The Glamourist (The Vine Witch #2)(33)
Henri placed his hand on Yvette’s elbow. She waited half a beat to see if he pushed or pulled, the grip on her paintbrush tightening.
She was not going back to prison.
When Henri pushed her toward the public square across the street, she ran beside him, the paintbrush still tightly poised in her grip. No one appeared to follow as they escaped down a narrow lane, past the restaurant with the pink walls, and into the vacant lot atop the butte. There they scrambled up the slope among the rubbish and weeds and tucked themselves under a corrugated sheet of tin fastened in place over the corner of a brick wall. Heavy drops of rain splattered at their feet as they caught their breath.
“I haven’t run from les flics like that since we were kids.” Henri laughed and shook the rain off his coat. When she didn’t join in the amusement, his face grew more serious. “You didn’t think I would turn you in back there, did you?”
Considering she’d only been back living on the butte for two days and had already had a run-in with a childhood acquaintance and a near miss with the police, she was more than a little skeptical of the coincidence. “You still living on the hill?”
“Can’t afford anywhere else. Why?”
“What are you doing out this time of morning? Kind of funny running into you of all people. You still working the crowds?”
He shook his head and took a cigarette from his pocket. “Let’s call it providence.” He struck a match, lit a ciggie, took a puff, and then offered it to her. “Truth is, I was on my way to see a beautiful woman before we met.”
“Oh?” She accepted the smoke and inhaled with the deep relief of the addicted.
A glint of devil-may-care mischief darted across Henri’s eyes. “The magnifique Mademoiselle Delacourt.” Met with Yvette’s blank stare, he pulled a face and added, “She’s Tulane’s most famous model. He painted her many times. His masterpiece, Bisou d’amour, hangs in the Musée Couloir. I go nearly every week to study her. The way he captured the bend of her arm and the tone of her skin is his true genius.”
“Oh! She’s a painting?” There was more relief in her voice than she expected. “That’s right. You always were an artist. That’s why the, um, blue paint.” She pointed to the smudge on his chin.
“I suppose that’s been there all morning.” He rubbed the spot sheepishly, then brought the shabby folder out from under his jacket, untying the leather string holding it closed. “Would you like to see?” She nodded, and a flutter of sketches—some marked on rectangles of canvas, others drawn on scraps of butcher’s paper—fanned out. Many were of the same woman, presumably the Mademoiselle Delacourt, kneeling in a bed of flowers with a man standing beside her kissing her cheek. And a few were of a woman on a park bench, though each from a different angle, as if he’d observed her on more than one occasion. And one, a palm-size painting, was of a young woman with blonde hair who could have been a fairy-tale damsel from another age. She sat on les escaliers near the top of the butte as she gazed out over the city below. Yvette could almost believe it was her, if not for the flawless skin and happy expression on the model’s face.
There was a true verve to his art, a passion that translated through the lines of charcoal and strokes of paint. Movement, imagination, and promise. At least to her inexperienced eye.
“They’re wonderful,” she said, and meant it. She could tell he was pleased.
“Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing with my days the last couple of years. Can’t say I don’t still hit the theater crowds at night now and then. A little cash here and there, or a pocket watch for when I can’t pay the rent.” He went silent then, long enough to make her think he was considering if they were still close enough for him to ask the big question. And then he did. “What about you, Yvie? Why’d you come back here? You must know how dangerous it is, what with your, you know”—he pointed to the newspaper tucked under her arm—“circumstances.”
“You mean because I’m wanted for murder?”
Henri checked the direction they’d come. “Look, I’ve known you since I was old enough to climb that back wall, Yvie. I know what happened that night couldn’t have been your fault. The authorities must’ve got it wrong. But you shouldn’t have come back to the butte while things are still hot.”
“Had to.”
“Why? What’s worth risking your neck on the guillotine?”
Yvette pretended to look at a scuff on her shoe. “I had to see her.”
He bent his ear forward like he’d heard her wrong. “You can’t be serious. You came back to see her? You know there’ve been men watching the front door for weeks.”
“I snuck in through your mother’s back courtyard.” She allowed the corner of her mouth to curl up when he balked at her boldness. “Listen, Henri. I can’t explain how, but I was given a second chance to come back and find some answers. Things I have to know to be . . . to be a . . .”
“To be what?”
She lifted her head and looked him straight in the eye. “The witch I was meant to be.”
She’d said it to him before, once when they were kids, to see how he’d react. They’d stolen a pair of tarts from a bare-bones patisserie and ran to the construction site of the new basilica. It’s where the gang of neighborhood kids gathered under the scaffolding after the workers had gone for the day. Another boy who’d overheard her say she was a witch had told her to prove it by turning a stray dog into a cat. When she said it didn’t work that way, the boy had scoffed and called her a liar. But Henri hadn’t. He merely bit into his tart and stared at her with eyes wide and believing. The same way he did now.