“So he painted the woman he loved as someone about to lose her head,” Leo says.
“Romantic, isn’t it?”
His lips twitch. “I would have gone more along the lines of morbid.”
“Romantic and morbid aren’t always mutually exclusive,” I point out, and he gives a small huff of laughter.
Elizabeth has drifted to study the painting from the right side, giving us a small pocket of space.
“The thing I find most interesting about the painting is that Delaroche got nearly everything wrong. He set it indoors with these big Gothic arches for dramatic effect. But the actual execution happened outdoors at Tower Green. He basically staged it like a theater production with the lighting and composition.”
“So it’s famous for being inaccurate?”
“It’s famous for being emotionally true. Nobody cares that the architecture is wrong. They care that a seventeen-year-old girl is blindfolded and can’t find her own execution block.”
Leo is quiet for a moment, drinking the painting in.
“You know a lot about this painting,” he says.
“I know a lot about a lot of things,” I reply.
“I know you do.” Leo’s words are bathed with warmth and affection.
And that’s the thing that undoes me.
Because I don’t have to hide anything from Leo anymore.
He now knows the full truth of who I am. And he hasn’t flinched away from it. He’s not treating me any differently. He’s not suddenly holding everything I say reverently, and when I joke about the crutches Olympics, he isn’t acting like I’m somehow committing a cardinal offense because it’s so far beneath my intellectual pay grade to goof around.
I still remember my boyfriend Frederick at university. He was brilliant and serious. The kind of guy who ironed his jeans and used the word discourse in casual conversation.
“I cannot understand how someone with your intellect can have such an immature sense of humor,” he’d sniffed when I’d programmed the department’s shared printer to add a tinycartoon duck to the bottom corner of every document for an entire week.
It’s been a common theme throughout my life.
People are either intimidated by my intelligence or my supposed intellectual peers are unimpressed with my sense of fun.
But Leo seems to be able to handle both sides of me.
He acts like everything I say is worth hearing, whether it’s about anamorphisms in Renaissance paintings or about which dog on my walking route has the most problematic bowel habits. Although, to be fair, the bowel habits are directly relevant to him.
It’s…intoxicating.
So when we move onto another gallery, I tell him more random facts I’ve accumulated over the years, and Leo listens to all of them.
He doesn’t seem to get bored, he asks follow-up questions, and he actually snorts when I point out that Titian was probably the most commercially savvy artist, monetizing his personal brand and licensing his image across multiple platforms.
“He was the first influencer,” I say. “Just with more oil paint and fewer ring lights.”
“Did he have merch?” Leo asks, deadpan.
“He had an entire workshop of assistants mass-producing copies. So yes. He had merch.”
As we move to the next gallery, Leo sends me a sideways look.
“You’re getting tired,” he says.
“No, I’m fine.”
