“I’m Francesca Leeds, and I’m so pleased to meet you at last,” she said with a smile in her warm Irish voice. “Oscar’s told me all about you.”
“Has he?” Sigrid mumbled.
“Have I?” asked Nauman, frowning at a picture Lady Francesca had unearthed from earlier years.
“Well, somebody did, acushla. If not you, perhaps Hester Kohn or Doris Quinn.” She turned back to Sigrid. “Anyhow, I know you’re a police officer in the city. A detective, right?”
Sigrid nodded.
“And I’m an old friend of Oscar’s come to talk him into saving one of New York ’s landmarks. You must help me persuade him.”
There was something curiously familiar about the woman but Sigrid couldn’t quite decide why. As Francesca Leeds described the Breul House’s near destitution and the benefits an Oscar Nauman retrospective could provide, Sigrid had an opportunity to study her features more closely.
The bright glare of snowlight was not kind to the woman’s skin. It washed out the golden tones and made her seem too pale. It also revealed tiny lines around her eyes and nose so that Sigrid revised her estimate of age upward. Instead of thirty, Francesca Leeds was probably closer to forty. Nevertheless, she remained a stunning creature with the sort of poised assurance that often destroyed Sigrid’s.
Not this time, she told herself, making a conscious effort not to tighten up. But it was difficult. Despite the other woman’s friendly smile and easy conversation, Sigrid knew that she, too, was being studied and catalogued. She should have been used to it by now. Most of Nauman’s friends fell into two camps: those who were amused by their relationship and those who were patently puzzled. Very few accepted her without question.
Lady Francesca appeared to have both amusement and curiosity well in hand and seemed bent on making Sigrid her ally as she pulled a small picture down from one of the racks.
“Think of it, Sigrid: Would you not love to see Oscar’s whole career in one well-chosen show?”
“Pinned to the wall like a bunch of dead butterflies?” Nauman asked sardonically. “Forget it Anyhow, you’re talking to the wrong person. She doesn’t like my work.”
Francesca Leeds started to laugh, realized Oscar wasn’t entirely joking, and looked at the thin brunette with fresh interest. “Really?”
Sigrid shrugged as she studied the small purple-and-black abstract Francesca had held out to her. “He exaggerates.”
The implication not lost upon her ladyship, who knew something must exist before it can be exaggerated. How perfectly ironic that Oscar should be snared by someone indifferent to his artistic achievements, someone who could see him as a fallible man standing unclothed in fame and accomplishment. Francesca deliberately turned her mind away from the memory of Oscar’s lean hard frame unclothed in anything, but there was veiled mirth in her brown eyes as she delicately probed, “Then your interests will be lying in music or literature, rather than the visual?”
“She’s visual,” Oscar said.
His rangy body continued to lounge in the deep chair, but his tone was sharper than necessary, defensive even?
Still holding the small oil from one of Oscar’s middle periods, Sigrid glanced from one to the other, aware of a sudden tension in the air. She handed the violent abstract back to Francesca Leeds. “Even if I don’t completely understand them, I do like some of Nauman’s pictures.”
Oscar abruptly leaned forward to poke the fire and add another log to the blaze. “Ask her anything about the late Gothic, though.”
“Late Gothic? You mean Dürer? Baidung? Holbein?”
“And Lucas Cranach,” Sigrid nodded. “Mabuse, too. And earlier, Jan van Eyck, of course.”
“Ah,” said Francesca, enlightened now. “The Flemish. Precision. Order.” She waved her hand to encompass Oscar’s cluttered studio, the vibrant abstractions, the large canvases slashed with color and free-flowing lines. “Anarchy repels you?”
“I am a police officer,” Sigrid said lightly. “And I do know enough about modern art to know there’s structure lurking in there somewhere.”
Oscar laughed and stood up. “Stay for lunch, Francesca? I’m making my famous coq au vin. ”
Francesca Leeds pushed back the heavy auburn hair from her face and turned her wrist to consult the small gold watch. “Can’t, acushla. My hosts are expecting me back with their vehicle.”
She smiled up at him as she reached for her brown suede jacket. “I’m not giving up, though. A retrospective’s nothing like a ninth symphony, Oscar, and the Breul House really does need you.”
She turned to Sigrid, who echoed the formulas of “so nice to meet you; perhaps we’ll see each other again,” and both were pleased to realize the formalities weren’t totally insincere.
Exchanging comments on road conditions, icy patches, and the infrequency of snowplows through these back roads, Oscar and Sigrid followed Francesca out onto the deck. Oscar had cleared it earlier, as well as the steps leading down to the drive; but except for Francesca’s single line of boot prints curving up from a borrowed van parked beside the road, the crusted snow around the house was unbroken.
“Driving’s not bad,” said Francesca. “The van has chains and four-wheel drive.”
Even with all identifying landmarks blanketed by the snow, she seemed to know exactly how the drive curved, and walked confidently out to the van without tripping or putting a foot wrong. It was something Sigrid noted without actually considering as Francesca waved good-bye and called back, “At least you didn’t say no.”
“No!” Oscar grinned.
“Too late, ” she laughed and drove away in a flurry of snow.
Circling his studio to the rear deck, Oscar thoughtfully contemplated the ravine, where snow lay deep and crisp beneath tall pines and hardwoods so thickly branched that winter sunlight barely penetrated.
“The surface is too soft for conventional sleds,” he observed.
Over the years, various visiting children had left plastic sliding sheets behind in the garage, and Oscar had discovered them while searching for a snow shovel.
His assertion that their appetites needed building sounded ridiculous to Sigrid even as Nauman bundled her into a jacket and boots. Minutes later, she found herself alone upon a sheet of plastic, careening downhill on her stomach, half terrified and wholly exhilarated.
It was like being eight years old again-pushing off, oaring herself along with mittened hands, that slow gathering of speed, crashing through ice-coated grasses, dodging tree roots and low-lying branches, a belly-dropping sense of doom as she crested a small ridge and became briefly airborne before thudding back to cushioned earth again. Another straight shoot down the hillside and she hurtled toward a creek bank lined with dormant blackberry bushes and huge granite boulders, trying to judge exactly when she should come down hard with a braking foot to land in a laughing, tangled heap beside her companion.
Delighted by the sheer physicality of the experience, Sigrid unhooked her leg from Nauman’s elbow and kissed him exuberantly.
By their fourth trip down, Oscar had a long briar scratch across his forehead and Sigrid had jammed her right index finger. Climbing back to the top of the ravine each time left them winded, wet, and red-cheeked, yet both were somehow reluctant to end this brief return to childhood pleasures and go inside.
On the other hand, warmth and the expectation of good food did offer certain inducements. Not to mention the adult pleasures of stripping off their wet clothes and rediscovering other physical joys.
“What are you smiling about?” Nauman asked suspiciously.
“I was thinking about raw clams on the half-shell.”
“You want to eat first?”
“No.” Her slender fingers touched the red scratch on his forehead, caressed his left ear, then slipped to his bare shoulder. “I was remembering my cousin Carl. One of my Southern cousins. He bought a cottage down on Harker’s Island and it took him more than ten years before he’d even taste a raw clam. He’s been trying to make up for lost time ever since.”