniform and cap emerged from the station, wheeling Camille’s trunk on his dolly. “Here comes the porter.”
“Just in time. There is George rounding the far corner now!”
“We’re glad you decided to come a few days earlier, aren’t we?” Remy looked down the family dining table at his two children, Rand who was eight and Corinne, age five.
“Oui, Papa,” the children, who sat opposite Camille around the circle of the small dinner table, echoed each other.
“Papa says,” Rand added with a boy’s mischief in his sky-blue eyes, “that you will read us more scary stories as you did a few months ago. Will you?”
She glanced at Remy for signs his son spoke the truth. Remy, a huge man who’d worked for decades whittling Carrara marble and granite, might look like Goliath to the world. But the tall handsome fellow who sat here was the kind and indulgent father of these two and the husband and lover of his beautiful wife. No sign of the grueling work he did with hammer, pick and axe each day suffused his congenial smile. Here was the man who worked with the themes that drove the human animal to love and cherish the others.
“Well, Rand,” Camille said and chewed hersteak fritesand feigned considering Rand’s task, “the last time we did that, you had nightmares.”
