She paused in front of a looking-glass in the hallway. Her hair was a mess, as usual. She had stopped pinning it up during the day, for she had to take it down each time she sat for her portrait, and so instead tied it back with a ribbon. Today’s was dusky pink like her gown. Giovanni said she suited this particular colour but should never wear a paler shade. She could sort of see what he meant when she saw how well this gown suited her, but she had no idea why.
The ribbon dangled from her fingers as she stared at her reflection. It had been almost a week since she’d started posing for the Mr Brown portrait. Almost a week since Giovanni had told her the story of his past. And almost a week since she’d realised that she was in love with him.
She’d hoped the feeling would go away of its own volition. Melt away in the same way as it had crept up on her. The wild elation she felt every time she looked at him, the warmth that enveloped her when she thought about him, the ache in her heart when she reminded herself that every day that passed was another closer to him leaving. But she didn’t really wish it would go away, and it had not. The opposite in fact. Every time she saw him, it seemed to expand, this feeling, filling her with a longing which was physical and more. Each moment she spent apart from him was a moment lost. Each little fact she managed to extract from him was a treasure, to be stored up and added, like pieces of tesserae, to complete the mosaic of him. Not that she believed she’d ever have the complete picture. There was no time, and in any event, Giovanni was a man who would never give all of himself to anyone. That he had given her so much already, so much more than he’d ever given anyone before, that was one of the things which made it easier for her to bear the thought of his absence.
She loved him. In one sense it made no difference at all. There was no point in contemplating any sort of future with him. She knew for a fact that Giovanni had no interest in any sort of alliance, sanctified by the church or not. Of her own wishes, she was not so certain, but she was beginning to conclude that marriage, even if it was to a man of her own choosing rather than her father’s, was one of the things she’d been silently rebelling against all her life. She didn’t want to be someone’s wife. She wanted to be herself. She still had no idea what that meant, but she did know it didn’t require a change of name.
In another sense, though, being in love changed everything. Time took on a strange quality. When she was with Giovanni it accelerated, the hours flew past unnoticed. When apart it slowed inexorably, almost seemed to stop altogether. The relationship between love and time. Maybe she could occupy herself with a new theory in the long endless days after he was gone, she thought wryly.
For the moment, everything had taken on a new meaning. She saw and heard things differently. Her mood swung wildly from exhilaration to despair in seconds. The stupidest things made her cry. Or laugh. She was in a constant state of awareness. She wanted, passionately wanted, to have everything and all of Giovanni that she could. She wanted to know him inside and out. She wanted him. She really, really wanted him. But ever since he had begun on this second painting, ever since he had named her his muse, he had steadfastly refused to surrender to the smouldering tension which fired each portrait session. He would not make the first move for fear of breaking the spell. Cressie was certain that the chemistry between them could only enhance it. Which meant she would have to make the first move. And so far, she had been unable to pluck up the courage to do so.
A solicitous cough behind her made her jump. ‘Sir Gilbert Mountjoy wishes me to inform Lady Armstrong that he must leave for another urgent appointment in fifteen minutes, my lady,’ Lord Armstrong’s butler said. ‘I informed her ladyship, but she said that you had the matter in hand.’
‘I do.’ Cressie hurriedly tied her hair ribbon. ‘Lead the way, Myers.’
‘I tell you, Giovanni, I had been convinced that Bella’s unflattering description of Sir Gilbert could only be much exaggerated,’ Cressie exclaimed an hour later, sitting in the attic studio, ‘but in fact it was nigh on perfect, possibly even understated. He is a veritable death’s head of a man. I cannot blame her at all for fleeing from his ministrations. He really does have fingers like icy twigs. I shuddered when he shook my hand. Why any woman with child would let that walking cadaver anywhere near them is quite beyond me.’
Giovanni smiled over the top of the easel. ‘So the venerable surgeon has been despatched, never to return. What will Lord Armstrong make of that, I wonder?’
‘I could not care less,’ Cressie said impatiently. ‘Bella has an excellent point. If my father cannot make the effort to be in attendance, he has no right to dictate arrangements for the birth. After all, he is not the one who has to suffer the privations. Do you think she is looking better, Giovanni?’
‘I think she is certainly looking thinner. Has she ceased to devour half a patisserie shop each afternoon?’
‘She’s not eating much at all, but she seems to be much the better for it.’ Cressie lapsed into silence. She loved to watch Giovanni at work. He had a special painting frown which was not at all like his satyr look. When he was happy with something, he smiled lopsidedly and tapped his brush on the edge of his palette three times. When he wasn’t happy, he pressed his thumb hard into his forehead. For some reason known only to himself, he had abandoned his normal custom and was painting this portrait in his shirtsleeves, discarding his waistcoat as well as his top coat. As a result he had managed to get paint or oil or pigment or charcoal, sometimes a mix of all, on his shirt by the end of each session. When she suggested a smock he laughed scornfully. He seemed to have an infinite supply of snow-white shirts anyway, for he turned up each morning to paint her brothers looking as immaculate as ever. Only here, in their attic studio, did he relax both his dress code and his behaviour.
‘I had a letter from Cordelia today.’ Cressie rolled her neck and stretched her legs as they took a short break, an hour or so later. ‘She says that Aunt Sophia is exaggerating matters. She denies any knowledge of a wager on the number of her suitors, and informs me that there is absolutely and positively no need for either Bella or myself to come to town. Were it not for that last remark, I would be a little reassured.’
Giovanni stood frowning at the canvas, obviously unhappy with some element of the painting. ‘But you are not reassured?’
Cressie wandered over to stand beside him. ‘I think Cordelia is scheming. I suspect all these silly things my aunt has herself in a tizzy over are a ruse to deflect attention from Cordelia’s real indiscretions, and I think Cordelia knows perfectly well that I would smell a rat the moment I saw her. What I don’t know is what I should do about it.’
‘You said yourself that your sister will do as she wishes whether you intervene or not,’ Giovanni said distractedly.
‘Yes, but …’
‘I think it is the hair. I cannot capture the exact way it falls over your eye just here.’ Giovanni swept a long curling tress of her hair over her forehead. ‘I wonder if you tilted your head a little more like this—so. Or tucked your hair behind your ear, perhaps. Let me demonstrate, if I may.’ Cressie stood quite still, concentrating on breathing. ‘Yes, that is better,’ Giovanni said. ‘If you had perhaps a pearl earring that would be … yes.’
His fingers were tangled in her hair. His thumb caressed the lobe of her ear. Did he realise he was doing it? She could feel his breath as he leaned towards her. His fingers were stroking in delicious little circling movements, the area just behind her ear. Was it accidental, this feather-light touch in this most sensitive spot, or was he just thinking about the painting? She risked a glance. Dark eyes. That look, the flaring-heat one. Not the painting then. The knot of excitement which was permanently present when she was with him, when she thought of him, which was only temporarily unravelled when she touched herself at night in the dark thinking of him, the knot began to tighten.
‘I have a pearl drop,’ Cressie said.
She meant an earring. It didn’t sound as if she meant an earring. It didn’t look
as if Giovanni thought so either. His eyes flickered closed. ‘You have a pearl drop,’ he said softly, making the words sound even more erotic.
His mouth hovered over her ear. His fingers played up and down the line from her ear to her neck, threading and unthreading through her hair. Though she had pulled her shirt closed when he had called a break, she had not bothered to pull her corsets back into place. The cotton of her shirt was abrasive on her nipples. They were stiff and engorged.
Giovanni kissed her earlobe, taking it gently into his mouth and sucking. He licked his way around the contours of her ear, as if he were painting it with his tongue. His thumb stroked the pulse at the base of her throat. His other hand crept around her waist and slid down to cup her bottom. She knew he would come to his senses any moment. She knew that if he did, she would most likely lose hers. She had to find the courage. Cressie slipped her arms around Giovanni’s waist and lifted her head up to kiss him full on the lips.
He did not resist. She slid her arms up his back, flattening her palms along the ridges of his muscles, feeling the heat of his skin through his linen shirt, opening her mouth to him, silently pleading with him not to stop.
He didn’t. His kiss was languorous, his lips clinging to hers, not with a violent thirst but drinking from her as if she were nectar. Slowly, his tongue licked across her bottom lip. She dug her fingers into his back and arched into him, flattening her breasts against him. His kiss deepened. His fingers tightened on her bottom. His breath was warm on her face as he kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her.
Slowly, like a dreamer awakening, he stopped and began to disengage himself from her embrace. What to do? She didn’t know what to do. And then she did. For they were the same, she and he. That’s what he had said. Kindred spirits. ‘I dreamt of you last night, Giovanni,’ Cressie said in the barest whisper.
Her words instantly arrested his retreat. ‘What did you dream?’ he asked. Her words from the whispering gallery. He understood. And now she must turn his words into hers. ‘I was watching you undressing. You knew I was watching.’ She hesitated. ‘I was touching myself.’
His pupils were huge. She had his entire attention, fixed unwavering on her. But he did not move towards her. ‘Cressie …’
‘Like this,’ she said, pushing back her coat and waistcoat, sliding one hand inside the open neck of her shirt, cupping her breast. Her heart was pounding. She was hot, but she was not at all embarrassed. ‘I was touching myself like this, Giovanni.’
He moaned. A low guttural sound, it found an echo in her own sigh as she circled her aching nipple. His hand reached for her breast then dropped. He stared as she touched herself, fascinated. It was empowering and extremely arousing, the way he looked at her, the way she could make him look at her.
‘I dreamt you saw me,’ Cressie whispered. ‘You were pulling your shirt over your head, and you turned around to look at me. I dreamt that when you saw me, you called to me. “Help me, Cressie,” you said. And I did.’ She let go of her breast and pulled his shirt from his trousers. Up slid her palms on his skin, finally on his skin, as she pulled the folds of his shirt until he tore it off and threw it across the room.
His skin was not tanned but a beautiful olive colour. The dip from his ribs to his abdomen was clearly defined, almost hollow. Black hair ran in a thin line up from his navel spreading out over his chest. His nipples were dark brown. She touched them, rubbing her cheek against the rough hair of his chest. Don’t say beautiful, she told herself, don’t say it. But he was. Truly beautiful.
‘What happened next, Cressie?’ he said, his breathing shallow.
He seemed mesmerised by her. He would do as she bid, but only if she bid him. He wanted her, though he was terrified to break the artistic spell. But he wanted her to break it. She could see that, in the way he looked at her, in the tension which made him seem coiled, every muscle tight, poised. What next?
Echoes in the whispering gallery. She dragged her shirt over her head, mirroring his movement. ‘You touched me here,’ she said, taking his hands and laying them on her breasts, which had escaped from her corset. ‘You touched me.’
He did. As he had before, as she had imagined that day, and each night since. He cupped her breasts, lowering his mouth he hungrily licked around their contours. He sucked hard on each nipple then circled with his tongue. Heat, fiercer than any she had felt before, engulfed her. Every part of her seemed to be connected. Her nipples, her fingertips, her ears, her toes. Even the backs of her knees tingled. What next?
‘The softest of skin,’ she whispered. ‘I wanted you to find the softest of skin.’
‘Softest,’ he repeated, slipping his hand inside her breeches.
There was not enough room. Hurriedly she undid the buttons. His hand found the gap between the legs of her pantalettes. Cressie gasped. How could his touch be so different from her own? She had imagined him touching her there, but she had never dreamed it could be like this. The way he touched her, so gently, like the fluttering of a feather over her skin, and yet it seared.
‘What next?’ he asked, his voice ragged against her ear.
‘I needed to know if we were the same,’ Cressie answered. ‘I needed to touch you. “Let me touch you,” I said. And you unfastened your trousers. You took my hand, and you guided me, you taught me.’
She prayed that he would, since she was beginning to lose confidence, and her prayers were for once answered. Giovanni took her hand and slid it inside his trousers. Soft hair at the top of his thigh. Then rougher. His groan was louder and less restrained when she cupped him. Heavy. Warm. He contracted in her hand.
‘Cressie. I don’t think … I can’t think. Cressie, what next?’
What next? ‘Show me,’ she said. ‘I asked you to show me how to touch you. And you touched me too. Show me, Giovanni, show me now as you did in my dream. Show me how to do to you what you did to me in the whispering gallery.’
She could sense his hesitation. He knew she was playing an erotic game. This was no mere recounting of a dream but a form of seduction. He lifted his head to look at her, tilted her chin to look deep into her eyes, searching. She did not know what he found there, only that it was pivotal. The shift was almost tangible, from doing her bidding to his taking control.
Giovanni’s smile was entirely sensual. ‘In the whispering gallery,’ he said, ‘I have never so much in my life wanted you to touch me. Wanted it to be me touching you.’ He was kissing her neck now, his fingers stroking her thigh, with his other hand easing her breeches down. She had taken off her boots when she broke her portrait pose. ‘In the whispering gallery, I wanted to be with you like this,’ Giovanni said, lowering her to the floor, quickly kicking off his shoes, discarding the rest of his clothing to kneel before her, between her spread legs, completely naked.
‘I wanted to do this.’ When he leaned over her to kiss her, her breasts brushed his chest, the most delightful frisson, but not nearly enough. His mouth was hot, his kisses dark, drawing the tension up from deep inside her like water from a well. ‘You were aflame in the whispering gallery,’ he said, ‘you were slick and wet, weren’t you?’ His fingers slid slowly inside her, and Cressie gasped. ‘And I was hard,’ Giovanni said, his voice so low it vibrated. ‘Feel how hard I was, Cressie.’
He took her hand and wrapped it around his erection. She couldn’t help noticing how different he was from Giles. Darker skin. Thicker. When she clasped her fingers around him, he pulsed. When he slid his fingers deeper inside her, she cried out.
Her cry released any vestige of restraint in both of them. Giovanni pulled her hard up against him and began to stroke her, his fingers sliding over her, circling her, slipping into the heat of her then back over, sliding, sliding, like his tongue sliding inside her mouth now. She knew she should be returning his touch, but it was all she could do to hold on to him as he touched her, fingers and tongue, her mouth, her sex, bringing her to a height she had not thought possible to climb, pushing her mercilessly on u
ntil she climaxed, feeling as if she were splitting, pulsing around his fingers, her mouth pressing hot, wild kisses into his throat, his shoulders, his heaving chest. But it was not enough this time, her own completion. Not nearly enough. She wanted to share it with him. ‘Show me,’ she insisted, ‘Giovanni, tell me what you want, show me.’
She thought he would resist her. She saw the effort there in his eyes. Then she began inexpertly to stroke him, and he arched his back, his hand sinking into her flank. ‘Like this?’ she asked. He muttered in Italian. Something that sounded like a plea. Then he kissed her again, putting his hand over hers to slow her, showing her how to hold him. ‘Like this?’ she asked again. But even as she did, she felt him tighten, felt the pulse of blood and the rush of seed, and heard him cry out, a painful cry as if she had released the very devil, as he spent himself over her hand.
The speed of his climax, the unstoppable nature of it, swept Giovanni into a strange vacuum, a world where he floated in wholly unaccustomed bliss for the longest, sweetest moment. It was not that he had forgotten, he was certain of that, even though it had been years. This felt different. Completely different. Apart from anything else, he had never, in the past, had any difficulty in controlling his release, for those women he had pleasured had expectations. Expectations he had not only met, but surpassed.
The Beauty Within Page 16
