Diary of a Painted Lady

by Maggi Andersen

  His hatred for Blair suddenly swelled to block his throat. He made up his mind. When the weather improved, he would return to London to another high-stakes card game. His luck was surely due to turn.

  * * *

  London

  “Gina, is that you?

  Gina laid her purchases down on the table. “Of course it’s me. Who were you expecting, Queen Victoria?

  Milo hurried from the next room, holding a fat wad of notes in his hands. “Look! I’ve sold the painting, Aphrodite. I told you that one would be a great success.”

  She took a deep breath. “How much?

  “After commission, three hundred pounds.”

  “La mia bontà! Gina put her hands to her cheeks. She had never even dreamed of so much money. “That cannot be right.”

  Milo sniffed and wiped away a tear. “The painting broke a record at auction.”

  Gina rushed to hug him, feeling his bones through his skin. When he started a new painting, he often forgot to eat. “We’ll have meat tonight.”

  “And vino.” Laughing, he took her hands and danced with her around the room. “The best that money can buy.”

  “Not too much wine, Milo. We have debts to pay …” Gina began. Milo drank like he painted. He didn’t know when to stop.

  “You don’t understand, girl. I have three good paintings with you as the model, and I’ll do more. They will fetch a very good price now. You’re my lucky charm. We’ll never have to worry about money again.”

  She laughed with him. Could it be true Milo’s talent was to be recognized at last? “How wonderful.”

  He peeled off several notes and thrust them at her. “Go and buy yourself a pretty dress.” He studied her. “And a new coat. A young girl should have nice clothes.”

  She took the money, curling her fingers around it with excitement. “We need to pay the bills,” she said, thinking of the beautiful hat she’d seen in a shop window. But what use did she have for a blue velvet hat, adorned with tulle and soft, white feathers?

  Milo patted her arm. “At last I can do what I promised your mother. I can take better care of you, Gina.”

  She kissed his bristly cheek. “Oh Milo, you’ve always taken care of me.”

  His expression sobered. “No. I haven’t, but that’s about to change.” He gestured at the patch of damp on the wall. “The first thing I’ll do is look for a better place for us to live.”

  “That would be most welcome,” she said to his retreating back. He returned to his easel and she knew that moving faded quickly from his thoughts. The prospect of leaving this place made her determined to keep his mind on track. She followed him into the studio. “Where do you think we might live?

  “Arthur Cowper has done well for himself. He’s bought a studio-house in Holland Park. Says it’s the best thing he’s done.”

  “Holland Park? How wonderful to live in a park,” she said wistfully.

  “Then we shall, just as soon as I’ve sold enough paintings. Change into your costume, girl. Let’s not waste time.”

  Gina ran to her room as a vision of Holland Park formed in her mind, green hills with many trees, and roses. Yellow roses.

  Chapter Four

  Since the sale of the painting three weeks ago, Gina and Milo had dined like royalty. At the market, she found cheap bolts of material. She stitched bright calico curtains for the windows and made a cover for the shabby sofa. She distempered the dingy, tobacco-colored walls working around Milo as he painted. He now had better sway with the landlord, who sent someone to fix the leak in the roof. It was the least he could do to have a famous artist living in his attic.

  Gina tucked the single, yellow rose she’d bought–roses were so expensive–in her hair and settled into her pose for the new work, wrapped in swag of burnished silk soon to be fashioned into a new gown.

  Someone rapped on the door.

  “Who can that be? She jumped up and ran to the door. “Are you expecting any of your friends?

  He shrugged and continued to work violet shadows into the folds of painted cloth.

  The knock came again.

  Clutching the fabric about her, Gina opened the door a crack. “Who is it?

  A stranger stood in the hall. He was tall and broad-shouldered, in his elegant dark blue coat, dove-grey silk waistcoat, and grey trousers. He lifted his bowler hat. His hair curled over his neck, black as soot. A smile of recognition lit his blue eyes as if he knew her. “Blair Dunleavy, he said. “I believe Milo Russo lives here? I bought his painting, Aphrodite.”

  “Yes. If you’ll please wait, I’ll fetch him for you.”

  Gina shut the door and leaned against it. She placed her hand on her bodice, feeling the rapid beating of her heart beneath her fingers. She’d never seen the like! He was so handsome! She gathered her wits and rushed into Milo’s studio. “There’s a man come to see you. He says he purchased Aphrodite.”

  Milo grabbed a cloth and wiped his hands. “Perhaps he wants to purchase another painting. Where is he? Did you invite him in?

  She scowled at him. Really was Milo ever on this earth? “You let him in. I’m not about to, dressed like this.”

  She turned and ran to her room and shut the door. The smartest among her sad array of dresses was the apple-green satin she’d trimmed with tartan. She struggled into her stays, then pulled on petticoats and red stockings, thankful the fasteners on her dress did up in front. As she slipped on her buttoned leather shoes, she heard Milo speak to the stranger. The man replied. His voice had a pleasing lilt to it. Irish. She twisted her waist-length hair into a knot and secured it with the deft placing of her mother’s tortoiseshell hair combs which came from long practice. Pinching her cheeks, she bit her lips and opened the door.

  The Irishman perched on a stool, admiring the canvases Milo had pulled out for him to see. He stood as she entered, smoothing his hand over his dark hair. Her attention focused on an unruly lock that sprang from a widow’s peak, slightly off-center. It made him a little less ordered, and more appealing somehow.

  For a moment no one spoke. He studied her intently while Milo fussed among his canvasses.

  “May I get you coffee?” she asked feeling pleased she could offer it. Coffee was the first thing she had bought with the money. A luxury she couldn’t resist.

  Black lashes fringed his smiling blue eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m at a disadvantage. I don’t know your name.”

  “Where are my manners.” Milo straightened holding a canvas in his hand. “This is my step-daughter, Giovanna. Gina, this is Mr. Dunleavy.”

  “So, the lady in the painting,” Mr. Dunleavy said in that mellow voice as he gazed down at her. He put out his hand.

  His hand clasped with hers sent a jolt through her body. Gina felt as though her entire skin from top to toe had come alive. She turned away, afraid he would read her thoughts. “Or tea. Everyone here seems to love tea.”

  “Coffee would be fine, thank you. When did you leave Italy?”

  “Eight years ago. I was thirteen,” she said. She bit her lip when she realized she had given away her age. Her mother said a lady never revealed her age. Her cheeks burned. “I’ll get the coffee.”

  At the door she turned. Mr. Dunleavy had dropped one of his grey gloves and bent to pick it up.

  As he straightened, his eyes found hers across the room.

  Her hands shook and a pulse beat in her throat as she piled the cups and saucers, milk jug and coffee pot onto a tray. Carrying it carefully into the studio, she found Mr. Dunleavy studying the woodland scene one of Milo’s more recent works. Milo had captured her in oils beside a stream dropping wildflowers into the water. She wore a filmy, white slip of a dress which clung to the curves of her body. Her fair hair, garlanded with flowers, hung about her waist.

  “Shakespeare’s Ophelia,” Mr. Dunleavy said. “This is beautifully done, Mr. Russo. More reminiscent of Hughes than Millais. You have made her a wood nymph.” He smiled at Gina. “I’ve won a bet I made with a friend�
��” he paused, and something in his gaze made her body heavy and warm, “…that I’d discover the model of my painting to be more beautiful in the flesh.”

  “How much was the bet?” Milo asked with a chuckle.

  “One hundred pounds,” he said with surprising coolness.

  “One hundred pounds?” Gina echoed, aghast at the waste of money.

  He smiled again. “I should have made a larger bet.”

  “I think you gentlemen have more money than sense,” she said, placing her hands on her hips. And a lack of propriety. If he began to utter empty compliments laden with insinuation, like so many of the men she met, she would throw the coffee in his face. Even if he was a customer.

  “I’m afraid you may be right,” he said seriously, but his eyes danced.

  “Gina is beautiful, is she not?” Milo interrupted, turning from his easel where he’d picked up a brush.

  “Not in any way to devalue your work, Milo, but more so in real life,” Mr. Dunleavy said gravely. “Difficult to capture a goddess. But you have, superbly.” He reached into his coat pocket and drew out his wallet. “I should like to buy the wood nymph, if I may. What is its price?”

  “I place a higher price on my work now, Mr. Dunleavy,” Milo said. “It’s a smaller painting than Aphrodite, though, so, let’s say … three hundred pounds?”

  “A bargain.” Blair peeled off some notes and handed them to Milo.

  Was he hinting at buying her services too? The thought made Gina’s stomach churn with anger and an excitement she quickly tried to suppress. “I don’t believe it is like me,” she said briskly. “But it is a good painting,” she added, not wanting to deter him from buying it.

  Mr. Dunleavy studied her and then looked back at the painting. “It is an excellent work. It captures your essence.”

  She tucked a stray wisp of golden hair back behind her ear with nervous fingers. “My essence?”

  “Your soul or spirit. I’ll take the painting with me, if I may.”

  “Of course. Wrap it, Gina.” As if he’d wasted enough time, Milo turned back to his easel.

  “I’ve interrupted you long enough,” Mr. Dunleavy said. “Please don’t worry about wrapping it. I have a cab waiting.”

  “It will take but a minute.” She hurried from the room.

  “May I call again?” he asked, when Gina returned with the wrapped painting.

  “Come anytime and welcome,” Milo called from the studio.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Dunleavy,” Gina said.

  As she began to close the door, he put his hand up to stop it. “I’d like to see you again.” His eyes were as blue as a Tuscan summer sky. Their intense expression sent another quiver of excitement through her.

  She hesitated. Knowing it would be unwise, yet beguiled by him.

  “I don’t believe I put that well.” His gaze met hers, an intense expression on his lean face. “I must see you again.”

  “You may come anytime to view my father’s paintings, Mr. Dunleavy.”

  He nodded. “I look forward to that, Giovanna.”

  Gina ran to the window and watched the tall, graceful man leap into a hansom cab. She went to her room to change again. Stripped naked, she studied herself in the mirror. She cupped her full breasts as a man might, and ran her hands down over her softly rounded stomach to the vee of golden hair at its base. Her body felt strangely heavy and ached to be touched between her legs. Shivering slightly, she wrapped the thin silk tightly around her. She shook her head sternly in the mirror. “Never,” she said firmly. But she knew he’d come back. And when he did it would be hard to resist him.

  “I’ve stoked up the fire,” Milo said when she returned to the studio. “A nice fellow, didn’t you think?”

  “Perhaps.” She settled back into her pose, staring up at the smoky sky through the attic roof. She liked what he said about her essence. Not just empty words of flattery. But she wouldn’t allow herself to dream. He came from another world. One she would never be able to enter.

  Chapter Five

  As the hansom drove through the crowded streets, Blair unwrapped the canvas, and studied it in the daylight. Superbly crafted, it would prove to be a great investment. Russo deserved to be famous. He gazed at Giovanna’s painted face. Russo had called her Gina. He liked the name it suited her. In a way, Horace had been right. Russo had taken poetic license with his subject. Gina was taller than the paintings suggested, perhaps more than was fashionable, her head almost to his shoulder. Her hand in his was slender, the fingers long and tapered, but not tiny. Her coloring different to Aphrodite too, her magnificent hair more fair than red and her glowing skin seemed kissed by sunshine, not something one expected to find at the end of a long English winter. Her pointed chin was stronger than that of the painting. Nor was she a milk-and-water miss, she had challenged him with those almond-shaped eyes at one point, and would let a man get away with very little. In truth, when she’d opened the door, her exotic beauty had floored him.

  He had the means to rescue her from that miserable hole in the wall, and he intended to do so when the time was right. He leaned back and indulged in the vision of passionate fire lighting up those tawny eyes. He knew instinctively that for someone, sometime, they would. It must be him. Her full lips opening for his kisses. Lord! He was going mad. Her image hanging on his wall would be a torment. He wanted her in his bed and, as his mother was so fond of reminding him, he always got what he wanted.

  It would have to be soon. He would begin immediately to search London for a suitable apartment, one that would delight her and ease that line of worry that crept between her brows when she looked at Russo. He had the look of one who likes the drink.

  Her glorious curves should not be so plainly dressed. The yellow rose she wore in her hair when she first opened the door was perfect. She would look superb in jewels, topaz, rubies, emeralds and diamonds. What pleasure to dress her…and undress her.

  Blair left the cab with the painting and entered his townhouse. His butler and manservant, Jarvis, took the parcel along with his hat and cane. “Have this framed.”

  “A letter’s come from Ireland, sir.”

  “A whiskey, please, Jarvis.” Blair took the letter to his study and sat down to read it. He rose again. As Jarvis hovered with the crystal decanter, Blair said, “Don’t bother with that. Pack me a bag and hail a cab for the station. I’m leaving immediately for Ireland.”

  * * *

  Milo and Gina emerged from Earl’s Court tube station into fresh air and wide, graceful streets. They walked along Kensington High Street and turned into Melbury Road. Milo pointed out number eighteen where the painter, William Holman Hunt lived. Gina could hardly believe her eyes the houses were so big and grand.

  “He was the founder of the Pre-Raphaelites,” Milo said. “But he brought scandal on himself, marrying his dead wife’s sister. His latest work, May Morning on Magdalen Tower is known to be a fine piece, but sadly I hear his eye sight is fading.”

  They walked into Ilchester Place, admiring Sir Luke Fildes’ studio with its magnificent cupola attached to a house of several stories with many chimneys. “The garden is as big as a park,” she said breathlessly. She and Milo wandered down streets filled with other magnificent residences, they passed a group of street cleaners and entered the park.

  They strolled for an hour through the gardens which surrounded Holland House, an enormous, ghostly Jacobean mansion. Gina was open-mouthed, this was an entirely different world from any she had ever known. Like them, families had come for a picnic and greeted them as they wandered along enjoying a rare, sunny winter’s day.

  Young children romped with hoops and threw balls while dogs raced after them barking. The winter sun climbed overhead, as they sat on the grass to eat. Gina drew a checked cloth from her basket and spread it on the ground, arranging two plates and a knife to cut the sausage, cheese and bread.

  “Frederic Leighton lives near here,” Milo said, slapping two pieces of bread around a wed
ge of cheese and sausage. “You know his work. He’s a touch above us.”

  “Why?” Gina said, with a fierce frown. “You studied art in Florence, and your work is better than his.”

  “Such a loyal girl you are, Gina,” Milo said with a smile. “You know Herbert Schmalz, a good friend of mine–he paints those New Testament scenes, married Leighton’s model, Dorothy. It was Leighton who formed the artist’s colony here, The Holland Park Circle.” Milo pronounced it carefully with great deference. He looked around and sighed. “I’d love to be part of it.”

  Gina had said very little since they arrived. She had taken in every detail of the elegant houses, the large gardens with creepers spilling over stone walls, the finely-dressed people walking the clean, open streets. She looked up at the canopy of pale blue above. It even seemed to be a different sky, while the breeze rustled though the branches overhead, banishing any thought of city traffic. The birds and the wandering deer were restful to her eyes, made sore by looking at nothing but bricks and mortar and the small patch of grey sky between the tenements.

  Her heart swelled at the prospect of her dream becoming a reality. “Could we live in this beautiful place, Milo?” she asked, the need causing her voice to catch in her throat. “Could we ever afford it?”

  Milo smiled at her as he pulled a cork from a bottle and poured red wine into two glasses.

  It stung her to realize that his hair had begun to thin and his chin sagged. He was growing old. Success had come to him almost too late. “Three more paintings and I promise you, we’ll come here to live.”

  “I can’t believe it,” she gasped, and lay back to listen to the sound of water spilling from the nearby fountain into a pool. A vision of another fountain in a paved courtyard, sheltered by a rose arbor, swam into her mind’s eye. “Milo, who was my father?” she asked again. “Mamma would never tell me.”

  Milo raised his shaggy, grey eyebrows. “She didn’t wish you to know.”