‘I think your sister is jealous. I think she would like to fly the kite for herself, wouldn’t you, Cressie?’
She would. He knew she would, but one look at her brothers and she knew she could not spoil their fun. ‘I am not nearly strong enough,’ Cressie said graciously, though she would dearly have loved to have flown the kite, Giovanni standing close behind her, guiding her hand just as he had done when he allowed her to paint a little of the canvas.
She retreated to the wall once more, contenting herself in her role as spectator, watching a very different Giovanni from the one she knew, laughing, entirely at ease. He was every bit as athletic as she had imagined him as he ran across the field with the boys and the kite, his lean body showing to admirable effect as he hoisted James into the lower limbs of a tree to free the flapping toy.
‘So this is the kite I have been hearing so much about.’ Bella, in a claret pelisse topped with a Paisley shawl, picked her way carefully towards Cressie. ‘I heard the boys’ shrieks from the salon window. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them laughing so much. Look at Georgie, waving his hands like a windmill. And James. I had not noticed how tall James had become these last few weeks. Why, his breeches are several inches too short for him.’
‘Janey has let the seams out several times, but I fear he is about to burst out of them,’ Cressie said, smiling.
‘They seem to bicker so much less these days. Henry—your father—told me that it was in a boy’s nature to fight constantly. “It’s how the lads assert themselves,” he said. “Encourages their competitiveness,” he insisted.’
Taken aback, not so much by the accuracy of Bella’s mimicry as by the mocking tone behind it, such a contrast to the tender way she had spoken of her sons, Cressie was forced to laugh. ‘My father believes that competitiveness is one of the ultimate virtues. For a man, that is.’
‘Your father loves to compete provided he can be sure to win. I meant what I told him, Cressie. You have been a very good influence on my sons.’
‘Thank you. You will not take offence when I tell you that your compliment means all the more, coming from you.’
Bella laughed. Not her usual tinkle, but a gurgle which sounded positively girlish. ‘Because it is so grudgingly given, you mean.’
‘Because you are such a stern critic, is how I would have worded it.’
‘Same difference.’ Bella leaned her bulk against the stone wall, shading her eyes against the sun. ‘Signor di Matteo is quite the most beautiful man I have ever seen, I must say. Not handsome, but beautiful. I confess, I thought him a cold fish, but one would not think so, seeing him like this. I saw the drawings he did for the boys. He understands them very well. Unlike …’
Bella trailed off into silence, looking suddenly older and sadder. Feeling uncomfortably as if she were intruding, Cressie returned her attention to the kite flyers. James was helping Freddie with the spool now, Giovanni standing with his hand resting casually on Harry’s shoulder, the pair of them laughing at some private joke. She hadn’t seen Giovanni with his guard so completely down before.
‘He would make a good father, though I doubt he will ever choose to become one.’ Bella too was watching Giovanni. ‘For all his attractions, he is a man who avoids human contact. Yet he obviously likes my boys. Perhaps it is because they are no threat to him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ask yourself why a man who could have any woman, if his reputation is to be believed, chooses to have none. It is not that he is the type who likes men, that much is obvious—though it is obvious too that men of a certain sort would find him most appealing.’ Bella smiled her tight little smile. ‘I may live out of the world, but I once lived very much in it and I still keep up with the latest gossip, Cressida, do not look so shocked.’
‘Gio—Signor di Matteo—I believe he was in love once.’
Bella snorted. ‘Is that what he told you? I doubt it is true. Or if he was, it was more likely a hundred times than once. Poor Cressida, I detected you had developed a fondness for him but I had not realised things had gone so far. Take my advice. Do not set your heart on a man like that. He will freeze the life out of you, for he has not a heart to give you in return. Trust me on this, I know about these things. Now, I think I have had my annual allocation of fresh air and exercise. It certainly makes one peckish. I hope cook has been baking today.’
With an airy wave of the hand, Bella began to pick her way delicately back across the meadow. As she watched her go, Cressie decided that Bella was wrong on any number of scores. For a start, Giovanni was not in the least like Lord Armstrong. It was merely that Bella was hurting, and wished to lash out. You only had to look at the way Giovanni was with Freddie, George, James and Harry, to see that he was not the selfish, self-centred man her father was.
Bella was simply jealous. And she was wrong about Giovanni’s reserve too. It was nothing to do with him being cold. Quite the reverse. He had been hurt, hurt so badly that he had lost his muse. And yes, perhaps his decision to turn his skill to commerce was a cold and calculated one, but what was wrong with that? He was the best—he deserved to be recognised as such.
But the thing Bella was most wrong about was her assumption that Cressie—Cressie!—could possibly be imagining herself in love with Giovanni. The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. Would never cross her mind. She was the muse he had lost. She was proud to be his muse, and honoured, and in addition, it meant that she could see at first hand whether she had been wrong about art and mathematics and beauty and—and all that stuff which was important, very important, even if she had lost sight of it.
Cressie jumped down from the wall and ran over to join the boys, who were gathering in the kite, flushed from their exertions. ‘If you could capture them like this,’ she said to Giovanni, ‘it would make a painting much more like the truth than the one in the gallery.’
‘And far less valuable, sadly. I could sketch them for their mother, though, if you think she would like it?’
‘I think she would adore it. That is very thoughtful of you.’
‘They are actually quite nice boys, when you get to know them.’
Giovanni handed the kite to Harry and picked up Freddie, throwing him over his shoulders, much to the little boy’s delight. ‘Gee gee, Gio is a gee gee,’ he giggled.
Cressie lagged behind, watching Giovanni gallop across the meadow with Freddie on his back. Bella was right about one thing—he would make an excellent father. It took her by surprise, the sadness that gripped her. Thinking that she would never marry was one thing. Realising what she would be sacrificing, that was quite another.
Giovanni had finally settled upon a pose. Cressie sat sideways on the Egyptian chair, her breeched and booted right leg crossed over her left, one arm resting casually on the chair back, the other on her crossed leg. She looked full on at the painter, her beaver hat provocatively tilted over one eye, her hair wild and hanging free. The tails of her coat hung down almost to the floor, her neckcloth carelessly tied, the buttons of her waistcoat undone.
‘I don’t look a bit like a man,’ she said, when he showed her the preliminary sketches.
‘Do you wish to?’
She twisted a strand of hair around her finger, her latest attempt to stop herself biting her fingernails. ‘I thought I did. I thought I wanted to be a man.’
‘I remember you told me you wished just that.’
‘But I don’t now. I think I like this. It’s …’
‘Subversive, I hope. I want to show you peeping out from your disguise. You have a very mischievous sense of humour. I want to demonstrate that. And I want to use the clothing to show—I am not sure how, but I want your man’s clothes to show more of the woman.’
Cressie giggled. ‘Perhaps if you combine Mr Brown with Penthiselea you can achieve that effect.’
‘That is it!’ Giovanni threw down his charcoal and threw his arms around Cressie. ‘You are a genius!’
Smiling and shaking h
er head in bewilderment, Cressie tried not to notice the instant response of her body to his. ‘I am more than happy to be called a genius but I have no idea why you do so. I meant it as a joke.’
‘But no, it is perfect. It is outrageous. It will be …’
He kissed his fingertips. The gesture was so dramatic and so typically Italian and so untypically Giovanni that Cressie laughed. ‘I don’t understand. How can it be so outrageous? Oh!’ As realisation dawned, her smile faded. ‘You mean that I will have to …’
‘Bare your …’
‘Breast.’ Cressie swallowed. Her throat was dry. She licked her lips. She looked at Giovanni to find that he was staring at her chest.
‘You have beautiful breasts. Speaking as an artist, that is,’ he added quickly.
‘Do I?’
‘Si. Bellissimo.’
Colour slashed Giovanni’s cheeks, emphasising their sharpness, giving his face a hungry look. He led her back over to the chair. ‘Let me show you. It can be done tastefully.’ She sat statue-still as he arranged her coat and waistcoat, as he untied her neckcloth. His fingers were cold, shaking slightly as he undid the six little pearl buttons on the bib of her shirt. She wore only her corsets underneath. When his fingers brushed her skin, she breathed sharply in.
Giovanni loosened the laces. His hand hovered over her breast. Her nipples hardened in anticipation. She could see, from the angle at which his head was bent over her, that his hair grew in a little circular whorl at the back of his head. Heat radiated, from him, from her, from both of them. Her skin was on fire. Sweat prickled at the base of her spine.
Giovanni stood up. ‘Then—when we come to paint—then we will …’
Disappointment made her rash. Cressie dragged her corset down, twisting the open neck of the shirt so that the vee shape where the buttons stopped supported her bare breast. ‘There, is that what you meant?’
Giovanni simply stared. Her nipple looked a much darker pink against the white of the man’s shirt. Cressie hadn’t really paid much attention to her nipples before. It seemed to her that it was defiantly pert. She straightened her back. She felt defiantly pert herself. She placed her open palm over her breast, cupping it lightly, shivering as her fingers grazed her aching nipple. His breath came out in a low hiss. His eyes went dark. He was swallowing repeatedly. Desire and power surged together. ‘What do you think, Giovanni?’
‘I think …’ It was his dark smile, the one that made her feel as if she were being twisted tight from the inside. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that you know perfectly well what I think, Lady Cressida. I just hope you can hold the pose.’
She could not decide whether to be glad or sorry when he disappeared behind his easel again and began to sketch. He drew no grids this time, his movements seemed freer, his concentration much fiercer than before, as he sketched and muttered and scored lines through what he’d drawn, tearing page after page of drawing paper from the board and casting it on to the floor.
It felt like a day had passed, it might have been as little as an hour, when he looked up and smiled triumphantly. ‘I have it.’
Her nipple was stiff with cold and nothing else by now. She had no thought but to move before her muscles seized altogether, and to cover herself. ‘May I see?’
She hadn’t expected him to agree, but he beckoned her over, another change from the previous portrait. ‘Well?’ he demanded impatiently.
Cressie shook her head in amazement. ‘You don’t need me to tell you.’
‘I do, Cressie.’
‘Giovanni, it’s brilliant.’ She grinned as she stared at herself, roughly outlined in charcoal but nevertheless fully realised. There was no careful symmetry evident in this portrait, though she could see that the angles, of her face to the front, of her body in profile, were quite deliberately chosen. It was the contradictions which she liked best though. A female in man’s clothing. A manly pose and a womanly breast. Her face, serious and yet mischievous. And the overall effect, it was strangely sensual, though she could not say how. She looked out from the drawing defiantly, confidently, herself, but not as she had ever seen herself. ‘It is—confusing though. I don’t know what to think.’
Giovanni smiled with deep satisfaction. ‘That is it exactly. Confusing. Inflammatory. Anarchic. Not one thing or the other.’
‘It doesn’t—I mean I can see that there are some rules, but it seems to me that you have quite deliberately broken many.’
‘Poor Cressie, what will your theory say of this painting?’
‘I really have no idea.’
‘I will prepare the canvas tonight. We can start painting in oil tomorrow. No more today, you must be tired.’
‘I was not the one who spent all morning running about with four obstreperous boys. You must be exhausted.’
Giovanni shook his head. ‘I enjoyed it, to tell the truth. I had forgotten how exhilarating it is to be young and carefree. I envy them their innocence.’
‘Watching you all today—I have achieved at least one of the things I hoped from my time here. I have come to love them for themselves, and not because they are my brothers.’ Cressie picked up her cloak and began to smooth out the folds. ‘I ought to go and write to Cordelia now. I promised Bella I would, but I confess I have been putting it off.’
‘Why?’
‘My Aunt Sophia wrote—oh, it’s complicated. You wouldn’t want to know.’
‘Sit down. Tell me about it, I do want to know. Cordelia is the sister who is in London, yes?’
Giovanni took the cloak from her and placed it on the Egyptian chair, guiding her over to the window, where he had placed a rather tatty chaise-longue in the embrasure for him to rest on between bouts of painting. ‘I am all ears,’ he said, ‘as you English bizarrely like to say.’
It was a relief to pour out her concerns, and a relief to laugh too, for it was true, Cordelia might lack judgement, she was rash and unthinking and often very selfish, but she was always amusing company, she had a knack for making sure no one could ever be angry with her for too long, and really some of her exploits were very droll. ‘Though why she should wish to watch two men beating each other up with their bare fists, I cannot imagine,’ Cressie finished. ‘I will have to find a way of making her heed our aunt before she puts herself beyond the pale, though I have no idea how.’
‘From what you have said, Cordelia will do exactly as she wishes, whether you intervene or not.’
Cressie smiled. ‘You are quite right, and I can’t help but admiring her for it. She is like a cat, my youngest sister. You can throw her from the highest of windows and she will always land on her feet.’
‘You love your sisters very much.’
‘Yes, I do. We are all so different, but I never doubt they would come to my aid if I really needed them. Perhaps it is a result of growing up without Mama. When we were younger and all living here at Killellan, we were very close. Now—well, you know what the situation is now. But I wouldn’t be without them. Or my brothers. I can’t imagine what it was like, growing up an only child as you did.’
Giovanni shifted uncomfortably. He had become used to suppressing the unwonted urge to confide in Cressie, accustomed to reminding himself that the past was in the past. But the more he denied himself, the more he had begun to realise how isolating was his silence. It was not so much that he wished to talk about it, more that he wished Cressie to know him better. He found he wanted to share some of himself with her. It mattered that she understood him, even just a little. And sitting here so comfortably in the privacy of their studio, with the daylight waning, and the outline of what he hoped would be his magnum opus on the drawing board, with Cressie so relaxed and at her ease sitting beside him, he would never get a better opportunity. Her remark, that their relationship was entirely one-sided, had hit home. It had just taken him a long time to acknowledge that fact.
‘You have that look.’ Cressie was managing to frown and smile at the same time. ‘The look that tells me I’ve said som
ething you don’t like, and you’re not going to tell me what it is.’
‘You are wrong this time. I am going to tell you. I was just—steeling myself.’
Cressie had kicked off her top boots. Now she folded her legs up underneath her and turned side-on to face him. ‘Is it so bad?’
‘I do have a family, many sisters and brothers, though none of them are full-blood. Some are known to me, some not, and those who are known will not acknowledge me for the same reason that my mother will not acknowledge me and why my father had me raised by a fisherman’s family until he needed an heir. The man who fathered me is Count Fancini. An ancient and extremely wealthy family, with a bloodline which can be traced back until before there were records. I am Count Fancini’s bastard. Illegitimate. His baseborn son.’
Cressie actually reeled with shock. Her eyes were huge as she covered her mouth with one hand, the other reaching for his. He ought not to allow her to take it, he did not need the words of pity which she was obviously trying to swallow, but he twined his fingers in hers all the same, and it felt—right. Not pity, but sympathy—he could bear that.
‘Oh, Giovanni, how awful.’ She was blinking furiously. ‘I cannot imagine—I shall never, never complain about my family again. No wonder you were hurt when I joked about wishing my father was someone else. I am so, so sorry. Did you say that your father—your real father—he had you adopted?’
‘Si.’ Giovanni tightened his clasp on her hand. ‘For twelve years, I thought myself the son of a fisherman. My father—the man I thought was my father—was a rough man, but kind. He—it was he who took me to Santa Maria del Fiore. You remember I told you, the church with the whispering gallery? And he taught me to swim. And of course to fish. I was teased by the other boys in the village for the way I look.’ He winced, and smacked his forehead. ‘This face, it was not at all like the face of the people I called Mamma and Papa, but I never questioned, and they never breathed a word, my parents. I thought they loved me.’
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