Evening Star

by Catherine Coulter

  Giana looked at her oddly.

  “Ah, do not say that you disapprove. You know what parents are. They forget that they were once young and in love.”

  “Yes, I suppose they do.”

  “We will be marrying in but two months.”

  Giana gazed over at Signora Palli, who was complacently drinking her lemonade, one benign eye on her daughter.

  “Do you love Vittorio?” Giana asked.

  Cametta cocked her dark head, bouncing her tight curls over her ears. “Of course. Who would not? He is so handsome, so gallant.”

  “But do you know him?”

  “Giana, how foolish you are. I know him enough to let him kiss me.” She rolled her eyes. “His mouth is so firm, and yet so gentle. I much enjoy it. Of course, he apologizes for being so forward.”

  Bianca Salvado said, “What secrets are you two tattling?” She did not wait for a reply. “Vittorio, I believe Cametta is telling Giana all about you.”

  “I trust you are being kind, little pigeon,” Vittorio said, a charming smile indenting the creases beside his mouth.

  “Pigeons are such nasty birds, Vittorio. I vow I would prefer another fowl.”

  But his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, Giana saw. My God, she thought, staring at him, he is bored. How strange, she thought, studying him from beneath her lashes; the way he gestured with his hands when he spoke, his palms up and his fingers spread, somehow reminded her of Randall. No, impossible. Randall was not a vain fop, and he was never bored in her company.

  Bruno Barbinelli, a dark, brooding young man, an image he was at pains to project, rose and proffered Giana an elaborate bow. “Would you care to stroll through the gardens, signorina? We will not, of course, be out of Signora Palli’s watchful sight.”

  Giana paused for only a moment. She wanted to walk about the beautiful gardens, no matter who her escort. She looked a question toward Signora Palli, and at the lady’s nod, she allowed Bruno to help her rise, and tucked her hand through his arm.

  “Do not go far, you two,” Cametta called out, and dissolved into a giggle.

  “You mustn’t tease him, Giana. His eyebrows are already drawn together.” Bianca looked toward Bruno’s twin sisters and tittered loudly until they joined her.

  “It is a beautiful day,” Bruno said.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you enjoying your stay in Rome?”

  “It has been most unusual.”

  Giana stopped in front of a fountain, pulled off her glove, and glided her fingers through the cool water.

  “You speak Italian quite well.”

  “I am learning.”

  “Your eyes are beautiful.”

  “Grazie,” she said, and walked on. Was he going to start reciting poetry?

  “My sisters tell me that you are engaged. Such a pity.”

  Giana chanced to be looking at his eyes at that moment, and she saw an assessing gleam in their brooding depths. “Why is it a pity?”

  “Because this Englishman met you first.”

  “Yes, I suppose that he did.”

  “I could make you forget him, you know.”

  Giana felt a sudden urge to laugh. He spoke with such passion, his dark eyes filled with sincerity. It was so very trite, and he was so very young. She suppressed the laugh, feeling suddenly very ancient.

  “I don’t think so, signore.”

  “You are so small, so delicate, Giana,” he continued, his voice becoming deep and more impassioned. “This Englishman cannot deserve one of your poise, your sensibility.”

  “Undoubtedly you are quite right, Bruno,” she said with a brilliant smile. She bit back a grin as he blinked rapidly at her.

  “What else have your sisters told you about my fiancé?”

  Bruno shrugged, palpably relieved at her neutral question. “That he will join your family’s business.”

  “Actually, it is my mother. She is my only family.”

  There was a look of incredulity on his smooth-cheeked face. “I . . . I did not know that your mother was a businessman.”

  “I assure you she is not. She is a businesswoman.”

  There was an appraising look in his eyes again, and a question, but she did not enlighten him. She knew all about Bruno Barbinelli, and his twin sisters, and his father, who was searching for an heiress to marry his only son.

  She felt his fingers tighten about her arm. “I have wanted for the past two weeks, ever since I met you, to be alone with you. You are so exquisite, Giana, a small, innocent little bird who wants to be loved and tamed.”

  “How about a dove, Bruno? I have always had a liking for doves. They are small and innocent, would you not agree?”

  “You do not take me seriously,” Bruno said.

  “You are very young.”

  Startled, he exclaimed, “Young? I am twenty-three years old.”

  “Odd, you seem younger, much younger.”

  He flushed angrily, but his voice rang with passionate sincerity. “You are toying with me, signorina, but I like a girl with spirit. You take my gentleness and my desire to please you as a sign of an immature man.”

  He clasped her shoulders and jerked her toward him. It was too much and Giana could not help herself. She burst into laughter. He released her so suddenly that she stumbled backward.

  “You need to be tamed,” he snarled, his dark face now truly flushed with anger, his studied passion forgotten.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” he growled, staring at her with open dislike.

  “Why would you say that I need to be tamed, when I simply find you funny?”

  “Funny?”

  “Well, amusing then.”

  “You are supposed to be a proper young lady, not an outspoken, insulting . . .”

  “Bitch?”

  “Dio, I would not marry you, even if you are—” He broke off, and clamped his teeth over his lower lip.

  “Even if I am wealthy. Now that you have spoken your mind, Bruno, perhaps we can stop this elaborate charade. I think you are probably quite nice. You prefer poetry to girls anyway, do you not?”

  He said stiffly, drawing himself to his full height, “The day is very warm. I wish to have another glass of lemonade.”

  “I think that is a fine idea, Bruno.”

  As they walked back to their party, Bruno maintaining an angry silence, Giana wondered at herself. She did not understand why she had been so very impolite to Bruno, despite his motives. She had, she saw, wounded his vanity deeply. She realized suddenly, a flush splaying over her cheeks, that she would have felt flattered and would undoubtedly have preened at his ardent attentions but a month ago.

  It was a galling insight, and she felt ashamed that it was true. But he had been so obvious with her, had made her want to laugh. She touched her fingertips to her cheeks. She must remember that she was in Rome, and people were different here, despite what Uncle Daniele said. They were different, not she.

  But the sight of the River Anio and the Temple of Vesta that afternoon brought only a trite compliment to her lips. She could not seem to pay much attention to either the scenery or her companions. Signora Palli asked her once if she was feeling ill, and Vittorio gazed at her oddly from his elegantly arched brows. Bruno maintained a brooding silence and the girls were left to flirt with the other young gentlemen, whose names refused to come to Giana’s mind.

  She shared a quiet dinner that evening with Daniele. Over a game of chess he said, “This is the first time in Rome you have been with people your own age for an entire day. You have not remarked upon it.”

  Giana moved her queen’s bishop to a diagonal bearing down upon his white king. She shrugged, not raising her head. “It was not particularly remarkable, although I did enjoy visiting Tivoli. There are five hundred fountains in the gardens at the Villa d’Este. I read it in a guidebook. Is that not interesting?”

  “What did you think of Vittorio Cavelli?”

  She had expected him to question her
about Bruno, for she had the inescapable feeling that he knew of the young man’s interest in her. She raised her head and regarded him with some surprise.

  “He is all right, I suppose. Attentive to Cametta, says all the right things, but I do not particularly like him. He is not sincere, perhaps.”

  “As you know, Vittorio is the heir of an aristocratic family,” Daniele said smoothly, moving his knight to attack her bishop. “It is as true in Italy as in England that the aristocracy still wield much influence and control much wealth. But the rest of us, Giana—and you are one of us, despite your mother’s titled antecedents—are becoming a force they must reckon with. Year by year, we grow stronger, are more wealthy. Year by year, the aristocracy become more degenerate and more impoverished. Vittorio’s marriage to Cametta Palli is quite understandable. She becomes a countess and Vittorio can continue his idle existence in comfort. Her dowry is quite monstrous.”

  Giana’s fingers were poised over her bishop. “What are you saying, Uncle?”

  “Nothing of any importance, I suppose.” He shrugged. “It is unusual that Randall Bennett wishes to soil his aristocratic hands with business.”

  “I told you that he is different,” she said. “Check, Uncle.”

  “How odd that you should have your father’s skill,” he remarked, staring down at the board. “With all your mother’s remarkable intelligence, she could never grasp the intricacies of the game.”

  “And mate.”

  “Most delightfully unfeminine of you, my dear.”

  Chapter 6

  It was a scorching, humid day, as only a day in August could be in Rome. Giana wished for nothing more than a tub of cold water she could sink into and sleep. Her layers of petticoats felt like a deadweight, and her damp underclothes chafed against her skin. She gingerly wiped a drop of perspiration from her lip before it could fall on the swatch of white embroidered linen she held. Many wealthy Roman families had weeks before escaped the heat and journeyed with their households to the cool mountains to the north. They had all gone except for the Pallis, the Salvados, and the Condes, and even they had packed their children off. It had been with a sigh of relief that Giana had bid good-bye to Cametta Palli and Bianca Salvado. It was only Angela Cavour, who had been gone for three weeks now, that Giana missed. Soft-spoken, gentle Angela. Giana, of course, could not go with her. Brothels were always open, even in August.

  Giana let out a sigh of boredom and jerked her needle again through the linen. She was aware that Mirabella del Conde had stirred herself to watch her again, and as luck would have it, the needle was well laced and the light brown silk thread pulled through easily.

  “Nice even stitches,” Mirabella said in her flat voice. “I like the shades of brown. They will make lovely seat covers for the solarium chairs.”

  Giana merely nodded, so bored with the eternal embroidery and their endless conversations that she wanted to scream. There has to be more to life than this. Once the thought had finally spoken itself in her mind, the reply was not long in coming. There is more to life—and your mother has found it.

  Giana shook away the thought. She was simply out of sorts with the ghastly heat. And the ghastly boring company of these ladies. Giana realized that Camilla Palli was speaking to her. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I was saying, my dear child, that Cametta much enjoyed the outing with you last month to the Villa d’Este. She wished that you could have accompanied her to the mountains.”

  “It was interesting, ma’am. On a day like today, I wish I were splashing in a fountain somewhere.”

  “One becomes accustomed to the warmer weather,” Luciana Salvado said. She lowered her eyes to her embroidery and continued in a reproachful voice, “I only wish you had enjoyed all the young people on your outing.”

  “But I did,” Giana said.

  “That is not what Bianca told me,” Mirabella said. “She said that you left poor Bruno sadly cast down.”

  “I sincerely trust not, ma’am. He is very pleasant. It is just that I found his attentions rather awkward. He is immature, I think.”

  Camilla Palli tittered, a sound very much like her daughter, Cametta, made, and just as grating. “You, dear child, are only seventeen. I daresay he would make a fine husband.”

  “You forget, ma’am,” Giana said, jutting out her chin, “that my fiancé awaits me in England.”

  “Dear Bruno is related to me,” Camilla explained. “His mother is my cousin.”

  Ah, Giana thought, and you are piqued because I can’t be nabbed.

  “Englishmen are so cold, I have heard,” Mirabella said to no one in particular, threading her needle.

  “The climate in England is cooler than it is here,” Giana said blandly.

  “That is not what Mirabella meant,” Luciana said sharply.

  When Mirabella’s eyes went to the clock, Giana’s gaze followed hers, and with a relieved smile she rose. “It is time for me to meet my uncle,” she said.

  “But you have not yet finished the chair cover,” Mirabella said.

  “I fear it will have to wait, ma’am. Uncle Daniele will not.” Even the thought of spending the evening at Madame Lucienne’s brothel seemed preferable to this.

  “Your gown looks quite limp, Giana,” Luciana said. “You should lace your corset more tightly. It prevents wrinkles.”

  “I fear I would faint if I did, ma’am. It is so warm.”

  “Still,” Camilla pursued in Luciana’s wake, “a lady should always appear immaculate. I am certain your dear mother would give you the same advice.”

  “Perhaps,” Giana said, inching toward the door of the salon.

  “Let me ring for a servant,” Mirabella said finally, seeing that Giana was set upon leaving. “Where has the time gone?” she said brightly. “It is already four o’clock. My dear husband does not work so late now in August. I expect him home soon, yes, quite soon now.”

  Daniele settled back against the leather squabs of the carriage, enjoying the stirring of a slight evening breeze against his skin. Giana sat silently beside him in the open carriage, staring toward the Tiber, sluggish and muddy in late summer.

  “You were always such a chatterer, Giana. Has the Roman heat tired your tongue?”

  “I suppose so, Uncle Daniele.”

  But Daniele knew it was not the heat. Giana had fallen into brooding, thoughtful silences more and more as the weeks passed. He decided to test the waters.

  “You will be returning to England in two weeks.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I hope it will be cooler in London.”

  Not an auspicious beginning, he thought, tugging on his mustache. “Your mother writes that she misses you.”

  “Yes, I saw her letter.” She paused a long moment, then looked squarely at Daniele and said, “I look forward to seeing those I love again.”

  Damnation. What could he do to convince the stupid girl? He grinned to himself, but only briefly, remembering his encouragement of Signore Barbinelli and his favored son, Bruno. Giana, by all accounts he had heard, had seen through his flowery blandishments and sent him about his business. He wondered if Bruno was less skilled than Randall Bennett. Evidently so. That, or Giana, at an eight-hundred-mile distance, had preserved Randall’s image, perfecting it with a kind of nauseating piety.

  He grew suddenly angry, both with the endless situations he had created for Giana and with her for clinging like a drowning person to a man who had no more substance than a dream. And she had grown seemingly indifferent lately to the scenes she witnessed in the Golden Chamber. He glanced at her set profile. There was steel in her, and a core of stubbornness. He would have to write to Aurora and tell her there was more of her father in Giana than she suspected. But for now, Morton Van Cleve’s heritage was his problem.

  “Go to Madame Lucienne’s room, Giana,” he said when they arrived at the brothel, “but do not bother to change your clothes or put on your blond wig. Stay there until I come to fetch you.”

  “Why
?” she asked him shortly.

  “You will see soon enough,” he told her.

  She quirked a black brow at him and smiled mirthlessly. “So the gentlemen are to be deprived of my charming conversation this evening?”

  “I believe they will survive their disappointment.”

  She asked him again what he had planned for her amusement this evening, when he returned to fetch her. He glanced at her sharply, for her voice sounded bored, as if she were inquiring about the weather.

  “It is rather difficult to describe, my dear,” he said finally as he took her by the arm and led her down the long corridor toward the small door that gave onto the Golden Chamber. She stopped at it, but he waved her forward, and pulled open the door that led to the fourth floor.

  “Are those not the servants’ quarters?”

  “Some of them are. Come.”

  She followed him silently up the narrow stairs until they were at the top of the house, with tilting eaves overhead. He ushered her into a small room that was very different from the other one. There was only a small table and two chairs set in the middle of the room, and the walls were papered in stark dark blue.

  “Sit down, Giana. We will have supper here. The entertainment will begin a bit later.”

  It was very warm in the small room, and Giana tugged at her high-necked collar. She felt drained and tired. Despite Daniele’s air of secrecy, Giana supposed that her entertainment was to be another evening of watching a man, ridiculous-looking in his naked, sweating lust, heaving and grunting over a girl. She no longer found them disgusting; indeed, they no longer intruded in her conscious thoughts. She had set herself apart from them, had retreated for many weeks now from the nightly spectacles. They no longer touched her.

  A light dinner of fresh shrimp, fruit, and cool white wine was brought in by a servant soon after they were settled. Giana ate sparingly, for every bite she swallowed made her corset press that much tighter against her sweat-damp shift. They ate in silence, and Giana sensed that Daniele was not particularly pleased with her tonight. She thrust her chin forward. Let him sulk in his failure, she thought. I have kept my end of the bargain. It was odd though that Randall’s face was no longer clear in her mind. What was clear, and what was precious to her, was his remembered gentleness and his trust in her. She had known weeks ago she would not let him down; he was her lifeline. Her eyes clouded as she wondered if her face was as blurred to him as his was to her. She became aware that Daniele was speaking to her, and lifted her eyes from her plate. She smiled, hearing his words, for he was speaking about business, a carefully neutral topic that would raise no arguments between them.