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Ambri’s jaw clenched. “I’m aware.”
“I didn’t know anyone still lived there.”
“They haven’t. Not for hundreds of years.”
I frowned. “I’m not a whiz at math but didn’t you just say it was your childhood home?”
“I did. Stop interrupting. It just so happens that in the long, noble lineage of my family, there has been an unfortunate oversight. My official portrait has never been painted.”
“And you want me to paint it?”
“I will pay you quite handsomely. For supplies, canvas, paints. Whatever you need.”
For a few moments, hope and relief flooded me and then drained right back out.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can paint your portrait and then what?”
“I don’t understand.”
“It just puts off the inevitable. A stay of execution.” I offered a wan smile. “No offense to Anne Boleyn.”
Ambri arched a perfect brow. “The inevitable?”
“Going back to…”
The bridge?
“Where I was.” I shook my head. “You don’t want me, anyway. I’m not very good.”
“On the contrary, I’ve seen your work.”
“Mywork. Whatever that is.”
Ambri rolled his eyes. “They’ve done quite a number on you, haven’t they?” He continued before I could ask whotheywere. “You’re who I want for the job. You and no one else.”
“It’s a great offer,” I said. “God knows, I need it. But I haven’t been myself lately. What if the portrait turns out to be shit?”
“Impossible,” Ambri said. “I’ll be its subject, remember?”
I chuckled, but it died fast. “I don’t know. It sounds pretentious but…I’m just fucking lost. What you saw tonight on the bridge isn’t me. I graduated from the Royal Academy, for Christ’s sake. I edited the art magazine. I had prospects for the future and somehow, they all evaporated. Or maybe I didn’t do enough to keep them alive. Art is so subjective, one hundred people might love your work, a hundred might hate it, another hundred couldn’t care less, and they’d all be right. Unless you’re a Van Gogh or a Picasso, there’s no job security.”
Ambri frowned. “I doubt Van Gogh considered he hadjob security.”
“You know what I mean. He’s an undisputed master. Untouchable. I pushed myself to be untouchable too, to insulate myself from the criticism. Not from the outside world but from the noise in my own head. It was paralyzing, making me question every brushstroke, every line. Something I liked yesterday, sucks today. And I started to run out of the mental energy needed to push past all that and go out in the world and make a living.”
Ambri arched a perfect brow. “Perhaps you’d have better success if you didn’t try to talk paying clients out of hiring you.”
I chuckled again, feeling lighter despite myself, and looked at this strange man who dropped into my life.
Or slipped through a crack in the window?
“All that negative shit I was feeling about my work, it was like quicksand,” I said. “The more I fought against it, the more it sucked me down. Until…”
“Until?”
“Until I drew you as a demon. From my dreams, I guess. You make for a fucking beautiful fallen angel, Ambrosius. No offense.”
“None taken.”
