David Morrell - Burnt Sienna

“What happened when you went away with Bellasar?”

“In the limousine, as we drove to the airport, he looked at the bruises on my face. He told me he couldn’t let beauty be destroyed. He said he was going to make sure no one ever harmed my face again and that I never harmed myself, either. He brought me here. He had a plastic surgeon waiting to make sure the injuries to my face wouldn’t leave scars. He had a medical team detoxify me. He had a psychologist who specialized in eating disorders cure me of thinking food was my enemy. It took six months before the results met with Derek’s approval. He was so proud. He’d created me, he said. He’d walk around me, study me from all angles, beam, and say that my beauty wouldn’t have existed without him.” She shrugged wearily. “He was right. At the downward rate I was going, I’d have been dead in the time he took to resurrect me.”

“So he gave you what you needed. Finally, you had someone to take care of you.”

“Until three months ago.”

Malone frowned. “What happened then?”

“He came back from a business trip, and all of a sudden he’d changed. He complained about the start of wrinkles at the corners of my eyes. He claimed he saw a strand of gray in my hair. He warned me to stop being expressive with my face – the movement was starting to cause furrows in my brow, he said. I kept asking myself what had happened on that business trip to make him change. Had he fallen in love with another woman? When I raised the issue with him, it made him furious. He told me I was imagining things, that I had to get control of myself. I had my hair dyed, had facial scrubs, did whatever I thought would please him. But he only became more impatient with me. Nothing I did was good enough. I began to look forward to his trips away. They gave me a measure of peace. But each time he came back, he was even more critical.”

Malone opened his mouth to reassure her and abruptly stopped as something behind him made Sienna stiffen.

She jerked to her feet. “Honestly, Derek, we’re just talking about how to pose me. We’re just about to start working. I swear it.”

Bellasar stood in the doorway. “We’re flying to Istanbul. Be ready at five.” He narrowed his gaze toward Malone. “You have two weeks to finish your work.”

“That might not be enough time.”

“ Make it enough.”

“When I agreed to do the portraits, I told you I had to do them on my terms. You accepted those conditions.”

“The conditions have changed.”

“How am I supposed to work without a model? How long will Sienna be away?”

“As long as necessary.”

“Well, the longer she’s gone, the longer it’ll take me to finish.”

Bellasar’s eyes darkened. “I’m beginning to agree with Alex. It was a mistake to get involved with you. Five o’clock.” He turned angrily and left the room.

Watching him cross the terrace, Sienna shivered. “What time is it?”

“A little after three.”

“God, that doesn’t give me enough time.”

As she stood, Malone asked, “What’s in Istanbul? What’s so important?”

Her voice was tight. “Whenever this happens, it’s business. Several of Derek’s clients enjoy spending time with me. Derek has an easier time negotiating with them because I’m around.”

Malone nodded. Sure, Bellasar would be a bigger man in their eyes because he was married to a woman so beautiful.

“I can’t talk any longer.”

As she hurried away, Malone continued his thought. Yes, so much beauty might dazzle a client, might subtly affect his judgment. But what about when that beauty developed flaws? Bad for business. Bad for the rigid standards of a husband who couldn’t settle for less than perfection. Bad all the way around. When someone stopped fulfilling a necessary function, a replacement had to be found.

The sun was low enough to throw the terrace into shadow, but not enough that it didn’t cause a reflection off the spinning blades of a helicopter. Malone watched as Sienna, Bellasar, Potter, and three bodyguards got into it. She wore an elegant suit, her hair impeccably arranged. Even from a distance, her beauty was overwhelming, but also from that distance, Malone was able to tell how reluctantly she got into the chopper. In fact, she had the manner of a well-dressed prisoner being taken to a trial. Or to a funeral.

The metaphor made him uneasy. As the helicopter roared away, he felt a stab of separation.

Accustomed to cocktails with Sienna each evening at seven, Malone was more uneasy as that hour approached. I would have started down to the library by now, he thought. Instead, he roamed those sections of the grounds permitted to him, a frustrated animal trying to relieve tension. When sunset finally tinted the shrubs, statues, and ponds of the estate, he decided that he ought to try to eat something, but sitting alone at the long candlelit table, he only poked at the veal cutlets that had been prepared for him. He couldn’t stop wondering where Sienna was and what she was doing.

If she was still alive.

He had a sudden harrowing image of Bellasar hurling her from the chopper, of her body crashing onto rocks, or of Potter blowing her brains out and dumping her into the sea. No! he kept telling himself. Bellasar’s manner suggested that he needs her. For now at least. The crisis won’t come until after Istanbul.

He slept fitfully. In the morning, trying to subdue his mind, he extended his calisthenics from one to two hours, but his fear for Sienna intensified. He went to the sunroom and spread out his sketches, gazing at her features. Drawing her from memory, he imagined that she was seated before him, talking to him.

He went to the library. Smelling the must of its ancient volumes, he crossed the carpet to the far wall and climbed a ladder to the middle shelves. It was toward them that Bellasar had gestured the evening the portrait had been unveiled, the evening Bellasar had compared Sienna to Dante’s Beatrice, the inspiration for the Divine Comedy . “If you’re curious about Dante and Beatrice, Rossetti translated Dante’s autobiography,” Bellasar had said. “You’ll find an 1861 edition of Dante and His Circle over there…”

Bellasar had said something else: that Beatrice had died young and that Dante had obsessed about her ever after. Malone couldn’t avoid the insistent comparison: Is Sienna going to die young?

I’ve got to stop thinking about death.

Because the books were arranged alphabetically by author, he had no trouble finding the volume he wanted. In the process, he thought it curious that Rossetti’s first name was Dante, the same as the poet whose autobiography he had translated. He sat in a leather chair, opened the book, and came to the first time Dante had seen Beatrice.

Her dress, on that day, was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson… At that moment, I say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook.

Yes, Malone thought.

Two nights later, Sienna still hadn’t returned.

Malone lay tensely on his bed, listening to the sounds of guards patrolling in the darkness beyond his window. The intervening slow passage of time had been agonizing, but it had given him a chance to plan.

Rosetti’s translation of Dante lay open before him.

The same wonderful lady appeared to me dressed all in pure white… Because it was the first time that any words from her reached mine ears, I came into such sweetness that I parted thence as one intoxicated.