expense of mounting a major retrospective of an important artist.”
“The Breul House doesn’t do that sort of thing,” Jacob Munson snapped, yet curiosity piqued him. “Who?”
“Oscar Nauman.”
The old man smoothed his thin gray beard and shook his head. “He will not do it.”
“He might if
“My dear lady, I
“Miss Kohn?”
“Don’t look at me,” said Hester Kohn. “I’d love to mount a comprehensive retrospective of Nauman’s work, but Jacob’s right. He won’t even discuss it seriously.”
“But why?” asked Thorvaldsen.
Munson gave a palms-out gesture.
“I think he’s superstitious,” said Hester Kohn. “Some artists are. They think a retrospective’s the kiss of death, the beginning of the end, an official assumption that they have nothing more to say.”
“Nothing more to say?” exclaimed Thorvaldsen. “But this is a man who has found a dozen new voices in his lifetime.”
Hester Kohn uncrossed her trousered legs and sat more erectly in her chair. “Are you by any chance represented by Dansksambler in Copenhagen?”
Thorvaldsen hesitated, then nodded.
“ ‘Autumnal’ and ‘Topaz Two,’ ” she told her elderly partner.
“So, Mr. Thorvaldsen, you own two pictures by Nauman?” asked Jacob Munson.
“Actually, I own eleven of his works and I’m told there are things in his studio that have never been exhibited.” It was not quite a question and there was a touch of wistfulness in the big Dane’s voice.
“What do you think, Jacob?” asked Benjamin Peake and he, too, sounded wistful.
“Hester is right,” Munson told them with Teutonic finality. “Oscar will not agree to this.”
Lady Francesca stretched an appealing hand toward him and her soft brown eyes melted into his. “Dear Mr. Munson! Have you not been Oscar Nauman’s dealer for over thirty years? And if you were to explain to him the situation here at the Breul House and entreat him for old time’s sake-?”
Munson considered and Peake rushed into the lull. “If you approached him, too, Lady Francesca,” he said gallantly. “I’m sure you could make him agree. I’ve always heard that Oscar Nauman responds to beautiful women, right, Jacob?”
Her smile did not falter, thought Jacob Munson, and the old man gave her full marks for self-control. Nauman tried to keep his personal life private, but the artist was a public figure and rumors did get around. Jacob was under the impression that Oscar’s affair with Lady Francesca Leeds had ended more than a year ago. He seemed to recall that there was a fresh rumor making the rounds now. A lady fireman, was it?
Or dog catcher?
Something unusual anyhow. Leave it to Oscar.
Mr. Breul had arrived in Europe in the summer of 1879, but nearly three years were to elapse before he presented his compliments to the Swiss branch of his grandfather’s family in Zurich, where the Fursts had been burghers since 1336.
In later years, Mr. Breul enjoyed speaking of that first encounter with his fair cousin, Sophie. Fresh snow had begun to fall as the young American crossed the park to the Furst villa on the right bank of the lake. As he approached the gate, a small white dog darted through the railings, heedless of a girlish voice that called in vain. Though hardly dressed for the bitter weather, the impetuous girl had rushed from the house to rescue her wayward pet, undaunted by her thin shoes and indoor dress.
With the instant acumen which later marked his business dealings, Mr. Breul immediately grasped the situation and hastily captured the little dog by its collar before it could hurl itself beneath an oncoming carriage.
His quick action secured the young woman’s gratitude, but when he insisted that she take his coat as protection against the falling snow, he won her heart from that moment forward.
III
Even before she was fully awake, Sigrid sensed a difference in the December morning light. And it wasn’t just the difference between rural Connecticut and urban Manhattan either. She snuggled beneath a down comforter with her eyes half focused on one of Nauman’s early oil paintings and drowsily noted a new clarity in the shifting planes of color, a new vibrancy.
A part of her brain cataloged the variance. The other part was still too drugged by sleep to care or analyze.
She yawned, turned over in the king-size bed, and abruptly caught her breath at what lay outside.
Oscar Nauman’s house sprawled along the edge of a steep, thickly wooded hillside. With no near neighbors on that side, he had replaced his bedroom wall with sheets of clear glass so that nothing blocked her view of a tree- filled ravine that had transformed itself into a Currier and Ives print.
Yesterday’s heavy gray sky was clear blue now and last night’s thin flakes must have thickened sometime during the early morning hours because snow capped each twig and limb, softened the craggy rocks, and shone with such dazzling purity that sunlight was reflected inside to intensify Nauman’s paintings and light up the room from unfamiliar angles.
A thoroughly urban creature, Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, NYPD, knew almost nothing about nature in the raw and, on the whole, rather mistrusted unpaved lanes and trackless forests. She cared little for wildflowers or for knowing the identity of birds hopping mindlessly around in treetops. An occasional National Geographic special on Channel 13 was her nearest link to wild animals.
Moreover, snow was usually an annoyance, dirty slushy stuff that got inside her boots or lay too long in messy heaps and, by alternately melting and refreezing, made city sidewalks treacherous for walking.
But to gaze out for the first time in years upon a virgin snowfall unsullied by any footsteps filled her with unexpected wonder.
She pushed herself upright in bed with Nauman’s down comforter wrapped around her bare shoulders and watched a small black-capped bird try to perch on an ice-crusted twig just outside the window. It misjudged the ice’s slickness and seemed startled when its feet slid out from under its first attempt at perching; but it recovered, settled onto the twig, and hunched into its gray feathers much as Sigrid hunched into the bedcovers.
Her breath puffed in visible little clouds and she felt a momentary twinge of solidarity with the bird. If it was cold in here, what must it be out there? And how did birds keep their unfeathered feet from freezing anyhow?
On the end wall opposite the bed, the stone hearth was black and lifeless. Nauman liked to sleep in an unheated room and last night’s fire had already burned down to glowing embers before they fell asleep. She shivered and sank a bit deeper into the covers.
No sign of Nauman, of course. He was an early riser and had probably been up for hours.
According to the clock on the mantel, it was a quarter past eleven. Were she in her own apartment, Sigrid would have stretched contentedly and gone back to sleep. A weekend’s greatest luxury was her freedom to drift in and out of sleep for several hours and she seldom rose before noon.
Nauman’s Connecticut retreat offered better incentives to rise; nevertheless, it took all the willpower she could muster to leave the warm bed and snatch up jeans and sweater.
Happily, the man’s Spartan attitude toward cold bedrooms did not extend to his bath. The tiled floor felt pleasantly warm to her bare feet and the hot water was a benediction.
She showered, toweled the mirror free of fog, then ran a comb through her dark hair and pushed it into shape with her hands. Until October, her hair had been long and she’d worn it pulled straight back and pinned into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Now ragged bangs swept over her strong forehead and the back was clipped
