‘Giovanni, of course they did.’
It was like a weight around his heart, this truth. Like a heavy stone he never tried to move, for how could he when the facts were so clear? ‘They handed me back to him, Cressie. I was just a child and they gave me back without protest.’
‘No. I am sure—that cannot be true, Giovanni. No one who has raised a child as their own could simply hand them over. It would be too painful. Your memory must be playing tricks.’
‘I was twelve years old. I remember it perfectly, as if it was yesterday. I remember they made no move to hug me when the carriage came to take me away. I remember the one answer to all my letters was a request to stop writing. My father—my real father—told me he had been paying them to look after me.’ Giovanni swallowed, but the lump in his throat would not budge, the stone in his heart seemed heavier than ever. No matter how many times he told himself it didn’t matter, he could never quite make himself not care. He dug the knuckles of his free hand into his eyes so hard that he saw red. It didn’t help.
Cressie shuffled along the chaise-longue and put her arm around his shoulders. She stroked his head, a strange little movement, as if she were trying to tuck a lock of hair he didn’t have behind his ear. It was intensely comforting. ‘You told me once,’ she said softly, ‘that what we think and how we feel are often quite different things. You said there was a big gap between logic and instinct. I remember it so well because it struck a chord with me. I know you think you ought to hate them for giving you away, those people. But for twelve years, the better part of your childhood, you thought they were your parents. It would be quite unnatural for you not to love them, even if they did hurt you. Look at me, for goodness’ sake. I don’t respect my father, I don’t like him, there are times when I hate him, but I still love him, and I know that won’t ever go away, no matter how hard I try. I’ve stopped trying to hate him. It is a relief, I promise you.’
Cressie kissed his temple, then resumed her rhythmic stroking. She was warm against him, soft and pliant, contradictorily more feminine than usual in her man’s clothing. Giovanni allowed himself to relax against her, just the tiniest bit. It felt good. ‘I don’t hate them,’ he said. ‘They were poor people, they needed the money. I understand that.’
‘That’s just arrant nonsense.’ Cressie stopped her stroking and put her face up so close to his that their noses almost touched. ‘You loved them. You were obviously happy with them. They clearly loved you—your father did not have to teach you all those things, swimming and the like. He did not have to take you to that church with the whispering gallery. They cared for you and you loved them as all children love their parents. It must have been awful, beyond awful, for all of you, when they had to give you up. At the very least, you must feel hurt. Your real father is obviously a man of great influence. If he desired your return, I doubt there would have been much to be done to stop him. I am sure they did not abandon you, Giovanni, though I can understand it must have felt like it. I can see why you think you hate them.’
Cressie’s truths had always been uncomfortable. Her way of seeing through things to the nub of the matter, it was one of the things he most admired in her, but it was painful to be on the receiving end. Such clarity of thought made it impossible to avoid confronting the truth. And how much worse would it be if he told her the whole unadulterated truth? Never! Giovanni pushed her away gently. ‘I don’t hate my parents,’ he said, which was true.
He could almost see the wheels and cogs in Cressie’s mind working. He saw the very moment when she decided not to pursue the matter. For a split second, he was relieved. ‘Then tell me about your real father,’ she said. ‘The one you really do hate.’
He was forced to laugh, a hollow sound which made Cressie shiver. ‘Blood. My real father is the man who taught me the significance of blood. He is the reason I understand you so well. He is very, very like your own father in character.’
Cressie shuffled back along the sofa and nestled up against him. ‘Tell me the whole story,’ she said, draping his arm around her shoulders.
Her curls tickled his chin. ‘It is a sad story. The sort of story someone else would have turned into a fairytale. I have never told it before.’
‘I have often thought fairytales tend towards the tragic. Celia used to read us Cendrillon, it was Cassie’s favourite story. She loved the romance of a poor little ragged girl marrying a prince, but I always thought what Cendrillon would have preferred would be to have her mama back. We didn’t have a wicked stepmother ourselves at that point, of course,’ Cressie added with a grin. ‘I think Bella would have put quite a different slant on that story. But I am interrupting yours. Please, go on.’
He couldn’t think with her so close. Giovanni untangled himself from her embrace and laid his head back against the chaise-longue and closed his eyes. ‘Once upon a time,’ he began, for it was easier to think of this as a story than to relive it, ‘there was a rich Italian count. His name was Fancini.’
Cressie shifted round on the seat, the better to watch his face. Shocked beyond measure by what he had thus revealed of his childhood, she could now see quite clearly why Giovanni appeared so cold. To have been abandoned not once but twice—no wonder he was determined no one else would hurt him. As for that woman who had been his lover and his muse—how could she have hurt him when she must have known—no, she did not know, for Giovanni said he had never told anyone. Cressie was to be his first and only confidante. That counted for something, even if he didn’t love her as he had the other woman. Not that that was relevant in any way. She was not in love with Giovanni. The very thought of it was—was—not to be thought of!
But she did find herself thinking of just that as she listened, wrapping her arms around herself, mostly to stop herself wrapping them around Giovanni. She could not possibly be in love with this man. This strange feeling, a sort of tightness, a dawning awareness like a light flickering in the dim recesses of her mind, waiting for her to turn the corner and discover—no, that wasn’t love. And the ache in her heart, that was sympathy for the pain he had suffered, nothing more.
‘Count Fancini was of impeccable birth,’ Giovanni continued, ‘from a long line of blue-blooded Tuscans and who counted the Granducato di Toscana amongst his closest relatives. The count has a child from his marriage, that all-important thing, a male child, a son and heir to the vast country estates and the palazzo in Florence. The Countess Fancini produces many more children, but all die or are still-born. The count, a man of lustful appetites, has several more healthy children, born, as they say, on the wrong side of the blanket, but all are females and therefore unworthy.’ He opened his eyes momentarily. ‘You see,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘it is the same the world over.’
Cressie touched his hand briefly, but said nothing. He closed his eyes once more, speaking as if he were far away, talking of another world, of other people, as if none of it were connected to him. Which was completely understandable. How many times had she herself escaped into the fantasy life of Mr Brown? How alike they were in their experiences. An affinity, that was what they had. That was all they had. She smoothed her waistcoat down over her shirt. Affinity was a most logical explanation. She couldn’t understand why it felt such an unconvincing one.
‘One day,’ Giovanni was saying, ‘Count Fancini met a girl, a beautiful young lady in actual fact, as well born as he, quite a different sort altogether from his other amours. Though he had no business wooing her, being a married man, woo her he did. And Carlotta, for that was the young lady’s name, most foolishly imagined herself in love. Her parents had the highest hopes of her making an excellent match—blood and beauty again, you see. These hopes seemed dashed when Carlotta discovered herself with child, but between them, her parents and the father-to-be, Count Fancini, hushed up what could have been a major scandal. Carlotta gave birth in secret. Six months later, still apparently fresh and virginal, she was married off. The boy—for it was, unfortunately, a boy—was given to a
childless family of humble origin as their own, and thus, the story ended. Or so thought Carlotta and Count Fancini.’
‘And then?’ Cressie asked with a sinking feeling. This was a fairytale without a happy ending.
‘And then,’ Giovanni said, his voice becoming icier in his efforts to maintain his air of detachment, ‘the count’s only legitimate son tragically died. And the count was by now, for reasons associated with his having been so eager to indulge his lustful appetites, unable to father another child of either sex …’
‘Let me guess,’ Cressie said fatalistically. ‘The count decides an illegitimate son is better than no son at all and has him summarily recalled from his foster parents.’
‘Exactly.’ Giovanni’s smile faded, to be replaced by his satyr look. ‘Like your Cendrillon, who in Italian is known as Cenerentola, our poor little fisherman’s boy was granted great riches. He was given the best of tutors, taught how to fight with a sword, how to converse politely, how to bow and how to eat with his mouth closed. He was taught how to be a gentleman. He worked hard at his studies, he wanted very much to please his most intimidating and most powerful new father, but the count was a difficult man to satisfy. Giovanni was forbidden all contact with the people he still thought of as his real family. Their names were beaten out of him, and—as I said, finally he was given proof that they had no wish to see him. He knew he ought to be happy living in such luxury, but the truth is that he was lonely. He was still much too rough around the edges to be exposed to society, and he was not permitted to find friends among his father’s servants and tenants. Where once he had had the run of the village and the freedom of the sea, now he was confined to the family estate. Beautiful as it was, Giovanni came to think of it as a prison.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ Cressie was struggling not to cry, all the more so because Giovanni was so determinedly unemotional. Whereas she was feeling—what? She didn’t know what to think either. She couldn’t allow herself to think. Not about that. Not about him or her feelings for him.
Oblivious of the turmoil raging in her heart, Giovanni shrugged her hand from his arm. ‘There is nothing to say. I was never hungry. I had an excellent education. I was still a bastard, but I was as close to being a legitimised bastard as it is possible to be. My father formally recognised me and had his will changed. I should have felt privileged.’
‘But?’
‘I tried, just as you did, Cressie, to do what was expected of me. I tried to be grateful, I tried to pay back what was being given with obedience. I was miserable.’
‘Which is why you recognised it in me?’
‘Exactly. Like you, I fooled myself into thinking that if only I tried harder I could want what my father wanted for me, but I could not. The one thing I had of my own was my art. I’d been drawing since before I could read or write. When he saw how much it meant to me he had my paints taken from me. Drawing, you see, is a hobby for women. Painting is carried out by artisans. Neither are acceptable activites for the son and heir of a count.’
‘Like mathematics for the daughter of an earl,’ Cressie said. ‘At least my father merely discourages me. I shall never think of him as a tyrant again.’ She uncurled her legs and wriggled her toes to rid herself of the pins and needles which had taken hold. ‘Was it then your mother, Carlotta, who encouraged you to paint?’
Giovanni swore. ‘I met her only once. She did not want to know me. Her reputation was of far more import than her first-born. It was when Count Fancini decided to send me off to the army to finish my education that I finally rebelled. He said he would cut me off. I told him I could make my own way in life without him. He told me I would return with my tail between my legs. I have not seen him since. It has been fourteen years.’
This last part of his story was told in a flat voice, without pretence of distance or objectivity. Giovanni looked drained and horribly close to defeated. It was clear there was more, much more, that he had not told her, but to ask him now would most likely send him into the darkest of tempers or the deepest of depressions.
‘So you cast off your blood and made a living out of beauty,’ Cressie said.
She could restrain herself no longer. Jumping to her feet, she pulled him with her, putting her arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest. She could feel his heart beating, slow and steady. Her senses were alight, attenuated, alive with an awareness of him. She couldn’t fool herself any longer. This wanting, this dragging, drugging insistent wanting, she ought to have known it could be nothing else.
She reached up on tiptoe to smooth his hair, unable to stop herself fluttering kisses over his forehead, his eyes, the sharp planes of his cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she whispered over and over. Sorry for him. Sorry for her own stupid self. ‘Sorry,’ she said, pressing herself more tightly against him, as if burrowing into him would bring comfort, telling herself that was all she wished, while at the same time her hands stroked his head, his neck, shoulders, and her mouth sought his and her heart wished for so much more.
When their lips met, she felt his resistance. She closed her eyes and pressed tighter into him. Kissing. Little tiny kisses to comfort and reassure and to take away the pain. Kisses that soothed, then kisses that slowed as he began to respond. Kisses that became a kiss. Her lips clung to his as tightly as her hands, her body. She felt as if she were pouring her heart out in her kiss. And it was that, not the salt taste of her tears, which made her stop lest she betray herself.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ Cressie said, tearing herself free. ‘I doubt you feel better for having unburdened yourself right now. My own experience with such confessions as you have drawn from me is that all you will feel is exhausted. But you will feel the benefit of it soon, Giovanni, and see things more clearly.’
Loath as she was to leave him, she knew him well enough. He would not like to have the details picked over or analysed. Besides, she needed time alone with her own thoughts, time to reconcile herself to that thought. She touched his cheek, almost overwhelmed by what she was feeling, desperate now to get away before she broke down. ‘You will create a new sort of beauty here, with me as your model, yes? I must go and write to my sister now. Thank you for trusting me with your story.’
She kissed his other cheek, then draping her cloak around her made for the door. Giovanni stood still, his eyes blank. Cressie felt as if her heart were being squeezed, seeing him so. She loved him so much. There, it was said.
Chapter Eight
‘I categorically refuse to see him. You have to get rid of him, Cressie, I beg of you.’
Bella gripped at the sleeve of her stepdaughter’s dress plaintively. Pink silk striped with grey, the gown had a plain round neck, puffed sleeves which tapered to end just past the wrist and a pretty design of scrollwork around the hem in the form of waves. It was one of Cressie’s favourites, but it crushed very easily. She tried to unpick her stepmother’s fingers, but Bella refused to let go.
‘Sir Gilbert has travelled all the way from London; surely you can at least grant him a short audience. It would be a most sensible precaution. You must think of the health of your unborn child. There is no disputing he is considered the pre-eminent man in his field.’
‘No!’ Bella threw herself across the salon and dropped dramatically on to a sofa. ‘No, no, no! I told your father, I was most plain with him. I simply will not have that horrible man touch me again. His fingers are like—like frozen twigs. And his nails are far too long for his calling. They are positively sharp, Cressie. You cannot imagine.’
Cressie could, unfortunately, imagine very well thanks to Bella’s graphic description. She shuddered and pressed her knees together. ‘Could you not simply consult with him, discuss your symptoms without subjecting yourself to the rigours of an examination? You have been quite unwell, after all.’
‘Because this child is a girl. I have been sick, that is all.’
Bella folded her arms protectively over her stomach. Her really
very small stomach. In fact Bella herself, Cressie thought, seemed to be shrinking. Was she losing weight?
‘Please, Cressie. Don’t force me to see him. His head looks like an egg peeking above a bird’s nest. He has one eyebrow permanently raised and a way of looking at one—he makes me feel as if I have committed some sort of heinous crime. And his voice. It is cadaverous, all whispery and monotone and cold. I tell you, he would not look out of place in a graveyard. He makes me feel as if I shall not be long in taking my own place there. As for his hands—but I have told you about his hands.’
Bella was now wringing hers together tragically. Her feet, no longer swollen but clad in blue satin slippers, were dancing a frantic little two-step, thanks to the way she was jiggling her legs, something of which she seemed to be wholly unaware. Why, if she disliked the surgeon so much, had she allowed him to attend her at all three of her confinements? Cressie rolled her eyes. The answer was obvious. Lord Armstrong must have insisted. It was wrong of her, but she couldn’t help thinking that it would be gratifying to help thwart her father just once. Telling herself that she did so only for Bella’s sake, Cressie nodded. ‘Very well. I am sure you exaggerate—the poor man cannot be so grotesque as you describe but I will send him away. I have to admit that you are looking much improved these last few days.’
‘The sickness has gone, certainly.’ Lady Armstrong sank back on to the sofa with a huge sigh of relief. ‘Thank you, Cressida. I very much appreciate this, I truly do.’
The words seemed to be genuinely heartfelt. Cressie was touched and rather pleased at this latest development in their relationship. As Bella said, they would never be bosom companions, but there was honesty and an understanding between them which meant they could exist, if not in harmony, then at least in peace. Even the two oldest boys seemed to have noticed the thaw in their relationship. James and Harry rarely played the obnoxious brat when in their mother’s and Cressie’s company, whereas before they had misbehaved terribly, feeding off the enmity between the two women. Which meant that Freddie and George no longer followed their lead with their own childish tantrums. Rarely did Cressie wish, as when she first took on her role to teach them, to tie them up and gag them, or to run screeching from the room tearing at her hair in frustration. Her brothers would never be angelic but they were nearly always biddable, and indeed likable, these days. She supposed that Harrow would soon change all that, if her father and the excruciating man he called his friend, Bunny Fitzgerald, were anything to go by.
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