Caine's portrait was finally finished, and Bleys had invited him to see it unveiled this afternoon in the sunroom.
Orinda was aware that Bleys had asked her to paint Caine's portrait as something of a jest, a move in the game he was playing with Caine, tempting him to join what she thought of as the red-headed cabal. The public face of the cabal, Bleys was charming when he wanted, but she tended to think of him as marred by a certain sulkiness when he didn't get his own way. Clarissa, she thought, had failed somehow in his training.
Caine was tricky. There was little kindness in him, and little enough else that he would show. It had taken longer than she liked to find his likeness and elicit it in paint on the canvas. It wasn't a Trump, of course, but Orinda liked to capture as much of a subject's essence as she could in even the least of her portraits.
What Caine and Bleys had talked openly of during his sittings was politics and the state of the realm. Orinda had learned more about Amber's military in the last few weeks than she had learned in all her years in Amber. The family politics she'd had a better grasp on, though she'd never realized how intense Caine's dislike of Random was.
Some of that showed in the painting. In fact, to Orinda's mind, the portrait showed as much about her as it did about Caine. Orinda would never have confessed that, but Bleys was perceptive enough that Dworkin probably would have warned her against agreeing to paint Caine for him if he'd been available and not absent as he too often was.
Not that denying Prince Bleys anything was an option for Lady Orinda. It was a mercy of God or her great-grandmother the Unicorn that he wasn't interested in her in other ways as well.
The portrait stood on an easel, covered, waiting for Bleys and Caine, as Orinda sat waiting for them in her chair across the room from it. They kept her waiting only a few minutes--a kindness in princes, Orinda supposed, since there was no one to discipline them for lateness--before they arrived for the unveiling.
"No, no, don't get up," said Bleys as he strode into the room, Caine following in his wake. Orinda had already half-risen from her seat as he spoke, then awkwardly sat back down in her chair. Damn him. He always made her feel like a gawky girl again.
"Here it is, at last," Bleys said to Caine. He hadn't let Caine see the portrait at any point during the process. What lay beneath the cloth was a surprise to Caine, who stood impassive as Bleys whipped the cloth off with a flourish, smiling.
The portrait showed Caine seated in a chair identical to the one in which Orinda now sat, framed in the oriel. His face and eyes were shadowed in the bright sunlight, showing nothing. He was handsome and dashing in his Admiral's uniform. There was no single thing that anyone could have said was wrong with it--technically, it was very good--but one came away with the impression that there was something ... off, perhaps? ... about it. Bleys and Orinda at least knew what that something was. It was impossible to tell what Caine thought.
Still smiling, Bleys came to stand behind Orinda in her chair, his hand resting on her shoulder. "Well, brother, what do you think? Has she captured you?"
Caine looked at the two of them, still smiling, but with something cold and dangerous visible in his dark eyes. Orinda felt a chill run down her spine. I have just made a dangerous enemy. Then Caine's gaze traveled up from her to meet Bleys, and grew even colder.
No, I haven't made a dangerous enemy. Bleys has.
Orinda had an urge to flee, which somehow must have conveyed itself to Bleys, because his hand on her shoulder now carried weight with it that forced her down into the cushion. She forced herself to relax as Caine smiled, still dead-eyed.
Then, still smiling, he calmly picked up the painting and put his knee through it. Orinda watched, helpless, as he snapped the frame and tore the canvas, and nothing was left of her living, breathing painting but something broken on the floor, dead in the sunlight. With no change in the smile or the deadliness in his eyes, Caine regarded the two of them again for a moment before turning on his heel and walking out of the sunroom.
And Orinda was left alone with Bleys. Caine, she realized, had not spoken a word throughout the entire ordeal.
"Pity," said Bleys. "The portrait really wasn't half-bad. Orinda, with some proper tutelage, you might actually make an artist." His hand had moved from her shoulder to the back of her neck, and she was aware that he was more than strong enough to break it. But it was only a gentle caress; the moment passed, and so did the terror and nausea, and he was no longer touching her, merely laughing and striding away in his charmingly careless way.
Sudden defiance took her, then. "Prince Bleys," she said, "Perhaps you would care to sit for a portrait."
Bleys stopped in the doorway, perfectly framed, bright against the shadows of the hall, and looked back at her, as if he were mildly and pleasantly surprised to find that his pet mouse had sharp teeth. Then he laughed. "No, my pet, I believe I'll pass on your generous offer. Some other time, perhaps."
"At Your Highness' pleasure, then," Orinda replied. And Bleys nodded, gave her an insouciant grin, and was gone.
Bleys would never sit for her, Orinda knew. Now that he had seen what she brought to her paintings, he could never let her show him as she saw him. And they both knew that he knew, and that she knew that he knew.
It was a small victory, but fairly won, and Orinda had learned that in Amber, she had to take her victories where she could get them.
Kenneth Branagh is Bleys