The Girl with the Botticelli Eyes

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The Girl with the Botticelli Eyes

Herbert Lieberman

Contents

Prologue

PART ONE

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

PART TWO

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Twenty-six

Twenty-seven

Twenty-eight

Twenty-nine

Thirty

Thirty-one

Thirty-two

Thirty-three

Thirty-four

Thirty-five

Thirty-six

PART THREE

Thirty-seven

Thirty-eight

Thirty-nine

Forty

Forty-one

Forty-two

Forty-three

Forty-four

Forty-five

Forty-six

Epilogue

Postscript

About the Author

For Jean and Adrian Marcuse

Prologue

IT WAS HOT, SO they left the doors open. If you stared at them for a while, you could see the waves of heat rising off the damp stone walk just across the threshold. Sunlight streaming through the branches of an olive tree outside washed the marble entryway in thick shadows of black and gray. And beyond the door, a jagged line of dome and corkscrew shapes stood silhouetted against a sky of dazzling blue.

It was nearly 5:30 P.M., and within the Church of St. Stephen, a tiny Christian church in Istanbul, it was a half hour to closing. St. Stephen’s is a little-known structure dating back to the time of Bajazet I. An extension of stone fortress built during the Crusades, it sits astride the western slopes of the Golden Horn. Never a major attraction to the general run of tourists, unlike Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Dolmabahçe Palace, or the Topkapi, the church is known mostly to Turkish Christians and to art historians who come there from all parts of the world to view its chief attraction—the splendid Byzantine murals and mosaics over seven centuries old.

During this particular afternoon, the flow of tourists had been light but steady. Now, at this late hour, only a handful of people still lingered in the fast-fading light of the basilica.

St. Stephen’s sole security guard was an aged sexton. Imprisoned in a thick robe of gray twill, clearly hot and tired, the poor man did his best to fulfill a guard’s function. With the sun slanting westward and the great clock in the tower outside the church ticking off the few remaining minutes until closing, the sexton had grown noticeably restless. Shifting from one foot to the other, he watched the visitors circle the little area, view the various exhibits hanging there, light votive candles in the vestibule, then file out through the open door. On his face, he wore that expression of sullen resentment so characteristic of underpaid petty functionaries the world over.

One of the visitors lingered longer than the rest. A shapeless gray figure—ill-kempt but respectable—he wore a long, transparent raincoat of some synthetic substance—the sort that can be folded into a neat square and slipped into a jacket pocket. On the coat in question, the squares of the fold lines showed clearly in the straight gridlike ridges running both the length and width of the coat.

This person’s most prominent feature was a headful of bushy hair of nondescript color. A rather large pair of yellowish incisors protruded ever so slightly over his lower lip, forcing the mouth into an expression of fixed petulance.

In one of the tiny chapels off to the side, scarcely observed, the man stood riveted before a small painting. Executed in oil and tempera, in the thirty-two-by-forty-seven-centimeter category, it was attributed to Botticelli. The subject was a portrait of the good Centurion whose slave Christ heals, as told in the Gospels of both Matthew and Luke.

Here, the Centurion is seen in a simple three-quarter pose. Attired in a pale white belted tunic that barely hints at the muscularity of the figure below, his face is long and sharply lined, with high cheeks and eyes that convey a mixture of both power and gentleness. Upon the viewer, he turns the shrewd, vigilant gaze of a wise man, a knower of arcane things. It is a look of keen and disarming intelligence.

The man poised before this painting was now the last person in the church. Anyone near him would have been struck by his total absorption in the subject. A dreamy expression on his face, he muttered words half-aloud to himself, oblivious to his surroundings, or to the fact that the church was suddenly empty and that the sexton was now glancing with frank impatience in his direction.

In the next instant, the man’s arm rose. Something bright and metallic shot from the bottom of his sleeve. The sexton watched with fascination as the shiny object leaped upward to the top right-hand corner of the painting, then, with a single uninterrupted slash, plunged diagonally downward to the bottom left corner. A noise like ripping cloth followed.

The motion was repeated, this time starting at the upper left-hand corner, then once more descending with a fierce, rhythmic rage, over and over again.

Manship was in Munich, at the Alta Pinakothek, viewing paintings, when he was informed of it. Twenty-four hours later, he was back in Istanbul at the Church of St. Stephen, surveying the wreckage. The little chapel in which the painting had hung was cordoned off. A variety of forensic specialists and Turkish police padded noiselessly about, carrying out their duties. Though tourists were still permitted in to view other parts of the church, there was all about the place an air of hushed reverence, like a mortuary to which people have come to pay final respects to one recently deceased. As of yet, the police had picked up no suspects.

By means of an official pass authorized by the Turkish government, Manship was allowed into the chapel. He stood there now, silent and grim, gazing at the painting, the thing he’d viewed whole and gorgeous less than a fortnight ago. As a curator and the man charged with the responsibility of bringing the painting to the United States for a massive Botticelli retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum, he was beset by a horde of practical questions. First and foremost was to ascertain the degree of destruction sustained by the painting, then to determine whatever reasonable expectations he might have of repairing it in time for the exhibition’s opening in late September.

When Manship entered the church that morning, a blush of healthful pink had suffused his sharply angled features. Over the course of a few hours, his pallor had drained to something like that of old parchment. Less than two weeks ago, he’d left Istanbul ecstatic, having successfully negotiated terms for the painting’s temporary loan, the first time this startling Botticelli, virtually unknown in the West, would be exhibited. Now, in this ancient little church full of the dank musk of centuries, he was back again to see what might be salvaged from the pitiful ragged strips hanging on the wall there still in their frame.

Though the painting was unsigned, Manship had no doubt what it was. Layered with dust, encrusted with five centuries of grime, it hung in a dark niche at the rear of the tiny chapel, illuminated by no more than a few votive candles guttering in the damp, cryptlike air. But not even grime and dust and the absence of decent light could conceal the unmistakable brushwork, the streaks of dazzling color leaping like flames from out of the ruins of it.

It had taken his breath away, finding it there like that. Old Yampolski had talked about it on several occasions. But who listened to Yampolski these days? Manship had thought it was nothing more than an old man’s (albeit a brilliant old man’s) flight of fancy. A leading figure in the field of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century European painting, Yampolski was said to be failing rapidly, along with his memory and whatever meager worldly fortunes he’d managed to accumulate as an art critic and historian.

Manship had been so thrilled with the find that in a burst of gratitude he’d rewarded the old man with the job of writing the catalog for the show, his chief motive being to put some much-needed cash into his former teacher’s pocket.

The next morning, the Centurion, packed in crates specially designed to control temperature and humidity, then entrusted to the care of a team of trained couriers, lifted off the tarmac at Istanbul International Airport en route to Italy. Cabled ahead from Turkey, Signor Emilio Torelli cleared his work schedule and readied his staff and atelier to receive the badly mutilated canvas. Torelli was a genius. In the field of restoration he was looked upon as something of a miracle worker, his name uttered with a kind of hushed awe. He ran his shop on the outskirts of Florence in much the same manner as large urban hospitals run first-class emergency wards.

Torelli was Manship’s only hope. The Centurion had become the exhibit’s first casualty. Manship was determined there would be no others.

PART ONE

One

TWENTY-FIVE, TWENTY-FIVE. Do I hear thirty? I hear thirty. Now I have thirty. Do I hear thirty-five? Gentleman over there in the corner with the handsome yellow necktie. Splendid. Thirty-five is my bid. Thirty-five. Come now, let’s not be shy. We can do better than thirty-five for this excellent museum-quality sketch. Forty is surely not too high. Lady Beresford. Splendid. We have forty. Forty thousand, then. We have forty thousand.

The voice of the auctioneer droned on, piping numbers while the low murmur of some eighty or ninety people gathered in the small airless hall rose and fell upon his every intonation.

It was midsummer in London and the private Sotheby’s salon was packed with perhaps a dozen more bodies than it was ever intended to contain. Dusk coming on, an elderly white-haired attendant tottered around the room, lighting the small electric sconces that lined the walls at intervals.

Sixty-five. Sixty-five. The auctioneer’s voice prodded, taunted, and caressed.

Mark Manship sat there, knees crossed so lightly, they scarcely seemed to touch each other. His thatchy mane of salt-and-pepper hair had barely begun to recede at the forehead, and there was a certain elegant emaciation in the drawn, pallid lines of his face, like a Greco saint. Tall, gangly, boyish-looking, even in his late thirties, he seemed uneffaced by time.

Alert and upright in his chair, hands clasped in his lap, he gave an impression of innocence and inexperience that may have been just a bit disingenuous.

Quatre-vingt. The words issued from a long, Gallic face belonging to a man known to Manship as the director of the Louvre. Manship’s eyes wandered upward to the ceiling above him. It was a Baroque ceiling, bronze and coffered into separate panels in which raised friezes depicted various mythological stories. Just above him, several plump cupids, their cheeks swollen, puffed into coach horns.

Eighty. We have eighty, cried the auctioneer at the block. Who’ll give us eighty-five?

The object of all this attention was a small Madonna drawn by Botticelli in the late fifteenth century. It was one of a series of thirteen small line sketches executed by the painter at the request of his powerful patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Note the curious mixture of vigor combined with delicate refinement, said the auctioneer. His name was Philpot. The verticality, the unbroken linear perfection, the absolute confidence of the stroke— Philpot was much given to talk like that. It was his stock-in-trade. Truly an excellent example, ladies and gentlemen. Mint condition. Eighty-five. Come now. Let’s hear you. Eighty-five. Very good. Right over there.

Manship continued to sit with his hands folded in his lap. He seemed as removed from the bidding as he was from anything else going on at the moment. He gazed everywhere but at the drawing. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed his counterpart at the prestigious Getty Museum smiling sardonically back at him. Manship nodded to the man and received a deep, ceremonious nod in return.

I believe that was your hand then, Mr. Manship? said the auctioneer.

It was.

Splendid, the auctioneer enthused, for he knew the real bidding had at last begun. Ninety is now the bid of the Metropolitan Museum, he croaked happily.

The presence to Manship’s left moved abruptly. Ninety-five.

Ninety-five from Mr. Allenby of the Getty.

The action in the hall froze for a moment while everyone gazed at Manship.

One hundred thousand, came the bid.

One hundred. We have one hundred thousand pounds, ladies and gentlemen.

One hundred and five, cried a heretofore-unheard voice behind Manship and to his right. It was Carstairs of London’s National Gallery.

One hundred and five from Mr. Carstairs.

By then, most of the private, unaffiliated bidders had dropped out. Several of the attendants, including the charwomen and even the gray-uniformed guards, sensing drama, had gathered at the entrance.

Mr. Philpot, showing a large gap-tooth smile, beamed down from his place on the block. Manship’s hand rose again.

One hundred and ten, cried the auctioneer. His eyes swept the room, darting back and forth from Carstairs to Allenby. We have one hundred and ten. Do I hear fifteen? Fifteen. Let’s hear fifteen.

A Japanese gentleman, up until then a silent presence, hoisted a tremulous finger. If there was anyone Manship feared, it was that one.

The man on the block pounced. One hundred and twenty, he cried, his cheeks flamed. We have one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.

Twenty-five, Carstairs countered. Nothing of his face moved but an eyebrow.

Manship sat quietly. They were carooming toward two hundred and thirty thousand dollars now. He felt the spiteful smile of his colleague from the Getty and imagined with some-amusement the shocked indignation of the Metropolitan trustees. His finger rose again.

Is that thirty, Mr. Manship? said the auctioneer.

It is.

One thirty, then. We have one thirty.

Thirty-five, said Allenby, but this time Manship was certain he detected hesitation.

We have thirty-five from Mr. Allenby, the auctioneer cried, and stared hard at the curator from the National Gallery. But by then, Carstairs had little stomach for more. He shrugged and shook his head.

Thirty-five, then. The bid holds at one thirty-five. Mr. Philpot’s gavel inched upward above his head. He was watching Manship, who was watching the ascent of the gavel.

Just then, the finger of the silent Japanese gentleman rose again, this time to one forty, intended as a preemptive strike. A gasp pulsed through the hall.

Trustees be damned—Manship’s finger cocked up to meet the challenge. One forty-three, three. He heard his voice come back at him across vast distances.

The auctioneer was in a transport of ecstasy. People at the back of the hall had risen from their seats to see better.

The ball was once again in the Japanese gentleman’s court. The man on the block gazed intently at him. One fifty. One fifty is the call. The gavel resumed its slow ascent. An unearthly silence roared in on them. Going … going … All eyes watched the Japanese gentleman, his face an impassive mask as the gavel reached its apogee then plunged downward, striking the block with an awesome crack. The challenge had gone unanswered.

One hundred and forty-three thousand three hundred pounds it is. To Mr. Manship and the Metropolitan Museum.

He was suddenly surrounded by a flood of well-wishers—perfect strangers surging forward, pumping his hand, mumping his back.

Bravo.

Well done, sir.

A band of gallery officials swarmed down upon him. There were papers to sign, questions to answer, forms to complete. Sotheby’s director, Hiram McCallish, came steaming up. He was a large Scot with a ruddy face and a scrawl of veins raking each jowl.

I knew you’d take it, Mark. Once you get something in that pigheaded mind of yours. And frankly—he glanced sideward at the Japanese gentleman in the corner—I’m always delighted to see one of that lot routed for a change. McCallish had been a prisoner of the Japanese in Malaysia during the closing months of the big war, and there was no love lost there.

Manship signed several documents while a wolf pack of shouting reporters encircled him.

When does New York get to see your show, Mr. Manship? asked the correspondent of the Daily Mail.

With any luck at all, the third week in September.

Do you think you’ll have everything you planned by then?

If I know him, he will, McCallish said. He might even resurrect old Botticelli for the event.

They laughed and Manship handed the big Scot the Metropolitan Museum’s check for $229,000. McCallish held it at arm’s length, inspecting it.

May we have one of you smiling at the check, Mr. McCallish? asked a photographer. A flashbulb ignited before anyone could refuse.

A man from Lloyd’s came up. He already had the drawing in tow. It was wrapped in simple brown tar paper. Two armed guards stood behind him.

You’ll take good care of that now, said Manship.

Yes, sir. It leaves tonight for Florence by special courier.

Mr. Torelli will be at the airport to receive it.

He’d better be, said the Lloyd’s man, laughing. Just sign here, if you will, sir. He held a standard policy form out for Manship. You’ll want the same half million again, I presume.

McCallish shooed them all away. He took Manship by the arm and steered him through the lingering crowd just starting to drift off. Come on up. I’ve something nice chilling on the ice.

Manship let himself be guided into a narrow little coffin of an elevator that swayed and cranked its way haltingly up to the penthouse of the Sotheby building where McCallish’s private suite of offices was located.

Claude says you have the Lemmi frescoes. How’d you manage that?

It wasn’t easy.

I don’t doubt it. McCallish dabbed at his neck with a wad of tissue. Old Baudreuil is damned near impossible. You must have promised him all of Eighty-sixth Street. He sighed. "And the Duveen Madonna? I suppose you’ve got that, too?"

Hollander ran it down for me in Bruges. Needs a bit of retouching, but otherwise …

Wizard, dear boy. Wizard. There was a look of genuine wonder in the old Scot’s rheumy eyes. And the Chigi sketches? What number are you up to now? There must be some fifteen, if I’m not mistaken.

Thirteen. With this one, I’ve now got nine.

McCallish hummed in admiration. Hard to believe that thirteen Botticelli drawings could have gone unseen for so long.

Not all that hard when you consider they’ve been scattered all over the map for five centuries. No one knew what they were.

McCallish laughed scornfully. Incredible. Simply incredible.

The director’s long red nose whistled as he peeled the lead capsule from a bottle of Pol Roger. The cork popped. Commissioned by Lorenzo himself, were they not?

"Lorenzino, actually. Lorenzo the Great’s cousin, the fellow who commissioned the Primavera and the Venus."

McCallish’s face purpled as he bent stiffly from the waist to pour champagne into a pair of chilled flutes. Done before 1500, I should say.

Manship’s brow wrinkled in thought. Somewhere between 1490 and 1497. He reached up to accept a glass. The line is quite different from the sort of thing Sandro was doing after 1500.

Christina of Sweden figures in there somewhere, doesn’t she? McCallish smacked his lips, savoring the wine. Oh, I dare say, that’s lovely.

She bought eight and bequeathed them to the Vatican.

Those beggars give you much trouble?

They were very decent, actually. No problem.

McCallish sipped. They can be prickly about loans, you know.

A police siren went whooping past outside.

And the remaining four? Where were they?

In the hands of an Italian bookseller in Paris. Fellow called Molini, who sold them to William Beckford.

Oh yes, of course. My father knew Beckford. Great collector. First-rate eye. Odd sort of chap.

And Beckford’s estate passed them on to his daughter.

The Duchess of Hamilton. Well … you know the rest Manship raised his glass to permit another half flute to be poured.

When they had settled into the pair of commodious facing settees, McCallish extended an open humidor of Churchills, one of which Manship accepted. There followed some fumbling with a balky butane lighter. Shortly, the air grew thick with the rich, earthy odor of good Havana.

Succumbing to the effect of vintage champagne and a fine cigar, McCallish closed his eyes and leaned back into the cushions. Where to from here?

I’m off to Paris tonight to pick up another of the drawings.

Old DeMornay, I imagine. That leaves three to go.

That’s the rub. I don’t know where those last three are. I’ve got a few leads, but they’re thin, and I don’t have much time. Right after Paris, I’ll make a dash over to Berlin.

Berlin?

The German police. The last they heard of the sketches, they were in Leipzig. Probably stolen during the war.

Their art-theft division might be helpful there.

I’m already on to them. They’ve very generously promised to open their files to me.

McCallish blew a luxurious column of smoke into the air, then grew solemn. Heard all about that mess in Istanbul last week. Nasty business. What do you make of it?

Manship thought a moment, then shook his head. I don’t know what to make of it

When he reached his hotel in Carlos Place, the concierge handed him his cables and a list of phone messages. Manship went directly up to his room and drew a hot bath. Immersing himself in the healing potion of suds and steamy water, he gradually felt the jagged shards of nerves subside and nearly drowsed.

But into those easeful moments crept the thought of the attack on the Centurion the week prior in Istanbul. He wondered if it was an isolated incident or if it had something to do with the upcoming Botticelli show. He knew that there were people in the art world, so-called colleagues in lofty positions in other museums, even his own at the Metropolitan, who resented the show, whose smiles were venomous, and who cordially wished to see it fail—for no better reason than that it wasn’t their own. Manship didn’t whine about such things. He simply took it as a fact of life. Call it envy, competitiveness. In the museum world, it went with the territory. But would a colleague go so far as to vandalize a world-class painting in order to detract from the good fortune of another curator? Manship found that far-fetched and put the thought out of his head.

He turned instead to more pressing matters—namely, the show scheduled for an opening in New York in late September. He’d been given the job of mounting a Botticelli retrospective on the occasion of the 550th birthday of the great Renaissance master. It was to be the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of the Florentine painter’s work ever assembled under one. roof.

Manship had worked feverishly on the project over the past five years—buying, borrowing, tracking down all of the major paintings the world over—something over one hundred canvases. Most of them were already in New York, or else in Florence undergoing restoration. Those already in New York were being cataloged by scholars and assembled by the leading specialists in the field. Lighting experts were even then at work rewiring the entire second floor of the Metropolitan in order to present the paintings in the most advantageous illumination. Lawyers were drawing up contracts, hammering out terms for both sales and loans.

All of the major museums of the world were contributing to the show. The Louvre had promised the Guidi Madonna. The Lemmi frescoes were coming from Belgium and the Corsini Madonna from the National Gallery in Washington. The Saint Sebastian had just been flown across the Atlantic from the Staatliche Museum in Berlin. The papal frescoes were due from the Vatican and the predella panels were coming from the Accademia in Florence. The Uffizi itself was to make the major presentation with the medallion portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici, the tondo Madonna of the Pomegranate, the Adoration of the Magi, and the two breathtaking masterpieces, the Primavera and the Birth of Venus.

The final and most difficult job was still incomplete. It had been left to Manship to gather from a host of widely scattered sources some thirteen drawings, all executed by Botticelli as warm-up exercises in preparation for the painting of the Chigi Madonna. The painting itself was en route from the Gardner in Boston. Having all thirteen drawings was considered by the museum directors to be an absolute imperative. The drawings had literally been lost for centuries; hence, their appearance at the museum was generating the most excitement. Every major newspaper, periodical, and scholarly journal was sending representatives. The media coverage planned was rumored to be staggering, since the show was to be the highpoint of the Metropolitan’s year. On the success of it depended whether or not Manship would replace soon-to-retire William Osgood as the next director of the Metropolitan.

Manship had been a curator for the past dozen years of his life. In and out of several notable museums until, at twenty-six, he was catapulted into the sort of splashy fame that only the arts seem able to bestow. A wunderkind, he was appointed curator of Renaissance painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and, in a short time, as everyone had warned, he’d roused the ire of older generations of curators whose careers were then sliding into the twilight.

In the pursuit of his duties, he was tireless. He would travel anywhere to see a newly discovered Verrocchio, Piero, or Titian. A brilliant administrator, idolized by those who worked beneath him, he was one-of the first curators empowered to bid at auctions and private sales on multi-million-dollar works of art, a privilege entrusted to few of his peers.

In something just under five years of his appointment, he had transformed the museum’s Renaissance wing from an indifferent melange of second-rate Italian works into one of the most stunning and cohesive collections of Quattrocento painting in the world.

There was no doubt he had done well. Articles were written about him. He was photographed at thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raisers and power restaurants, dining with society ladies all with three names. He loathed that side of the job, but that was the bread and butter. That’s what kept the museum’s doors open over three hundred days a year.

Certainly he had enemies. Any man in as powerful and as coveted a position was bound to. But he also had friends in high places and knew how and when to use them. His future was bright, and after the autumn opening of the Botticelli extravaganza (depending on its outcome, of course), it should be many times brighter. A seat on the board could not be far behind.

Over the past months, he’d wheedled and cajoled and bullied the bulk of the paintings and drawings for the exhibit out of estates and from professional dealers all highly experienced at the art of extracting valuable concessions from ambitious curators. Assembling all thirteen drawings of the Chigi series for the show would be the topmost feather in Manship’s cap.

Still, three of the full series defied detection. Manship had already exhausted all of his sources, save one, as well as a small fortune trying to track them down. Nearly a million dollars had already been expended on that aspect of the show alone. That afternoon at Sotheby’s, bidders had forced the price of one of the drawings into the stratosphere. Manship had gone well over his budget and would undoubtedly have to go back to his superiors for additional funding. The prospect didn’t please him, since begging was not Manship’s strong suit. He’d already had several scorching wires from Osgood expressing the dismay of the trustees over his reckless extravagance.

Well, what did they expect? They wanted the whole series, insisted upon it. Did they think the world was made up of philanthropists and do-gooders all just panting for a chance to lay their priceless works of art at the exalted feet of the Metropolitan? And for what? A smile? A pat on the back? A pair of complimentary passes to the big show and a letter of commendation from William Osgood III? Not even a little something you could send to the Internal Revenue Service at tax time in the hope of a much-needed deduction was that enticing.

He laughed bitterly, suds sliding down the length of his long, bony frame as he rose from the tub.

Two

I’VE BEEN WATCHING YOU for several days now.

I know you have.

You do? Was I that obvious?

Yes. I kept wondering when you’d finally get up the nerve to approach.

He laughed at her bluntness and watched her drain her coffee.

Do you come here every day?

I like the coffee here.

Can I buy you another? he asked.

If you like. And I could use a roll and butter while you’re at it. She spoke without looking at him.

Pointing to an assortment of baked goods, he signaled the counterman. A scratchy announcement sounded over the PA system, totally garbled in the vast, high-ceilinged hall. All the same, people rose hastily from their stools, dropping coins on the countertop, and scurried off to various passenger gates where buses, idling their engines, spewed diesel fumes into the air and waited to carry them off to their destinations.

He watched her pounce on her food with ravenous hunger. He was certain she hadn’t eaten for days. She was pathetically thin and her clothes were not all that fresh. She could be no more than twenty-four or twenty-five, he judged, though she looked closer to forty; she was still attractive, but in a tired, badly used way, and with that sullen look of availability.

You know why I’ve been watching you? he asked.

She stared straight ahead, dabbing a napkin at her heavily painted lips with an almost laughable elegance. No. But I can imagine.

He caught the world-weary note in her voice.

I mean it. Seriously.

Yes, of course you do.

Your eyes.

My eyes?

Yes. They’re Botticelli eyes.

Who?

Botticelli—the painter. You have the very same eyes as his Venus and his Primavera.

She listened, not bothering to conceal the smirk, merely wondering why a