style="font-size:15px;"> “First of all, no artist has ever portrayed the anxiety of modern life quite so imaginatively or vividly. The backgrounds of each of these works conveys menace—images of the ugly, the grotesque, the terrible. And yet, the sheer passion of her technique, and the expressive flourish of her color, transforms them into something almost beautiful.”
Mason’s heart began to thump. He was getting exactly what she was after!
“Moreover, the threat of the backgrounds is further neutralized in each of the paintings by the central image of a young woman. These women exude a beauty, a purity, a moral strength, and an awareness of their own sensuality that transforms the misery and peril of the world around them. At first, the paintings seem pessimistic. But the longer one looks at them, the more obvious it becomes that they are intensely hopeful and life-affirming. Look at this one. Obviously painted in the catacombs, the woman is surrounded by stacks of human skulls. A more unsettling reminder of our mortality you’d never want to see. Yet she’s by far the most powerful thing in the painting. A power that makes even our destiny of death seem beautiful.”
Mason’s heart was racing now.
He gestured again toward her self-portrait. “But for me, this is the most captivating of them all. She’s painted herself in what appears to be a battlefield. A horror that has brought her to her knees and stripped her bare. And yet, she’s rising from her knees, from the ashes, and giving us that exquisitely enigmatic hint of a smile. What is she telling us?”
Mason looked away from the painting and into his eyes. “You tell me.”
“She’s telling us that the beauty of art can transcend and purify the horror of the world. Hardly the message of a woman about to kill herself, I admit. But that’s her tragedy. She succeeded in her mission, yet she didn’t know it.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I wish I’d known her. I wished I’d been able to tell her just how magnificently she succeeded.”
Mason couldn’t believe what she was hearing. For the first time in her life, she felt completely understood, accepted, appreciated.
“Who are you?” she gasped.
“Me? I’m nobody.”
“Are you a critic? Or an artist yourself?”
He chuckled, a deep rumble that seemed to emanate from his massive chest. “I’m not a critic or an artist or a collector. Just a chap who hangs about the art world. You might say I’m just an appreciator of art. But I know the real thing when I see it.”
“You must have a name.”
He smiled, showing a flash of straight white teeth. “Garrett. Richard Garrett.”
He extended a large hand that made hers seem miniscule in comparison. The touch of his firm, warm flesh sent a jolt through her senses.
“And your name is…?” he prompted when she just stood holding his hand.
“Ma—” She caught herself just in time. She was so befuddled, so swept away, that she’d almost slipped and told him her real name. Shaking herself, she amended, “I’m Amy Caldwell from…Boston, Massachusetts.”
“Well, Amy Caldwell from Boston, Massachusetts, I’d say you have a bit of a dilemma on your hands.”
“Dilemma?”
“I assume you saw all those people lining up outside to buy your sister’s paintings. Tomorrow they’ll be able to sell them for five times what they paid for them today. And the day after that, those people will be able to sell them for ten times what they paid. There’s a phenomenon afoot and you need time to sit back, assess the situation, and find the proper strategy for dealing with it. Were I you, I’d stop this sale right now before it gets started.”
Mason looked across the room and saw that Falconier was about to open the doors to the public and begin the sale. The gangster Juno Dargelos had already taken three canvases featuring Lisette off the wall and was waving a fistful of francs at Falconier’s back as Lisette continued to berate him for embarrassing her this way.
Uncertain what to do, Mason glanced back at Garrett and asked, “Stop it? But isn’t that a bit like leaving the bride at the altar?”
“Better that than a life of regret brought about by the wrong decision. Just go to Falconier and say, ‘I’ve changed my mind. The sale is off.’”
She cast a glance at the gallery owner who was unlocking the door, then back at Garrett.
His gaze pierced her.
“You’d best hurry,” he stressed, “before it’s too late.”
Chapter 2
Stop the sale? Before it even got started? On the advice of a complete stranger?
After all she’d gone through, shouldn’t she just be grateful to be selling anything at all?
But then…this wasn’t just any stranger. It was almost as if he’d been sent here by destiny to hold up a beacon to her future. Could there be more in store for her than selling a few paintings at bargain prices?
She had no way of knowing. Her life, since that tumultuous night on the Pont de l’Alma, had been a kaleidoscope of bizarre events that had taught her one thing: What had seemed like the worst catastrophe of her life might well have turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her.
Two months ago, on the city’s stormiest night in living memory, Mason was flailing in the Seine when suddenly something cracked her in the head. She’d lost consciousness, assuming those were her last moments on earth. But when she awoke sometime later in the night, she found that she’d somehow managed to hook her arm around whatever flotsam had struck her. Either she’d managed to pull herself up with her last ounce of strength, or she’d been saved by a fluke of that same fate she’d earlier cursed. She had just enough presence of mind to heave herself on top of it and out of the frigid water before she’d blacked out once again. After that, there was a sense of moving in and out of consciousness as the rapid current carried her cascading through the night.
When she awoke—God only knew how many hours later—it was in a warm bed under a fluffy down comforter. A woman’s face appeared above her and a kind voice asked, “Are you awake?” Mason tried to respond but couldn’t. She didn’t have the strength to move her lips. A moment later, she sank back into the darkness.
She was vaguely aware of tossing feverishly and kicking off the covers to cool her burning skin. She had bleary memories of moving in and out of the light and of some sort of vile medicine being forced down her throat, bringing with it another heavy sleep.
Then one morning she awoke to a room full of sunshine to see the woman sitting in a chair, mending a stocking. Mason tried to push herself up, but was so weak she fell back into the pillows, exhausted and lightheaded. Finally, she asked, “What happened? Where am I?”
She heard a cry. “She’s awake! She’s all right!” Then the shuffle of footsteps as the family quickly gathered round her bed—the parents, two boys, a little girl, and a toothless grandmother. They all spoke at once, making a fuss, rejoicing in her recovery.
The woman who’d been sewing said, “Dr. DuBois says something hit
