Vladimir spent the weekend with her in Paris after the haute couture shows, before he returned to Moscow. His new mineral holdings, and running them, had proven to be more time-consuming than he expected, and he told her it was too cold for her in Moscow, and he would be too busy, and had to do some traveling within Russia to unpleasant areas. He wanted her to stay in Paris, and then they would go to Courchevel in mid-February in three weeks. It had become the favorite ski resort of all Russians, and he had rented a fully staffed house for them for a week. He was an avid skier when he had time, and had hired ski teachers for her every winter for the past seven years, and she was a decent skier, though not of his caliber. But they had a good time skiing together, and she was looking forward to it.
The apartment seemed empty when he left. It snowed in Paris that week, and she spent most of the time in bed reading, or sitting by the fire in the cozy den, and combing antique shops for treasures when she went out. She always found something new that she loved for the apartment—that week a pair of Louis XV bronze chenets for the fireplace, to hold the logs. They had leaves and cherubs on them, and she put them in their bedroom.
She went to several galleries as well, looking for art for the apartment, and always received a stack of invitations for openings. One had caught her eye for that Thursday night, on the Left Bank. It was a gallery where she had bought a small but pretty painting two months before. And if it wasn’t snowing, she promised herself she’d go to the opening on Thursday night. She sometimes preferred going before the opening, if they let her, to snap up whatever she wanted before others had a chance to do so, but she had no time that day. She had workmen coming to add new shelves in the kitchen, and she wanted to oversee the work herself.
It was an hour after the opening had started when she got into the Bentley Vladimir hired for her in Paris, with a driver. She never drove herself in Paris, and was afraid to, with the complicated traffic and one-way streets, although she sometimes drove in the South of France. Vladimir kept a Bentley sports car for her on the boat. But in Paris, she preferred to use a driver. Vladimir had one of his own when he was in town, and used a Rolls. Her Bentley was subtler and less showy as they drove across the Pont Alexandre III to the Left Bank, and into the sixth arrondissement, where the gallery was.
It was small but well laid out, and filled with people drinking wine and talking when she got there. There were the usual arty types, and some serious people from the art world. It was an eclectic-looking group of young and old, as she walked around, looking at the work. It was handsome, serious work, with an odd combination of brushwork that resembled the Old Masters and the lighter colors and subjects of the Impressionists. The artist having the show definitely had his own style, and she hadn’t paid attention to the name on the card. All she had noticed was that she liked the work. She picked up a sheet of the artist’s biography at the desk as she walked past it, and continued to look around, and as she reached the back of the gallery, she stopped dead and found herself staring at her own face in a haunting painting that had captured her flawlessly. It was a portrait of her, and she was shocked.
And as Natasha stood there staring at herself, instinctively Theo looked up and saw her from across the gallery, and nearly felt his heart stop. He had never expected her to be there and see it.
“What’s up? Something wrong? You look like you’ve just been shot.” Inez was with him. He had decided to try one more time, and invited her to dinner just before Christmas. They had been dating for a month, and she was still leery of him, but it was going well. So far he had proven to her that he wasn’t crazy, despite being an artist, and he even liked her little girl, Camille. Theo wasn’t in love with Inez, not yet at least, but he was enjoying her company. She was an intelligent woman, responsible and sensible, and well able to take care of herself and her child. She wasn’t looking to be “saved” or supported. She wasn’t interested in marriage, and she’d rather be on her own than with the wrong man. So far he liked everything about her, and she had come to Paris with him for the opening, while a friend baby-sat for her child. They were staying at a small hotel on the Left Bank, near the gallery, and their relationship was still very new. She had seen him go deathly pale when he spotted Natasha at the back of the gallery, staring at her portrait. She stood like a statue gazing at it.
“No, nothing, I’m fine,” he said, smiling at Inez, and slipped quietly away from the group they were in, and threaded his way to where Natasha was standing. She was wearing a heavy fur coat, jeans, and high heels, since Vladimir wasn’t in town, and she looked as heartbreakingly beautiful as ever, as she turned to him with her soft halo of blond curls, and her hair loose down her back like a young girl.
“You painted that?” she asked him, with enormous eyes, as though accusing him of stripping her naked in a public place and leaving her there, exposed. He couldn’t deny it, and the painting was so haunting, so intense, and so obviously personal, that it somehow suggested he knew her intimately and even loved her.
“I…yes…I did…after I saw you last summer. You have a face that begs to be painted,” he said, which sounded like a poor excuse, even to him. The painting was so deep that it was obvious to both of them that it was more than that to him.
Her eyes bored into his with all the soulfulness of many Russians; they had a penchant for tragedy and sorrow, which came out in their literature, music, and art. “I had no idea you were such a talented artist,” she said softly.
“Thank you for being kind.” He smiled at her, embarrassed that she had caught him with the visible sign of his obsession with her. He had gotten over it, but the portrait was ample evidence of how taken with her he had been. She was not just a random subject or a model, or an interesting face to paint. She was a woman he had been falling in love with at the time, even if he had come to his senses since. But everything he had felt for her was in the painting, he had given it his all, which was why Gabriel and Marc thought it was his best work. Gabriel was at the opening that night, but Marc couldn’t afford to come to Paris at the moment, and had refused money from Theo to get there. He was planning to come up sometime during the course of the show, but couldn’t make it to the opening. “It was wonderful painting you,” Theo said, not knowing what else to say to her, to excuse himself for intruding on her and exposing her, “although I had a hard time with your eyes.” He felt like an idiot standing there, talking to her inanely, and just looking at her he could feel a vise around his heart, and his stomach start to slide. She did something to him every time he saw her. He had seen her only three times in his life before that night, and on his easel in his studio every day and night for months. The painting of her had become his passion, and the culmination of his work and technique at the time.