Again, his gaze swept over her, promising all sorts of delicious possibilities. Clearly an overture, but what sort: business, pleasure, or both?
“My guide,” she repeated, liking the sound of it. “That’s very kind of you. I’m sure there’s a great deal you can teach me.” Looking at the breadth of his shoulders, she felt a shiver race up her spine. “About art,” she added, then almost kicked herself.
“Splendid. We’ll start right here then, shall we?”
He stopped in front of a picture window displaying large canvases in gaudy frames. “This is the Onfray Gallery, the most successful in Paris. Tell me. What do you see here?”
She forced her attention away from him to try and focus on the paintings in the window. What would Amy Caldwell—who knew nothing about art—say about them? “Well, they’re not very colorful, are they? All brown and grey. And they all seem to be pictures of…historical events…mythological scenes…pompous businessmen straining to look successful…”
“Precisely. This is what we call academic art. It’s what gets displayed in the Salon every year—that’s the government-sponsored art show. It’s also what the critics rave over and well-heeled patrons buy. Let’s walk on, shall we?”
They continued down half a block until they came to what Mason well knew was the Durand-Ruel Gallery. This window was filled with vibrant canvases by Monet, Degas, Pissarro. “But twenty years ago,” he told her, “there was a revolution in painting.”
“Impressionism.”
“Yes, this gallery is one of the few that handle Impressionist paintings. What do you think of it?”
“After what we just saw, they’re like a breath of fresh air.”
He gave her a pleased smile. “With new, brighter pigments available in collapsible tubes and trains to take them out of town and into nature, artists were no longer bound to their studios. En plien air, they discovered they could capture the fleeting color and light of the scenes before them with a realism and beauty that had never been known before.”
She’d never heard anyone who wasn’t a painter speak on the subject with such enthusiasm. “You like Impressionism, don’t you?”
“I love everything about it. Its color, its beauty, its celebration of everyday life. It seduced me, and I believe it’s destined to seduce the entire world. To become to our descendants what the art of the Italian Renaissance is to us today. But, I’m sorry to say, that’s a minority opinion. And twenty years after it first startled the Parisian art world, it still hasn’t broken into the mainstream.”
“To my eye, Mason’s work doesn’t seem to have much in common with these Impressionists in the window.”
“You’re right. The new generation of avant-garde artists have absorbed Impressionism into their sensibility and are going beyond it. Experimenting with the psychological aspects of color. Exploring the symbolism inherent in nature. The critics call these new artists Neo-Impressionists. Their work is even less appreciated than the Impressionists. The only place you can see their paintings displayed is in the back rooms of a few Montmartre cafés.”
“Is that what Mason was—a Neo-Impressionist?”
“Technically, yes. But that hardly sums up the impact she might well end up having.”
“Impact?”
“She might be what the Age of Impressionism has always needed and never had.”
“And what’s that?”
“A larger-than-life figure. You see, one of the reasons Impressionism has never caught on is because it’s never produced an artist who has captured the world’s imagination with the force of a Michelangelo or a Leonardo. But something in Mason’s life seems to appeal to people on this profound and personal level. Maybe your sister will be the artist Impressionism has been waiting for.”
Mason was so staggered that she stopped short. “You can’t be serious!”
“I’m deadly serious.”
It was too much. His intoxicating words—his assurance—surged through her veins like an aphrodisiac. Suddenly all of it—what had happened at the gallery, his praise and approval, his vision of her potential—came crashing together to create in her a single overriding feeling, a desire she’d never come close to experiencing before.
I want this man…
I want him now!
She looked up and watched as the corner of his mouth slowly crooked into a smile. A devilish smile, as if he’d read her mind and knew exactly what she was thinking.
She felt herself redden and turned away. His effect on her was irresistible, this shamelessly handsome man, erudite, witty, with a voice that could melt chocolate and an animal magnetism that oozed from his pores despite the veneer of cultured sophistication. Her desire for him was so intense that she was having trouble catching her breath.
“But tell me,” he said. “What are your plans?”
“Plans?” She couldn’t seem to figure out what he was asking.
“For the future,” he elaborated. “Falconier will pull back the paintings for a bit, quadruple the prices, and no doubt sell them in a matter of minutes. Which will leave you with a valise full of francs. What then?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll go back to America.”
And Mason will miraculously reappear.
“A pity, that. I was hoping you’d stay for a while.”
His voice had taken on a husky timbre, hushed, intimate. Was she imagining it, or was he looking at her the way a hunter looked at his prey?
“Why would I want to do that?” She hadn’t intended it to be a tease, but the breathiness with which she’d uttered it gave it a sassy quality.
“It occurs to me that we have a great deal in common. I should like to…deepen our acquaintance.”
His tone was deceptively casual yet edged with determination—the polite vanguard of a will not to be denied.
“Deepen?”
Oh, God, did I really say that? It sounded like the invitation of some Pigalle tart.
“You don’t object, I hope? Because the truth is, I find myself in the throes of a most peculiar urge.”
“What sort of urge?” she gulped.
The dark eyes, hooded and penetrating, seemed to bore a hole in her. “The urge to do whatever it takes to keep you in Paris.”
“Whatever…it takes?”
What am I doing?
She knew where this was leading, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
He leaned toward her, close enough that she could almost feel his lips with hers, and repeated firmly, “Whatever it takes.”
Chapter 4
Garrett raised his hand and momentarily a large gilded coach drawn by four white horses pulled up before them. The words LE GRAND-HÔTEL were lettered on the side. It had apparently been waiting for him outside the gallery and the driver was monitoring the progress of his and Mason’s stroll.
Garrett took out his billfold, withdrew a hundred-franc note, and handed it to the crisply uniformed man who sat out front in the driver’s box, the reins taut in his white gloved hands. “Drive,” he commanded. “Don’t stop till I tell you on pain of death. Understand?”
“Certainment, Monsieur.”
Garrett opened the door and held his hand out to Mason.