After Innocence (31 page)

Sofie looked into Paul’s kind brown eyes and saw worry reflected there as well. She wore an oversize wool coat, and an oversize wool sweater under that, hiding her growing body. Did he know? Soon he would have to know, soon everyone would have to know, but Sofie did not want to talk about it, not yet. If she began to speak about Edward and how she loved him, she was afraid she would not be able to stop. “No, Paul,” she whispered. “No.”

“Are you going to work tonight?”

Their gazes held. “Yes,” Sofie said, her heart beginning to pound. “I think so.”

Sofie rushed upstairs, unlocked the door to her atelier, lit the old-fashioned gas lamps. She did not waste a single heartbeat. Her excitement increasing, she hurried to her trunk and flung it open. She found the single preliminary sketch of Delmonico’s that she had done before Edward had modeled so briefly for her; before the night of the hurricane. When she saw his roughly drawn face and form, saw how he lounged in such careless repose, she froze, remembering
that wonderful afternoon as if it were only yesterday.

Sofie ignored the now steady drip of her tears. Because she knew what she must do—she was driven. She must finish this portrait immediately. Before she forgot that glorious day, before she forgot what it was like, exactly.

Sofie shed her sweater and donned an apron. She began to open tubes of paint, preparing her palette. Oh, God! Although she would use a light and airy color scheme as she had done with
A Gentleman,
she would also use shocking pinks and brilliant reds. In fact, to capture the moment exactly, to make the viewer feel a sense of immediacy, Sofie decided to place the waiter’s hand and arm in the very front of the painting, as if he were serving Edward then and there.

For the first time in four months, Sofie put a brush to canvas. She was shaking with excitement. And she did not return to the pension for many days, losing all track of time and place.

“Sofie!”

Sofie stirred. She had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep on the faded velvet sofa that she had acquired secondhand when she had first rented the atelier. It was the studio’s only piece of real furniture outside of that necessary for her work.

“Sofie? Are you all right?” Rachelle shook her insistently.

Sofie blinked, very groggy, for a moment not sure where she was. It was so hard to wake up. But when she did focus, she met Rachelle’s wide, worried turquoise eyes. Sofie levered herself into a sitting position with an effort.

“You have not been at the pension for days! When I returned this morning and found (hat out. I immediately went to Paul’s. I was sure you would be there, but he said he had left you here on Christmas day and that he had not seen you since. Sofie—you have been here for almost an entire week!”

Sofie was fully awake. “I have been working.”

Rachelle began to relax. “So I can see.” She gave Sofie a long, speculative glance and walked away. As usual, she
wore her heavy black boots and a plain wool dress, this one a dark green, with the same crimson scarf draped about her shoulders, her wild red hair unbound. As always, she was very beautiful. Rachelle stood in front of the canvas, hands on her hips.

Sofie could see the oil from where she sat on the sofa, and her pulse raced. From the center of the room Edward smiled at her from the canvas, the smile reaching his eyes, sexy and suggestive and warm and seductive. He was clad in near white. The table was draped in ivory linen as well. But behind him, the restaurant was a shocking red, pink, and purple sea of the women’s vividly colored tea gowns. The waiter’s black-jacketed arm and pale hand were in the bottom foreground of the work, jarring the viewer out of any complacency.

Rachelle turned toward Sofie. “Who is he?”

“His name is Edward Delanza.”

Rachelle regarded her. “Is he really as handsome—as male?”

Sofie flushed. “Yes.” But she had begun to become accustomed to Rachelle’s frank bohemian manner and her sometimes shocking liberalism. Rachelle had a lover, a poet named Apollinaire, and he was not her first paramour.

Rachelle’s glance strayed to Sofie’s abdomen. “Is he the father?”

Sofie’s heart skipped and she felt her face drain of blood.

“Come,
ma petite,
let us cease pretense.” Rachelle walked to her and sat down beside her, clasping Sofie’s hands in her own. “I am your friend,
non?
I was not fooled, not even from the start. You may have fooled Paul, but men can be so stupid at times. Especially when it comes to women.”

Sofie stared at Rachelle. She had wept so much while painting Edward that she had no more tears to shed and she remained dry-eyed. That did not mean she did not hurt inside. “Yes. I am carrying his child,” she whispered.

Rachelle pursed her mouth. “It is too late, you know, to do something about it. A few months ago I could have taken you to a doctor, a good one, and he could have removed the child from your womb.”

“No! I want this baby, Rachelle, very much!”

Rachelle smiled gently. “Then it is a good thing.”

“Yes,” Sofie said, “it is a very good thing.”

For a moment they did not talk. One by one, their gazes drifted towards the canvas facing them, towards the extraordinary man lounging there in his chair. “Does he know?” Rachelle asked.

Sofie froze. “I beg your pardon?”

“Does he know? Does he know that you are carrying his child?”

It was hard to speak. Sofie wet her lips. “No.”

Rachelle gazed at her. patient and wise. “Do you not think it right for him to know?”

Sofie swallowed and glanced at the portrait again. Despite herself, her eyes grew moist. “I have been asking myself that very same question for a very long time,” she finally said hoarsely.

“And what answer have you found?”

Sofie faced her beautiful, worldly friend. “Of course he must know. But for some reason, I am afraid to tell him. I am afraid he will not care. I am afraid he will care too much.”

Rachelle patted her trembling hands. “I am confident you will do what is right.”

“Yes,” Sofie said. “I will do what is right. I must.” She slipped her hands free of Rachelle’s and hugged herself. “But the baby is not due until the end of June. There is time.”

Rachelle’s glance was sharp.

“Paul, I am tired, I really do not feel much like going to Zut today.”

But Paul Verault ignored her, handing her a light shawl. “You have been driving yourself too
hard, petite.
” He guided her out the front door. “For a woman in your condition.”

Sofie sighed, resigned to joining him at the small bar down the street. “When I decided to do
Delmonico’s,
I did not realize that, once I started to work again, I would not be able to stop.”

“I know,
petite”
Paul said softly. He kept one hand on her bulky body as they went down the narrow, steep stairs.
“I know how very hard you have been working. I know what the effort has cost you. But you have created some fabulous canvases.”

Sofie swallowed, trembling slightly. Paul knew the toll her art had taken on her because he came to her atelier almost every day. He was not her only visitor. Sofie had many friends now, almost all of whom were artists or an students, except for Georges Fraggard and Guy Apollinaire, who were poets. They all dropped in periodically, except for Georges, who had become a visitor almost as frequent as Paul.

Sofie preferred not to think about why Georges came to her atelier so often. She told herself he was infatuated with Rachelle, who had broken off with Apollinaire in the early spring. There was no other explanation. And it was possible. Georges flirted with her, just as he flirted with every woman he met. Except for Sofie. He no longer teased or charmed her as he had done during her first few months in Paris, and had not done so once he had realized she was pregnant.

Ridiculously, Sofie missed his flirtation. She had not realized how very flattering it had been during the loneliest winter of her life. It had been somewhat like drinking sweet, warm wine on a bitterly cold day. Sometimes she wished he would see Rachelle elsewhere, and not in her atelier while she was working. Sometimes he still reminded her of Edward.

Working was her life now, as it had been before Edward Delanza had disrupted it so completely last year. And Sofie was glad.

Finishing
Delmonico’s
had begun as an exorcism. But it had not worked. Instead of exorcising Edward from her life, instead of exorcising her grief, Sofie found herself more bound to him than before. Perhaps it was not just having completed
Delmonico’s,
perhaps it was also the baby, who was growing so quickly and purposefully now inside Sofie’s womb. When Sofie had felt her moving for the first time inside her belly, she had begun to feel fiercely like a mother, and the child had begun to take on a persona of her own. She was sweet and trusting and eager to be born. Somehow Sofie was certain that it was a girl. She
would name her Jacqueline, after Jake, and Edana, after Edward.

Sofie had never been closer to Edward than she was now. She thought about him all the time, and if not consciously, he haunted the back of her mind. Deliberately she made sure that she had little time to herself. If she was not with her master, copying at the Louvre, or at her own easel in her own atelier, she was with her friends, in a café, or in one of their ateliers. When she did retire in exhaustion to her small flat in Montmartre. which she had rented after the New Year, she was not alone—for Rachelle lived with her. Still, when she finally fell asleep, it was Edward’s dark, handsome image afflicting her.

She had painted other subjects since
Delmonico’s,
genre works that were also figural studies of Rachelle and Paul in various aspects of bohemian living, but she had returned to Edward as subject matter again and again as well. She had even portrayed him nude, as she had always longed to do. And even Sofie knew that when he was the subject of her work, she produced her most exciting and powerful canvases.

André Vollard had snatched up
Delmonieo’s
as soon as he had seen it. Paul had insisted that his friend Vollard come to view the canvas the moment he had glimpsed it himself. Vollard had begun to beg for the opportunity to buy the work when he realized that Sofie had used Durand-Ruel previously in New York City. Sofie could not refuse, not his enthusiasm nor the one thousand francs he had offered her. Paul had assured her that, as she did not have an exclusive contract with Durand-Ruel, she could sell her work to whomever she chose.

Delmonico’s
had immediately caused quite a stir in the art world, even though it remained unsold. Rachelle was as proud as a mother hen. She told Sofie that every artist and amateur they knew had gone to see the brilliantly hued canvas, and that it had been a hot topic of conversation in many salons and ateliers during the first few months following Vollard’s acquisition. In fact, Paul Durand-Ruel himself, whom Sofie had never met, had appeared one day on her doorstep, irate and intent on viewing the rest of
her work. There was some rivalry between Vollard and Durand-Ruel, the latter being far more renowned and far more successful—but often more conservative in his acquisitions, as well.

Sofie had had several pastels of Rachelle and Paul ready and was finishing the nude oil of Edward. He bought the lot on the spot, including the sketches, for a significant sum of money and tried to convince her that she must show her work exclusively with him. Sofie promised to think about it, at once incredulous and torn. Before he left, to sweeten his offer, he hinted that he might see fit to hold an exhibition for her. Sofie had dreamed of having a successful solo exhibition for many nights afterwards. In her dreams, Edward was always standing at her side, beaming with pride.

“André tells me there has been much interest in
Delmonico’s”
Paul said as they left the building.

Sofie’s heart lifted. “Really?”

“In the past two weeks several of his clients have expressed interest in it.”

Sofie tried not to feel too hopeful.
Delmonico’s
had been on the market since January without selling, and the initial euphoria brought on by being sought after by two rival dealers had faded long ago. “Paul Durand-Ruel notified me the other day. The portraits of my father and Lisa finally sold in New York, to an anonymous buyer.”

“That is welcome news,” Paul said, smiling.

Outside, it was so warm that Sofie took off her shawl. It was a bright spring day, and wildflowers poked up beside the trees shading the street, pansies and geraniums in the pots on windowsills and doorsteps. They trudged across the Place des Abbesses, past the
bateau lavoir,
an old, crumbling building where many of Montmartre’s poor artists lived, including some of Sofie’s friends. Several vendors stood in their open doorways in their shirtsleeves and aprons: booksellers, an antiques dealer, an art supplier. As Sofie and Paul passed, they were greeted with smiles and calls of “
Bonjour,
Verault, Sofie,
comment allez-vous?
”

Sofie smiled and waved back.

Paul looked at her soberly. “How is your family, Sofie?”

Sofie thought about her mother. “I think that Lisa is in love. Apparently she is being courted by the Marquis of Connaught, Julian St. Clare. From the tone of her letters, I think he has succeeded in turning her head.”

Paul grunted. “And your mother?”

Sofie grew tense. “Well, she has given up demanding that I release Rachelle from my employ.”

They turned the corner. A small boy ran up to them, begging for a coin, and Sofie gave him one. They ignored two shabby, unkempt women, undoubtedly prostitutes, who eyed them darkly from a door stoop.

Mrs. Crandal had not approved of Rachelle. She had not minced words, declaring that Rachelle was not just a model but a hussy through and through. And once in New York, she had gone directly to Suzanne, describing life in Montmartre and Rachelle. Suzanne had written to Sofie right away, demanding that Sofie dismiss Rachelle and forbidding her to carry on with hooligans and madmen posing as artists and poets in saloons disguised as cafés.