Page 41 of A Dangerous Bargain

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Medici want to speak to you.”

I flinch, sending my and Leonardo’s painting palette crashing to the workshop floor. “Why would they ever want to do that?”

Verrocchio drags his frown up from the rainbow smear on his shoes. “Because you two are working on the workshop’s wedding commission for them?”

I put down my brush with a shaking hand, trying to ignore the simmering panic in my belly. If Leonardo is also panicking, he’s hiding it better than me, though his eyes have seemed unfocused lately, clouded with thoughts he doesn’t share.

After making me scatter sawdust on the paint spill, Verrocchio motions someone at the workshop door forward. A solicitous little man with spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose comes forward, his wrinkled hands clasped behind his stooped back. Not Piero or Lorenzo, but someone employed by the Medici household.

I pull a hand down my mouth, shoulders relaxing. Cristo santo, Verrocchio really should be more specific with his Medici. ’Tis rude to frighten someone half to death.

The man presses his nose so close to the canvas, I expect him to come away with paint on it. “Hmm, no magic in this yet?”

I glance at Leonardo to catch his eye, but he’s not looking at me. “Erm… no.”

The man’s spectacles magnify his stare, making my skin prickle. “Have you two worked with magic before? The Medici are eager to work with a personal painter who feels comfortable with the angels’ gifts.”

Oh ho, I imagine they are! I choke back a snort and hold out my forearms. “Yeah, I’ve made a bargain or two before.”

The Medici’s man examines the long rows of black marks scoring my skin, and bows with a supercilious smile. “My masters will be pleased to hear it.”

As suddenly as he arrived, he’s gone, walking out with Verrocchio. It’s odd for a patron to send someone to examine their commission before it’s done, odder still that the Medici’s man barely looked at our painting at all. I think we could’ve shown him a painting of Giorgio’s infamous phallic fruits and he wouldn’t have noticed.

I slide closer to Leonardo as soon as the workshop door closes. “What do you think all that was about?”

He doesn’t answer. He takes about a century filling in a detail on Lorenzo’s collar with the tip of his brush before his eyes flick to mine, dark and unreadable. “C’mon, Virgil. Do we really need to talk about it? I think you already know.”

His annoyance feels like getting snapped at by a friendly hound. “What’s your problem these days?”

He bites his lip and drags a hand through his hair, clearly about to launch into a lecture of some kind—then he sighs and lets the red-gold mass tumble to his shoulders. “You know what? I’m not going to explain this one to you.”

“Explain what to me?”

“It’ll come to you or it won’t,” he says lightly, sidestepping me to go replace the paints I’ve ruined without making eye contact.

I gape at his retreating back. Unbelievable! What have I done to upset him?

Lupa slouches forward with a furrowed brow. She’s sitting in a chair behind me, one of the garden cats curled around her neck. “Humans confuse me,” she says. “He wants to spend time with you, then he does not suddenly. Why is this?”

“A very good question,” I mutter darkly. There was a time in the not-so-recent past when I wouldn’t have given a damn what Leonardo felt about me, but judging from the tight, buzzing feeling in my chest as I stare at him hunching over the pigment table, I now care quite a bit what he thinks of me. Sodding hell, I didn’t ask for this!

I beckon Lupa closer, whispering so the half-finished putto statues can’t overhear. Putti are terrible gossips. “I think I hurt his feelings.”

She inhales deeply, nostrils flaring. “I smell no blood. What part of the body are the feelings in?”

“They’re in your head.”

“They are not real, then?”

“No, they are. When the cat purrs on your lap, what do you do?”

Lupa scoffs, as if my question is insultingly dull. “I stay still because the cat is on me.”

“Right, but why do you stay still? Do you like it when the cat purrs?”

Her frown bends, becomes a pensive line. Her fingers sink into the fur around the cat’s neck, and the creature relaxes more blissfully against her. “I like it. It makes me want to stay.”