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Always keep in touch with nature, always try to get close to your model.

Auguste Rodin

Paris 1889

Julius Fetherstone had absolutely no need to sketch Cosima Antoine. Having met her, just the once, six days previously, and having fallen in love with her immediately, he knew her features off by heart instantly. Julius could have created a portrait bust of Cosima with his eyes closed. Literally. For, whenever he closed his eyes, there she was soliciting his every thought, setting his senses on fire, firing his artistic desire.

So it was a deplorable double con. Professionally, he had no need to see Cosima again. Ever. Whether commissioned or not, he would have been sculpting her. Again and again. Now he was charging his patron, her fiancé Jacques, more than he’d ever dared ask for a portrait bust. The fee would clear the debt to his landlady that a placating fuck every Thursday had done so far. More than just pay the rent and preclude further unsavoury carnal commerce; it would also keep him in clay and casting for a good long while. But far more valuable than the financial gains, Cosima’s image, imprinted in his soul, was now destined to provide source material for all future works.

He need never see her again. As he flipped through his sketch-book of the last week, her features stared back at him from every page apart from one with his copy of the new Manet he’d seen on display in the Salon des Indépendants and another with a charcoal of a maquette by his master, Rodin. But Cosima dominated all other pages. No further analysis today could make any portrait more complete than these done from memory, from knowing someone for less than twenty minutes. Yet in half an hour, she’d be at his studio and he’d be given carte blanche, plus a sizeable purse, just to stare at her.

Cosima Antoine was herself about to deceive her fiancé and con the sculptor. Julius Fetherstone had dominated her thoughts, asleep and awake, for the last six days. She told herself she was not in love with him because love was a state that should be avoided at all costs. She had decided this from an early age when witnessing how her mother’s love for her father was rebuffed by his compulsive infidelities with a succession of maids, friends and young cousins. No, Cosima told herself she was not in love with the brooding British sculptor, but feelings for him she certainly had. For her fiancé, she had no feelings, rather she had reasons. He would be a good man to marry. He would make a good husband. He would make a good father to her children. Sometimes, she found all that inherent goodness just a little unsavoury, but Cosima could cope because still the dark places in her heart and mind were free to take her wherever she pleased. And now her fiancé was taking her to the sculptor, walking her to a place where her fantasies of the past week might just take solid form.

Never had Paris looked so beautiful. It was autumn, leaves on trees were burnished bronze and breathtaking, those underfoot crunched and disintegrated most satisfyingly. The October sun, rosy and mellow, infiltrated her body and brought a rare warmth to her soul which saw her nodding politely at the inane witterings of her fiancé, though she chose not to hear a word.

‘I think we should ask Monsieur Fetherstone what he feels about a hat,’ Jacques was saying. ‘I think it would be most avant-garde for a portrait sculpture to be crowned by a hat. Otherwise, it might be like any old bust. We need to define you. To have a sculpture that says “1889; Cosima Antoine at twenty years old”.’

Cosima nodded thoughtfully; glad she had decided to leave the house hatless despite her fiancé’s concern and her maid’s horror.

There is absolutely no need for Cosima to undress. Julius has not asked her to, nor has she offered. They have simply exchanged cordial salutations and she has calmly walked over to the carved wooden screen in the corner of his studio. She has slipped behind it, unhooking her clothing as she goes.

‘I won’t be a moment,’ she says.

‘That’s fine,’ he replies, loosening his cravat with one hand, unbuttoning his trousers with the other.

Naked but for his loose, damask shirt, he folds the window shutters almost closed, affording his studio privacy as well as investing it with sultry shadows. October sun seeps through, licking all it touches with melancholy gold; a visual swansong of summer edged with the faintest prelude of forthcoming winter. He pads, barefoot, across the rug, closing his eyes to feel the transition between fabric ending and the well-worn, warm run of smooth old floorboards. He recalls how floorboards in Derbyshire, at the height of summer, were never as warm and welcoming as these in Paris in autumn. One more reason never to return. The other, just then, appears from behind the screen and time is suspended for Julius.

Ten twenty-two, the first Wednesday in October, 1889.

He, Julius Fetherstone, is wide awake in dream-time.

The briefest glimpse of Cosima’s nudity would have sufficed. Instead, she is walking over to him, fantastically naked. His senses are ablaze; his past, his twenty-three years until this moment, have lasted but a blink. His future will be governed by his ability to savour the present.

They stand, a foot apart, staring at each other. They have not touched but the heat emanating from their bodies seems to meet and merge. They have not kissed, but their lips are as wet as if they have. He stares at her. This body before him, the flesh and muscle, the curves and hair, is the composite of all his fantasies to date and will constitute the standard for all future fantasies. She can be everything. Angel–virgin–whore–wife.

Cosima takes her fingertips to his face and hovers them over his lips. His mouth parts and she can feel his breath on her fingers. He licks his lips and her fingertips are caught, like bees to honey paper. His tongue flicks over them. His hands encircle her waist and pull her against him. She brushes her now damp fingers over his cheek and down, so that she cups the back of his neck, dragging his hair between her fingers. Her other hand she takes to his chest, slipping behind the cotton of his shirt to meet his skin. He makes to kiss her but she turns her face at the last moment.

‘How long do we have?’ he breathes.

‘How long does a portrait take a sculptor these days?’ she asks, quite loudly, with a sly smile.

‘I need a day,’ he says, ‘that’s what I told your – him.’

‘Jacques,’ she states.

‘Jacques,’ he confirms.

‘My fiancé,’ she elaborates.

‘Your fiancé,’ he verifies.

‘Who,’ she says, licking her top teeth, ‘is commissioning my portrait in bronze.’

‘As a celebration of your impending union,’ he states.

‘So,’ she says coyly, ‘I suppose there was no need for me to undress?’ She eases Julius’s shirt over his shoulders and away.

‘No need at all,’ he confirms, skimming his hands up from her waist to her breasts. He places a thumb over each of her nipples and rubs small circles. The sound of her gasp causes his eyes to close and he sinks his mouth against hers, their tongues talking passion while their bodies begin to taste each other.

Since arriving in Paris three years ago, Julius Fetherstone has had sex with four prostitutes, two wealthy clients his senior by extremes, one of the studio models, and his landlady – coupling with whom is a necessity in lieu of rent, but necessitates closed eyes throughout. This afternoon, though, with Cosima, sex is different. New. They are both virgins together. Exploring and experiencing pleasures that are a taste, a smell, a sensation. At times tender, at others lewd, they fuck and make love, alternating seamlessly between the two, all afternoon.

At four thirty, he comes inside her one final time and they sleep for half an hour on the rug. When they awake, she walks calmly over to the screen and dresses. Barefoot, but in his shirt again, he folds the shutters back. The sun has gone. It surprises him. The studio had radiated such heat, appeared to be bathed in brilliance, time standing still. Cosima appears from the screen, neatly dressed. She sits demurely on the high stool and obediently turns her face this way and that at Julius’s command. He does not lift a pencil. He spends an hour just looking at her.

‘That’s fine,’ he declares, folding down the cover on the blank sheets.

‘I shall marry Jacques,’ Cosima proclaims, still holding her pose and looking out of the window. ‘He is rich and kind and he treasures me.’

‘I wish you happiness and health,’ Julius says, but he says it quietly. It doesn’t seem fair. Timing is lousy. He meets a mesmerizing woman, but she is betrothed to another to whom, ultimately, Julius is beholden.

‘Now that I have had you,’ Cosima adds, a breath of softness to her voice, ‘I can say that I truly want to marry Jacques. For whatever may be, however my life will unfurl, I will always have the memory of today.’

‘And now that I have had you,’ Julius clears his throat, ‘every time I sculpt a nude, your body will be at its core. Every time I model a pair of breasts, or carve the lips of a cunt, I will be feeling you again.’

‘Jacques arrives,’ Cosima whispers, taking her gaze from the window to the sculptor.

‘Goodbye, Cosima,’ says Julius.

‘Goodbye, Monsieur Fetherstone,’ says Cosima.