“That’s all? You’re not going to tease me?”
“Why? Paris is filthy with aristocrats. Do you know how many people I’ve met with a ‘de la’ in their surname? And none of them have two sous to rub together. So—lunch with the grand duchess this time next week?”
“Oh, please don’t call her that. She honestly prefers Agnes.”
“Then I shall call her Agnes, but in the French fashion. ‘Ahnyess.’ Far more elegant that way.”
“Mathilde? Daisy? Will you come, too?”
“Yes,” said Mathilde, meeting Helena’s gaze squarely. “We will be there.”
Chapter 11
A week later, they set off together for the walk to the ?le St.-Louis. Helena had spent the entire morning in a welter of nerves, her hands so clammy she had difficulty holding her pencils, and the drawings she’d produced in their only class of the day—a two-hour life drawing session with Ma?tre Czerny—had been fit only for the bin.
Her friends hadn’t seemed affected at all by her admission regarding her background, and no one had mentioned it since. Even étienne hadn’t teased her about it. But Agnes’s house was so very grand, and it was hard not to worry that they might find it intimidating, or be moved to think of her differently as a result.
She was worried about étienne, too, for he’d shown up with a black eye and a deep cut across the bridge of his nose. She’d been horrified, of course, but he had insisted he was fine, and had only slipped on some wet leaves. And yet . . . would a simple fall explain the injuries to his right hand, which was so bruised and swollen he could scarcely hold a brush?
Agnes must have been watching out for them from one of the upstairs windows, for she was at the front door, waving gaily, as they came over the Pont St.-Louis and walked the short distance north to her town house.
“Hello, hello! Welcome to my home!”
Introductions were made, cheeks were kissed, and Agnes announced her intention to give everyone the grand tour before sitting down to luncheon. “I have a few bits and pieces you might like to see—nothing particularly fashionable, but they were considered quite avant-garde at the time they were painted.”
With Hamish trotting at her heels, she led them first to the grand salon, which had been expensively decorated in a style Helena privately thought of as “steamship nouveau” and did little for the magnificent seventeenth-century architecture of the space. Above the hearth hung a full-length portrait by John Singer Sargent, painted when Agnes was in her late twenties and at the height of her beauty. On the opposite wall, between two lacquered cabinets, was a smaller portrait, also of her aunt, by Augustus John. Agnes’s gaze was so bold, so sensually inviting, that the painting had caused a minor scandal when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1907.
“Come with me into the dining room—I want to show you my favorite. It’s the only portrait I have of dear Dimitri.”
She led them to the hearth at the far end of the room, above which hung a modestly sized painting that depicted Dimitri and Agnes, dressed in the fashions of a decade earlier, their heads framed by a bower of roses in full bloom.
“Is that a Bonnard?” étienne asked reverently.
“It is. He painted it in the garden here. Wasn’t my Dimitri handsome? He was a great patron of the arts, I’ll have you know, and Monsieur Bonnard was a particular favorite. We used to have any number of his paintings, but after Dimitri died his dreadful relations stole nearly everything from me. Ghastly people.”
They were saved from a longer discourse on the greed and duplicity of Dimitri’s family by the arrival of Vincent, who advised them that luncheon was ready and they might take their seats. It was a simple meal by Agnes’s standards: lobster bisque to begin, followed by roast capon, braised celery, and souffléd potatoes, with poached pears in Riesling to finish.
The conversation was animated, dominated in the main by her aunt’s stories of adventures abroad with Dimitri. Only when they retired to the petit salon for coffee and petits fours did the discussion turn to their classes at the academy.
“I’m sure Hélène is too modest to tell you,” étienne said in a confiding tone, “but she has done some marvelous work so far. We are all of us in awe at her abilities.”
“I knew it. I simply knew it,” Agnes trilled, clapping her hands in delight. “All she needed was a bit of encouragement and practice.”
“Precisely,” said étienne, and there was something in the intent look he directed at her aunt, or perhaps the way he leaned forward, capturing Agnes’s gaze, that convinced Helena he was up to something.
“Although,” he continued, “it would be so much easier for her if she had a studio in which to work.”