The Portrait Read Online Free PDF Page B

ever
capture the color?"
    "My grandmother's was the same," I said, without thinking.
    "And men wrote poems to it. How I wish..."
    One last hairpin plinked onto the floor. "I saw the study Gainsborough did of her. You
have a bit of her about your face. The same chin, determined and inclined to a certain tilt." He
touched my chin, moved it slightly to the side. "There. Don't even breathe."
    Rising, he went to his easel and picked up the charcoal. A pause, while he stared at me,
eyes narrowed. "Still not right. How...?"
    I stared back, afraid to move, to speak.
    After a long moment, while he simply stared at me intently, he came to me again. This
time it was my ankle his strong fingers encircled. I was so startled that I let him move my leg as
he wished. He placed the foot flat on the settee, close to my other knee, before smoothing the
skirt to cover it. Smiling into my eyes, he said, "Don't fret. You are completely covered, to the
toes." A hesitation, then he smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Toes! Of
course!"
    He removed my slipper and was tugging at my stocking before I could react.
    "Wait!" I screeched.
    "Oh, calm down. I am not about to ravish you. Remove your stockings. I want to see
naked toes."
    "Turn your back."
    "As if I haven't seen a woman's legs before." But he obeyed, tapping his foot impatiently
as I removed the other shoe and both stockings.
    You haven't seen mine , I wanted to say, but refrained.
    Once again he posed me, like a jointed doll. He arranged my skirts to drape over the
edge of the settee, tugged and pulled at my hair until it cascaded over the scrolled end and
puddled on the polished floor. Everywhere he touched me--impersonal touches, but always with
that lingering, menace to virtue--everywhere his fingers stroked, I felt marked, branded.
    After all that, the next hour was anticlimactic. I reclined on the couch, half-dozing. He
sketched.
    At first he used the charcoal, but after a few minutes he picked up a brush. Fascinated I
watched it dart across the paper, sometimes in long strokes, sometimes in a series of quick
dabs.
    "I thought artists painted on canvas," I said.
    "I'm not painting. I'm sketching." His tone was distracted, as if half his mind was
elsewhere. More strokes, more dabs, until, with a curse, he tore the sheet of paper from the easel
and threw it onto the floor. "Don't move," he commanded, as I started to sit upright.
    For two endless hours I lay there while he filled sheet after large sheet of heavy paper
with paint and charcoal. Twice he allowed me to stand and move about for a few minutes. The
second time I asked him again if I could see what he had been sketching. To my great surprise,
he acquiesced.
    The first sheet I picked up was my hand. Nothing more. Just my dangling hand, fingers
relaxed, the tips lying lightly on the polished floor. Another was my foot, each toe lovingly
delineated, rosy and delicate. As I leafed through the sheets, I found myself growing warm, as if
I were standing too close to a fire. There was something about the drawings...something that
spoke to me on a level below--beyond?--thought.
    One of the sketches showed my body, from shoulder to hip. Yet it was not my body, for
there was something different, something... I shivered. The drawing in my hand shook, blurring
in my vision.
    Perhaps it was the blurring, or perhaps it was the film of tears in my eyes. The body on
the paper took on shape, depth. Seemed to breathe. And in that moment I wanted to touch, to
stroke, to cup and hold the soft breasts, the deep curve of waist, the sumptuous contour of hip.
My hands tingled and for one timeless instant, there was a ghostly sensation of touching, of
holding, of caressing.
    The drawing fell from my fingers. I swayed, might have fallen to the floor but for the
strong arm encircling my waist. I was held against a hard body, was warmed by its heat. A gentle
hand stroked my hair, pulled my face into the folds of an often-washed cravat. I smelled