An hour and many false starts later, the animal which looked back at her bore no resemblance whatsoever to anything equine. She had tried to draw it side-on and had produced something which looked rather like a hippopotamus on stilts. Her galloping horse was drawn mid-air in an impossible acrobatic leap which made it look as if each of its legs were being pulled towards a different point of the compass. Her rearing horse looked like a lap dog which had been trained to beg for its food, and, having decided that perhaps the legs were the problem, she attempted a horse lying down with its limbs folded under its body. It looked like a cross between a cat and a sheep.
Her final attempt was a horse’s face looking straight out of the paper. This drawing had character, there was no denying it. With its toothy grin and long-lashed eyes, it looked very like Aunt Sophia, who in turn looked very like one of the camels which Cressie had ridden on her single visit to Arabia.
‘Camels are a kind of horse,’ she said to Giovanni as he examined her masterpiece. His mouth twitched, and she forced herself not to fold her arms across her chest. She would never fold her arms across her chest again. ‘If I had had the benefit of lessons …’ She stopped, suddenly remembering that she had. When Mama was alive, there had been a drawing master who had toiled in vain to improve her artistic skills. ‘Oh very well, I admit it, it is not just a question of applying rules. I have no talent whatsoever. Are you happy now?’
‘Cressie’s horse looks like old Aunt Sophia,’ Harry said. ‘Look, James.’
She hurriedly retrieved the drawing from her brothers. The last thing she needed was for it to find its way into her father’s hands. Or worse, into her aunt’s. ‘Never mind my drawing, since I am obviously not the winner. Let us judge your attempts.’
Freddie and George had each produced a series of round blobs with lines, the same shape they drew for almost everything. Instead of dismissing them, though, Giovanni took the time to praise each and to find individual merit in each too, eventually declaring that they were all so good that they were equal winners, since each was the best in a different way. Such highly competitive children did not usually take to a decision like this, but once again Cressie was surprised to discover them not only compliant but proud and, most importantly, not bickering. Their prize was an individual portrait, swiftly executed, which managed to be both comic and remarkably accurate. A few strokes of Giovanni’s charcoal brought James to life as a king, Harry as a general, Freddie as a lion tamer complete with whip, and George, fists raised, as a boxer.
She had thought Giovanni oblivious to her brothers’ chatter and boasting as he took their likenesses in the schoolroom and in this makeshift studio. She had been quite wrong, for he had depicted each of them exactly as they most wished to be seen. Looking over Harry’s shoulder at his drawing, Cressie was filled with admiration for Giovanni’s skill, though the free-form cartoons were nothing like the carefully executed portrait which was emerging from the canvas. These sketches of her brothers were impish, unrestrained, full of movement and humour. For the first time, she had an inkling of the depths of his ability. In the drawings there were no rules, no careful proportion, only a highly evocative image. Admiration ceded to unease. He saw so much. What would he see in her, that she did not wish to have exposed?
Having sent the boys back up to the nursery for their midday meal, Cressie wandered over to stand beside Giovanni in front of the portrait. Here, there were none of the subtly subversive qualities of the charcoal sketches. This painting would be exactly as her father requested, showing his sons only to best advantage. ‘There is more truth in those drawings, the work of moments, than in this meticulously assembled canvas,’ she said.
‘But much more beauty in this painting, yes?’
‘So it is a lie, is that what you are saying?’
Giovanni shrugged. ‘It is your father’s truth. And your stepmother’s. It is the truth of what people want to see, what most people do see, for they do not look beyond the first impression.’
‘But you do, Giovanni. Why do you not paint it?’
His smile was bitter. ‘Because it is more profitable to sell lies. But I will paint the truth when I paint you for a second time. We will continue with the first portrait this afternoon, yes?’
‘The portrait which will provide my proof, which is a lie. What am I to make of that for my thesis, I wonder?’ Cressie picked up one of the sable brushes from the box which lay open on the table, and stroked the soft bristle over the back of her hand. ‘You were very good with my brothers today. They heed you in a way they never listen to me.’
‘You think so? Yet they fought for the privilege of sitting beside you to draw. Stop thinking of them as your father’s sons. They are not your rivals—they are just boys.’
‘I wish I had been a boy.’
‘You think Lord Armstrong will be any less manipulative with his sons than his daughters?’
‘He won’t force them into marriage.’
‘He cannot force you.’
‘He can make my life unbearable.’
Giovanni caught the curl which persisted in hanging down over her forehead, and once again brushed it back into place. ‘It is you who are doing that, trying to be what you are not, wishing to be who you are not.’
His hand still lay on the nape of her neck. His touch made her skin tingle. She was so conscious of him, her body so aware of his proximity in a way that confused her. ‘I wish you would not persist with the notion that I am unhappy, Giovanni.’
He ignored her. ‘This afternoon, when you sit for me, I want you to wear something different. Something with a décolleté. Whether you accept it or not, you are a woman, not a man, and I wish to paint you as one. Something else you are hiding under those terrible dresses you favour,’ he said, tracing the line of her throat with his fingers, brushing lightly over her breasts.
She caught her breath as he touched her, her nipple tightening as he grazed it. Without being conscious of it, she stepped towards him, wanting his hand to cup her, yearning in the purest, most thoughtless of ways, for him to satisfy the craving she had been feeling for days. It was nothing to do with aesthetics, she knew that. It was elemental, purely carnal.
‘Curves,’ Giovanni said, his hand tightening on her breast just exactly as she hoped. ‘You have the most delightful curves. Did you know that this is what your English painter Hogarth called the line of beauty?’ His fingers slid down, brushing the underside of her breast, to the indent of her waist and round to rest on the curve of her bottom, and pull her suddenly hard up against him. ‘You, Cressie, have the most beautiful line.’
His eyes were dark. She was trembling, and in absolutely no doubt this time that he would kiss her. Nor in any doubt at all about what she wanted. Cressie stood on her tiptoes and lifted her mouth in invitation.
Darkness, a swirling, dangerous darkness, enveloped her as his lips met hers, not gently but passionately, in a hard, hungry kiss that sent her reeling into a hot, heady place, crimson with desire. His fingers tightened, digging into her derrière as he pulled her against him, bracing her against the hard muscles of his thighs, his tongue stroking into her mouth, touching hers, sending a pulse of heat through her. She arched against him, angling her mouth against his, the better to taste him, mindlessly opening to him, wantonly kissing him back, every bit as hungry as he. It was as if they had both been wild dogs restrained, now freed to ravage, devour, a bursting open of pent-up passion which she could not believe, now it was released, had ever been contained.
She could feel the hard length of his manhood against her belly. No thought of it being ridiculous, no thought of that other time, when she had stared with analytical interest at Giles, what she wanted from Giovanni was violent, unrestrained and utterly base. She heard herself whimpering as one of his hands left her bottom, then a guttural moan as he covered her breast, stroking her nipple into an aching nub. His kiss deepened as he pushed her against the table, lifting her up on to it. She clutched at him, opening her
legs to pull him between them, impatient with the voluminous folds of her gown, desperate to get closer, pulsing with heat and wet with desire, reaching for the thick length of his erection.
Giovanni groaned as her fingers stroked him through the wool of his trousers. She stroked him again. He muttered something in Italian, leaning over her, pressing her down on to the table. She could smell linseed oil from the palette. Something clattered to the floor. His curse was violent this time, as he released her so suddenly that she fell back, her head colliding with the jar which held his paintbrushes.
The sound brought them both to their senses. Cressie scrabbled from the table, shaking out the skirts of her gown, blushing wildly. ‘I must go,’ she muttered. He tried to stop her, but she shook him off, fleeing from the room in a flutter of muslin.
Giovanni pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. Inferno! What was it about her that made it so difficult for him to keep his hands to himself? She was insecure and defensive, and what’s more she was abrasive, challenging and she was far too opinionated. Yet she provoked a reaction in him that no woman ever had.
For years he had embraced the cold kiss of chastity with barely any effort. Why did Cressie make him rail against his self-imposed restraint? He should not have kissed her. He should not have touched her at all. Yet when he had—a fire that threatened to be all-consuming, like a blaze ripping through a tinder-dry forest. His instincts had been right. That buttoned-down front she presented to the world masked a smouldering passion. Just thinking about her response, about her mouth on his, the way her lips clung, the way her hands touched him, stroked him—Dio, he was hard. Another few minutes and they would have …
‘No!’ Celibacy was his strength, the cornerstone of his success. He was confusing his desire to paint her with his desire to make love to her. It was an echo, a residue from the past, when art and sex were so inextricably mixed. His desire for her was so strong because his desire to capture her was irresistible. And yet, the Cressie who kissed him was the one he wanted to paint. The one he needed to paint, with a passion equal to the one she had aroused. To show her to herself, and to reflect that back in his art. His true art. To paint from the heart. That was what he wanted most passionately of all.
Giovanni jumped to his feet and began to gather together his palette, brushes and knives for cleaning. He must complete the first portrait, without further compromising himself. He must detach himself from the process, and paint Lady Cressida with as much precision as any other professional commission. The terrible drawing she had executed lay before him on the table. Almost persuaded that he had explained the shocking lapse away, Giovanni folded it up and tucked it into his trouser pocket.
Chapter Four
Cressie had decided to take her brothers for a walk through the estate’s park since the sun had eventually condescended to show its face. Bella had been taken poorly again and demanded Janey’s soothing presence at her bedside. Cressie was glad of the excuse to avoid sitting for Giovanni. She needed time to think.
The grass was damp underfoot, the trees only barely budding, but the sky was a clear, fresh blue above her head. Freddie and George had abandoned their hoops and were perched on the bank of a small stream, peering into the reedy waters in search of tadpoles. Their older brothers had run ahead into the woods, engrossed in some private game of their own. The skirts of Cressie’s gown were muddied, her hair a wild tangle, for she had come out without a bonnet in the vain hope that the breeze would clear the jumble of conflicting emotions in her head. Perching on the top of a stone boundary wall, she kept one eye on the twins, trusting that so long as she could hear the elder two shouting to each other they would be perfectly safe.
She must have taken leave of her senses in the gallery this morning. How had it happened? She could not even remember who made the first move towards the other, only that it felt inevitable and irresistible—words that she, a mathematician, a woman who lived by logic, should not even be thinking, let alone acting upon. Never in a thousand years would she have believed that she could have behaved so outrageously. Never before had she lost control in such a way. Making love to Giles had been a very deliberate act. Kissing Giovanni had been elemental.
It was her own fault. Her own fault for having conjured up those shocking images of Giovanni naked, poised with a javelin, clad only in a tunic. It was her own fault for having allowed her thoughts so consistently to dwell on the perfection of his face, on the clean, pure lines of his body. Her own fault for utterly failing to recognise that what she took for analysis and aesthetic appreciation had somehow metamorphosed into lust. Base, animal lust. She should, in all truth, be ashamed of herself.
The breeze ruffled her hair. She swiped a rebellious curl out of her eyes. The movement reminded her that this was what Giovanni had done, just before he had kissed her. Or before she threw herself at him and made it impossible for him not to kiss her. Not that he had resisted. But then why would he, when he must be quite accustomed to women doing exactly that! And now she was behaving just like those females, even though she knew perfectly well she was not, nor could ever be, because she had none of the attractions which went with successful seduction.
So why, then, had he kissed her, and kissed her as if he really had desired her every bit as much as she desired him? Cressie jumped down from the wall and began to make her way towards the twins, who had given up on the search for tadpoles and were now hurrying after their older brothers, intent on joining the game from which they would without doubt be refused entry. ‘Let us go and look at the baby sheep,’ she said, holding out a hand to each of the boys and leading them towards the far field, where lambs like little woolly puffs of cloud were cavorting while their mothers chewed complacently at the rich green grass.
She helped Freddie and George up on to the wall, keeping a supporting hand around the back of each. In the far corner of the field one black lamb stood alone, not bleating, but watching the others frolic without showing any inclination to join in. It would be too easy to think of herself as the black sheep of the family, but that was exactly how she felt. Even if Giovanni didn’t agree in his determination to get under her skin, to discover this mystical person he claimed was the real Cressie. The Cressie he wanted to paint.
And that, of course, was why he’d kissed her, she thought ruefully. He wanted to disconcert her, make her react. It was simply part of his technique, to rouse her in order to incorporate her reaction into his painting. No doubt it was a technique he had deployed many times, and equally doubtless it was a highly successful one, for who could reject the kisses of a man so perfectly irresistible?
The best thing to do would be to pretend it had not happened. She would not pander to his ego—not that he seemed to wish it. On the contrary, in fact, he was consistently deprecating about his appearance, now she came to think of it.
Lifting the twins down from the wall and calling to Harry and James to join them, Cressie turned back towards the house. She could not resist putting her fingers to her lips. It had been a professional kiss, Giovanni’s motives had been purely artistic, but his kiss had been more deliciously decadent than anything she had ever imagined. Professional or no, she could not pretend she had done anything other than relish it. Her reaction had been proof positive. There could be no denying that, since proof was her stock-in-trade.
Cressie entered the attic studio nervously. For over a week she had sat every day while Giovanni worked on her portrait, saying little, barely acknowledging her presence, save to adjust her pose, occasionally to explain a technical point. The atmosphere between them was claustrophobic, tense. He would not allow her to see the painting, Not until it is finished to my satisfaction, he had insisted, though he said he was making good progress with it. He had not once made any reference to their kiss. Which was a good thing, she told herself repeatedly, because she had no intention of mentioning it either. He was an artist, she was his sitter. This room, this situation, did not represent real intimacy but rather a form of ar
tistic intensity. Yes, that was it, she decided, satisfied that she had now explained it logically.
She tugged at the neckline of her gown in a vain attempt to make it cover more of her chest. Yesterday Giovanni had reminded her that he wished her to pose in something more revealing. Today she wore an evening dress and felt horribly exposed. Perhaps it was because it was still daylight and the rich crimson velvet gown, with its low décolleté and tiny puffed sleeves, showed far more flesh than she was used to displaying. It had belonged to her mother, and was cut in the old-fashioned style made popular by the Emperor Napoleon’s wife, Josephine. An overdress of figured black gauze trimmed with gold spangles gave it a decadent appearance. With her corsets much more tightly laced than usual, Cressie’s breasts were, to her mind, all too conspicuous, her nipples only just covered. When first she had seen her reflection in the looking-glass she had been shocked by the change in herself, but also by what her reflection said about Mama, whom she had not previously thought of as the kind of woman to wear a gown so obviously designed to seduce.
Cressie’s attempt to dress her hair appropriately had not been overly successful. Unwilling to fuel gossip below stairs, she had dismissed her maid once her corsets were laced. What she had intended was a knot in the Grecian style which would complement the dress, but something had gone sadly awry. Very sadly, she thought dejectedly as she put her hand to her coiffure and came away with several hair pins, which she was attempting to replace when Giovanni arrived.
He halted on the threshold, staring at her. She almost crossed her arms over her breasts, but managed to stop herself. ‘You said you wanted me to wear something more—but I didn’t have anything of my own. Naturally I have evening gowns, but even though I am six and twenty, I am still considered a girl as far as the marriage mart is concerned and so I—so I borrowed this. It was my mother’s, but if it’s not suitable, I will …’ She stuttered to a halt, blushing, as he continued to stare at her. ‘I will go and change into something else.’
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