Page 9 of Zenith
5
The eventat the art gallery seemed to have been forgotten a few days after it happened.
I’d taken to viewing Rivers’s progress with his modern abstract landscapes when I left in the morning and returned at night, utterly entranced at how they changed throughout the day. He didn’t show it, but I was sure he was pleased I was showing such an interest in his work.
It wasn’t until almost a week after the incident at the gallery when he approached me with a perplexing question, and certainly one I’d never expected him to ask me.
“Jane,” he said, standing beside me as I surveyed his latest progress on a silver-toned landscape. “May I ask you something?”
My hackles began to rise, but I nodded, wondering what he of all people could want from me.
“You have a beauty I desire to capture,” he murmured. “You have no doubt seen the context of my work? You were the inspiration, and the crowning jewel in the series would be a grand portrait of you, Jane. You must sit for me.”
I fidgeted nervously, not knowing how to discourage him. I longed for Edward then, knowing he would put a finite stop to Rivers’s advances, but I had run from him even as I had run from dealing with the full force of my broken heart. I had no one but myself to blame for this turn of events. Even Adele had warned me, and she did not even know a thing about me!
“I’m afraid I cannot,” I replied, my voice wavering slightly.
“You must,” he said more firmly. “I’m afraid I cannot paint you from memory and do your features justice. Nor would a photograph suffice. A camera cannot capture the same light as the naked eye, and it would do you an injustice.”
“Why me? I know you said… I… I’m not an adequate subject.”
Rivers frowned, his brow creasing as he swept away the shock of unruly hair that usually hung in his eyes. “I see I have made you uncomfortable.”
I wrapped my arms around my waist and shied away from him. “It seems rather…intimate.”
“In truth, it is,” he murmured. “I have an uncanny ability to bring out the true nature of my subjects even as they attempt to hide it.”
“Are you still worried about that?” I inquired. “I have told you everything, Rivers.”
He smiled, his eyes lowering. “No, not at all. I believe you are quite sincere. I merely mean to say that I wish to paint the real Jane. The one I see below the quiet exterior, the one behind the insecurities. The one marked by the very landscape I have spent months painting.” He watched my reaction, but I had closed myself off, remaining passive to his attempts to draw me out. “For it has marked you, has it not?”
“All life’s experiences mark people, though not as deeply as you may think.”
He smiled, his lips curving into a knowing expression, and he raised his hand. Brushing his fingers along the curve of my neck, I began to tremble, alarm bells ringing shrilly in the back of my mind.
I shrank away from his touch and turned to the side.
“Consider it,” he said, the tenor of his voice changing. “It would make the collection so much more than it is. I’m sure some rich businessman would snap it up in an instant and hang it in his living room. Jane Doe… You suit your name very much, do you know that? You are as elusive as a wild doe in the forest.”
I swallowed hard, angling my face toward the darkness. “Then let me disappear as such, for I cannot sit for you, Rivers. I do not wish to be subject to such whimsical desire. I fear I am too delicate for it.”
He nodded, his face etched with his troubled thoughts. “If you wish, but the offer still remains.”
I backed away hastily, leaving him to ponder his painting in solitary silence. Rivers had been a good friend to me these past weeks, but no matter what I attempted to do, he seemed besotted with the chase. I would not allow the friendship to grow into romance, for despite his rugged charm, I did not feel attracted to him. Any union would be hollow on my behalf, and we would both be left hurting at the end of it all.
I did not know what to do next to keep the friendship intact, but one thing was certain above all else—I needed to separate myself from him as soon as possible. I needed to find someplace else to live.
* * *
The next morning, I decided I had to chance accessing my bank accounts if I was to find my own place to live away from the studio.
Sense told me if Edward was looking and he was able to find my name, the next course of action he would take was to trace the activity on my bank accounts. So I took a bus across the city and found myself on Oxford Street in Soho. Entering the first HSBC bank branch I found, I set about my business with haste.
Mr. Briggs had given me all the details I needed to access my accounts, and I had logins and passwords for the bank’s online systems. Not having access to a computer, I hadn’t used them yet, so I slipped in front of one of the self-service terminals to see what I could learn about my financial situation. It was one thing being told, but to see it before your very eyes was entirely another.
Typing in the information, I was glad for the screen that had been placed over the monitor, affording privacy from prying eyes. When the accounts loaded, I hesitated, waiting for the moment a siren would wail alerting staff to the wealthy customer in their midst, but nothing happened.
I must have stood there for five minutes in a complete daze before a member of staff approached me.
