Corpus Christmas (6 page)

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 weekends’ 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 short.

Smoothing moisturizer over her face, she hesitated over the other small bottles and tubes in her toiletry bag. Cosmetics were
something else new in her life, and even though she enjoyed the sexual sizzle they sent through her body, she still lacked
expertise with the intricacies of technique.

She would never be very pleased with her reflection—her face was too thin, her cheeks had never dimpled, her mouth was too
wide—but she was starting to be satisfied with her eyes and the way her new bangs softened the former austerity. Cutting her
hair seemed to have cut away some inhibitions as well, made her less reserved and awkward.

At least with Nauman.

Suddenly impatient to find him, she smudged on eye shadow and lip gloss and quickly dressed.

An aroma of coffee hung in the air and she followed it out to the kitchen, but that utilitarian room was empty save for the
tantalizing smell of onions, herbs, and well-browned chicken now rising from the oven. Nauman cooked as instinctively as he
painted and had evidently felt creative this morning. Sigrid poured herself a cup of strong dark liquid, pulled the plug on
the coffee maker, and backtracked through the house to the end wing formed by the studio and its decks.

The lyrical intensity of a Martinu symphony was muffled by the double glass doors that led to Nauman’s studio.

Essentially a huge sun porch, it was lined on both long walls with French windows that led to wide decks on either side. A
high ceiling followed the pitch of the roof, accommodating two ten-foot easels; and with the snow outside today, the room
was awash in brilliant natural light.

At the far end of the studio, beyond the thrift-shop of tables and cabinets that held his painting supplies, was a huge stone
fireplace flanked by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Oscar Nauman sat in one of the comfortable chairs pulled up before the blazing
log fire and Sigrid paused to watch him relight his pipe.

He was half a head taller than she and a generation older, with a lean hard body, piercing blue eyes, and thick silver hair
that had finished turning white before he was thirty. They had sparred for six months, been lovers for six weeks, yet Sigrid
was still unsure of her feelings for him—how much was sexual, how much emotional, and whether the two added up to that irrational
state called love.

By nature and by training she was cool and analytical, but Oscar Nauman was the one element in her life that she consciously
refused to analyze. Clearly he was too old, too quixotic, too opinionated, too self-centered. Why was she not heeding the
logic of this?

Then Nauman’s head came up, he smiled in her direction, and Sigrid’s heart turned over. She smiled back and started to open
the door before abruptly realizing that he was not alone, that his smile had been for a red-haired woman who now walked into
Sigrid’s view holding one of Nauman’s pictures. Specific words were indistinct but her voice held a musical lilt.

With the snow reflecting so much dazzling sunlight into the studio, Sigrid knew she would not be seen if she retreated back
down the shadowed hall and read the morning paper till the woman was gone. Two months ago, she might have done just that.
She was still self-conscious with Nauman when around others but she was trying to overcome it. So she told herself that she
lingered here only because she was uncertain if the woman had come for business or if her Sunday morning visit were purely
social. Perhaps this was something neighbors did in the country?

There was only one way to find out.

Steadying the coffee cup in her left hand, she opened one of the glass doors. The others looked up as she entered.

This time, Nauman’s smile
was
for her. “Come and meet Francesca,” he said.

The visitor wore brown corduroy knickers crammed inside knee-length high-heeled brown boots and a loose pullover knitted in
tones of russet and amber. Windswept auburn hair tangled itself around her fair face and her classic features appeared almost
flawless as she put down the painting she’d been inspecting and came to Sigrid with her hand outstretched.

“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 cataloged. 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? Baldung? 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 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 head, 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.”

“I don’t know that I like being compared to raw clams,” Nauman grumbled.

“But they’re so delicious,” she murmured wickedly, running her hand down his muscular flank.

* * *

Lunch was just as leisurely, and afterwards, Sigrid curled up in one of the large chairs before the fire in Nauman’s studio
and opened the
Times
to the puzzle page. The large crossword appeared to contain a humorous yuletide limerick, and she became so absorbed in penning
in the answers that she didn’t notice when Nauman, perched on a tall stool at his drawing table, began to sketch her, his
pencil moving rapidly across the pages of his notebook.