Storm Winds Read Free Page A

succeeded.
We’ve
succeeded. My father will never know the difference between this Wind Dancer and the one at Versailles.”
    Desedero shook his head. “Tell me, have you ever seen the real Wind Dancer?”
    “No, I’ve never visited Versailles.”
    Desedero’s gaze returned to the statue on the pedestal. “I remember vividly the first time I saw it some forty-two years ago. I was only a lad of ten and my father took me to Versailles to see the treasures that were dazzling the world. I saw the Hall of Mirrors.” He paused. “And I saw the Wind Dancer. What an experience. When you walked into my studio some year and ahalf ago with your offer of a commission to create a copy of the Wind Dancer, I could not pass it by. To replicate the Wind Dancer would have been sublime.”
    “And you’ve done it.”
    “You don’t understand. Had you ever seen the original, you would know the difference instantly. The Wind Dancer has …” He searched for a word. “Presence. One cannot look away from it. It captures, it holds”—he smiled crookedly—“as it’s held me for these forty-two years.”
    “And my father,” Andreas whispered. “He saw it once as a young man and has wanted it ever since.” He turned away. “And by God, he’ll have it. She took everything from him—but he
shall
have the Wind Dancer.”
    Desedero discreetly ignored the last remark, though he was well aware of the lady to whom Andreas referred. Charlotte, Denis Andreas’s wife, Jean Marc’s stepmother, had been dead over five years. Still the stories of her greed and treachery were much passed about.
    Sighing, Desedero shook his head. “You have only a
copy
of the Wind Dancer to give to your father.”
    “There’s no difference.” A hint of desperation colored Andreas’s voice. “My father will never see the two statues side by side. He’ll think he has the Wind Dancer until the day he—” He broke off, his lips suddenly pinched.
    “Your father is worse?” Desedero asked gently.
    “Yes, the physicians think he has no more than six months to live. He’s begun to cough blood.” He tried to smile. “So it’s fortunate you have finished the statue and could bring it now to the Ile du Lion. Yes?”
    Desedero had an impulse to reach out and touch him in comfort, but he knew Andreas was not a man who could accept such a gesture, so he merely said, “Very fortunate.”
    “Sit down.” Andreas picked up the statue and started toward the door of the salon. “I’ll take this to my father in his study. That’s where he keeps all the things he treasures most. Then I’ll return and tell you how wrong you were about your work.”
    “I hope I’m wrong,” Desedero said with a shrug. “Perhaps only the eye of an artist can perceive the difference.” He sat down in the straight chair his patron had indicated and stretched out his short legs. “Don’t hurry, Monsieur. You have many beautiful objects here for me to study. Is that a Botticelli on the far wall?”
    “Yes. My father purchased it several years ago. He much admires the Italian masters.” Andreas moved toward the door, carefully cradling the statue in his arms. “I’ll send a servant with wine, Signor Desedero.”
    The door closed behind him and Desedero leaned back in his chair, gazing blindly at the Botticelli. Perhaps the old man was too ill to detect the fraud being thrust upon him. Whole and well, he would have seen it instantly, Desedero realized, because everything in this house revealed Denis Andreas’s exquisite sensitivity and love of beauty. Such a man would have been as helplessly entranced with the Wind Dancer as Desedero always had been. Sometimes his own memories of his first visit to Versailles were bathed in mist from which only the Wind Dancer emerged clearly.
    He hoped for Jean Marc Andreas’s sake that his father’s memories had dimmed along with his sight.
    Jean Marc opened the door of the library, and beauty and serenity flowed over him. This room