The Beauty Within

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘Thus are the mighty fallen,’ Cressie said. ‘Cassie had a lucky escape.’

  ‘You may not remember, but he more or less abandoned her at the altar. She had not the sense to realise—but she was ever a flighty piece. I fear Cordelia is another such. Have you really been unable to find any trace of her at all?’

  ‘She took a hackney carriage when she left Cavendish Square, but she took care not to let her direction be overheard. I don’t know how many hacks there are in London, but short of interviewing every single driver—it would take months, and goodness knows how much in bribes, by which time I am very sure Cordelia will have informed us herself of her fate, one way or another.’

  ‘You do not hope this will turn out well for her, Cressida?’

  ‘No, I don’t, Aunt,’ Cressie said gently, ‘and I think you are far too sensible to rely on hope either.’

  ‘No, I do not. I am feeble of body but not yet of mind,’ Aunt Sophia said with a glimmer of her customary wit. ‘You should return to Killellan, Cressida. It has been more than a week—Bella will have need of you. There is nothing more we can do until your sister shows her hand.’

  ‘I am more concerned about my brothers’ lessons. I suspect they will be making hay in my absence,’ Cressie replied, forcing a smile.

  Her aunt drew her a piercing look. ‘You do not fool me, Niece. Something is amiss with you. You are quite—changed. Were it anyone else, I would say there was a man behind it, but in your case—what is it, Cressida?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Cressie caught herself just before she began to pick at her thumb.

  ‘Rubbish. You think because I am sick and abed that I need to be mollycoddled, but I know there is something wrong, and I am sure I can help. Is it Bella?’

  ‘No.’ Cressie opened her mouth to deny once more that anything was amiss and faltered under her aunt’s gimlet stare. ‘It is nothing for you to worry about. Trust me,’ she said, borrowing Giovanni’s words.

  Aunt Sophia did her the honour of heeding her wishes, though her parting words were to reassure her of her support should Cressida require counsel. Sitting in the carriage a few hours later, dressed in a comfortable travelling gown with her new purchases safe in her portmanteau, Cressie heaved a sigh of relief at having to no longer put up a front, and gave herself over to her anxieties.

  She missed Giovanni terribly. She had not thought herself lonely when he came into her life, for she had Cordelia. But Cordelia, she now realised, was as self-contained in her own way as Cressie. Six years between them, and Cressie having assumed the position of elder sister when Cassie married, meant that there would always be a distance between them. And besides, Cordelia had never understood her quite as Giovanni did. No one had.

  ‘He sees me as no other does,’ she recalled Celia saying of her husband. Cressie hadn’t understood that until now. ‘And I see him in the same way,’ Celia had added. That hateful little man Luigi di Canio had forced Giovanni to strip himself bare. The revelations had been so shocking that Cressie had for the first few days when she arrived in London been unable to think beyond the hurt they caused. That he could have so carelessly given himself to those other women. Sold himself. The very thought of it made her shudder. Shamefully, shudder not so much with disgust, as with simple jealousy, for he had given them so easily what she had never had from him.

  It was a conversation with Aunt Sophia, a discussion of all the prospects which Cordelia seemed to have thrown away with her mysterious elopement, which had given Cressie pause for thought. Was not her own father in the business of selling his daughters, trading their bodies and their bloodline in order to achieve what he wanted, what Cressie called his dynastic web? For Lord Armstrong, his daughters were a means to an end. Truly, was this so very different? Or perhaps even worse, for at least Giovanni sold his own flesh and blood to his own advantage, not someone else’s.

  It amused her to imagine having that conversation with her father. Cressie smiled bitterly out of the window of the coach as the countryside flashed by. Was she so desperate to persuade herself that she could accept Giovanni’s past, that she was resorting to sophistry? That was what Lord Armstrong would accuse her of.

  Sophistry or not, what mattered was whether she could come to terms with those other women in Giovanni’s past. Asking herself this question made Cressie realise she had already decided that she wanted to. Which raised the question of what Giovanni wanted. She had no idea how he really felt about her, and had given him no chance to tell her after Luigi di Canio had put his vicious spoke in the works. Loathsome man. She was glad Giovanni had punched him. She would like to punch him herself. Better yet, lock him in a room with the worst possible art she could find and force him to look at it every day until he begged for mercy.

  Through the window of the coach, the countryside was becoming familiar. ‘Not far to Killellan now, my lady. No more than an hour,’ her maid said.

  Cressie nodded distractedly. An hour, not much more, and she would see Giovanni again. She would tell him—no, not that she forgave him, it was not her right to forgive. Actually, now she came to think about it, it was Giovanni who was far more disgusted than she by his past. Sordid, he’d called it. He hated his body, the instrument of pleasure he had sold. It was different with her. He’d said that too, but she had been so angry and so hurt. It was different with you. I want you to know that. He thought he was so tainted he would destroy her, but had he not also implied that she could remake him?

  When you touch me, it is as if no woman has ever touched me. Cressie shivered. He had not once mentioned Giles, never reproached her for her lack of innocence. That too had not occurred to her until now. It was not the same, but it was not so very different, her giving herself in return for a name, a position, for the sake of her father’s approbation. When she had confessed this truth of her past, Giovanni had been angry, not at her but for her. He had not judged her. He had made her see that she must stop judging herself. It was not the same, but it really was not so very different at all.

  When you touch me, it is as if no woman has ever touched me. Yes, that too was the same. He made her feel as if he were the first. Was it too fanciful to imagine that they could start anew? If he loved her as she loved him, she had no doubt they could. But did he? As the coach trundled up the carriageway to Killellan Manor, Cressie allowed herself to hope. Not for the conventional happy ending of orange blossom and blessings. She had no interest in either. But for something new, something which she and Giovanni could create together. And the first step was to see him, talk to him, tell him.

  She sprang out of the carriage before the footman had a chance to let the steps down, and was in the reception hall struggling with the ties of her bonnet when Bella opened the door of her salon. ‘No news,’ Cressie told her stepmother hurriedly. ‘No trace of Cordelia. I will write to my father tonight, but first I must—forgive me, but I must see Giovanni. Do you know where he is?’

  It was the expression on Bella’s face rather than her words which stopped Cressie in her tracks. Pity. ‘Gone?’ she repeated, trying to take in the meaning of the word. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Italy, apparently,’ Bella told her.

  One’s hopes being utterly dashed was actually akin to being flayed alive, Cressie discovered as she dropped her bonnet on to the marbled floor. She felt like a child, opening the wrong present on her birthday. Or no present. Or—for God’s sake, what difference did it make how she felt! Cressie ran up the stairs at full tilt, hurled herself into her bedchamber, locked the door behind her and howled like a baby in an agony of pain and frustration.

  She did not discover the portraits until the next day. Bella it was who told her to look in the attic. ‘He left them for you.’

  ‘You’ve seen them?’

  ‘What were you thinking, Cressida? I cannot believe you allowed things to go so far.’

  ‘Things did not go far enough, as far as I am concerned,’ Cressie replied, too worn out and depressed to prevaricate. ‘I love
him, Bella. I love him.’

  If she was in search of comfort, she was to be disappointed. ‘More fool you,’ her stepmother replied. ‘Did I not warn you about such men?’

  ‘You said he was heartless, but he is not.’

  ‘Did he compromise you, Cressie? Because if you are with child, I can help. I believe there might be a way—are you with child? All those headaches you have been complaining of lately, I was thinking that was a sign that you might be—are you?’

  Confused by the change, the strange note—was it eagerness?—in Bella’s voice, Cressie did not answer directly. Bella had lost more weight since she last saw her, she noted. In fact, the amount of weight she seemed to have lost these last few weeks was quite dramatic. The voluminous flowing gown she wore made it difficult to tell, but if she did not know for certain that Bella was increasing she might think … Did she know for certain? ‘When you first told my father about your pregnancy, he said Sir Gilbert Mountjoy had examined you,’ Cressie said.

  ‘That man!’ Bella waved a dismissive hand. ‘I told him about my sickness. He told me to rest.’

  ‘So he didn’t actually examine you?’

  Bella was beginning to look uncomfortable. ‘There was no need.’

  ‘Are you really expecting, Bella? Is there a child?’’

  Her stepmother took a faltering pace backwards, clutching at her stomach protectively. ‘If it is your father you are worried about, you need not,’ she said. ‘He won’t be back for many months. By the time he next deigns to pay us a visit, you would have already given your baby over to me. It’s bound to be a girl. Both Cassie and Celia had girls first. Henry would never know the difference.’

  ‘Bella, what on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I saw the paintings, all three of them. After he’d gone, I went up to the attic to take a look. There is no way he could have painted you like that unless you had—but it doesn’t matter.’ Bella stretched out a pleading hand. ‘It doesn’t matter, Cressie. I will take your baby. Your little girl. I’ll take her as my own and I’ll never tell, I promise you.’

  ‘Bella, I’m not with child,’ Cressie said gently, ‘and I don’t think you are either, are you?’

  A large tear rolled down Bella’s cheek. ‘I thought I was, I truly did. All the signs were there. My courses stopped. Then there was the sickness, all the time the sickness. And my stomach swelled. And my breasts. And you saw my feet, Cressie.’

  ‘I did.’ Cressie put her arm around Bella’s waist and steered her towards the chaise-longue. ‘I did see.’

  ‘I wasn’t lying.’

  ‘No. No, of course you were not.’

  ‘Only it all stopped. And then my courses started. And I feel so empty. So very empty. But she was never there, my little girl. Janey said—she said that I—she said that sometimes when a woman wants something too much, that she can imagine it is true. I couldn’t contemplate telling your father the truth—you can imagine his reaction—so I just sort of carried on pretending and hoping, not knowing what else to do.’ Tears trickled down Bella’s rouged cheeks.

  ‘Please don’t cry, we are all of us capable of deluding ourselves by wanting something too much,’ Cressie replied gently, thinking of the clearly misplaced hopes and plans she had concocted in the carriage, remembering with fresh pain that Giovanni was gone. Gone!

  ‘I thought if you had been so foolish as to allow that man—are you sure, Cressie?’

  ‘Bella, I wish I had been so foolish. Truthfully, I would gladly have been so foolish if he had allowed me. But it was Giovanni, not I, who would not—not—he would not.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bella’s fingers tightened around Cressie’s. ‘I know it’s a terrible thing to say but I confess I wish he had.’

  Cressie laughed, a bereft little sound. ‘Not as much as I wish it.’

  She handed her stepmother over to the tender ministrations of Janey, eventually. The nursemaid took her aside to apologise. ‘I wanted to say something, my lady, but I did not quite know what to say.’ Telling her not to worry, Cressie asked Janey to take good care of Bella, and made her guilty escape.

  Three paintings. Bella had said three paintings. She eased open the door of the attic, holding the oil lamp high, for it was past dusk. No easels. No palette. No brushes. Only the smell of linseed oil and turpentine hung faintly in the air. Giovanni was not there. Of course he was not, but it took her a moment to stop looking for him.

  The paintings stood in a row along the chaise-longue by the window. True enough, there were three canvases. Lady Cressida, the printed label by the left-hand painting said. Mr Brown, read the label on the right-hand portrait. The finished painting had a wittiness to it she had not noticed while it was a work in progress. It made her smile, and it set her off balance ever so slightly. So many contrasts, the portrait asked far more questions than it answered. How could she have been so pompous as to think she knew anything about art? Her stupid theory, so logical and so precise, explained nothing about how real art played on the emotions.

  Turning to the middle portrait, her visceral reaction felt like a punch to the stomach. Cressie, said the label. Just Cressie. Stretched quite naked, gloriously and provocatively naked, across the canvas, her arms over her head, making no attempt to hid her breasts, her sex. Her smile was all the more wicked for its being shameless. Cressie. Simply Cressie, revealed and naked. This was how Giovanni saw her, defying every rule, and innately beautiful in a way she could not explain but did not need to. The truth. The unadorned truth. And it was beautiful, she was beautiful.

  She understood finally, staring at herself as she had never seen herself before, but with a recognition that was incontrovertible. Giovanni’s art showed the truth about her, the sitter, and about himself too, the painter. He could not have been clearer if he had written it in bold capitals. This, Giovanni was saying, is the woman I love.

  Chapter Eleven

  Firenze was as beautiful as he had remembered. Giovanni walked along the banks of the Arno as the setting sun cast a warm glow on the soft stone of the impressive buildings on the river bank opposite, light and architecture combining to dazzling effect. The jewellery shops lining the Ponte Vecchio were closed for the evening, but the sun’s dying rays caressed the old stone, mellowing it from ochre to burnt umber. The reflection of the arches on the water was so crystal clear it could be another bridge, upside down and quietly drowning. It was a melancholy thought, but he shook it off. He had no intention of quietly drowning, not any more. He had come here, to Florence, to ensure just that.

  He had tried to paint this scene many times, but his work had always lacked lustre. Beautiful as the city was, he was never going to be a landscape artist. It was people who interested him, not places. And at this moment, as his feet found their way of their own accord to the Palazzo Fancini, one person in particular.

  The palace, built by the Fancini family during the Renaissance, was modelled on the palazzo built by the notorious Medicis. Roman in style, it was classically proportioned, presenting a stuccoed frontage to the street, facing on to beautiful gardens to the rear. The servant who opened the vast oak door to him was unfamiliar. The ring of Giovanni’s footsteps on the cloistered inner courtyard as he made his way to the count’s private apartment was, on the other hand, only too familiar. He could hear the echoes of his boyhood self playing alone here. He could see the ghost of his adolescent self too, sheltering from the heat of the summer sun with his drawing board perched on his knee, his concentration almost comic in its intensity.

  Count Fancini’s rooms opened out one from the other, presenting a series of salons of increasing grandeur. In the old days, the count had told him, the status of a visitor was easily demarcated by the progress he made through the various echelons towards the inner sanctum. In the old days. Giovanni’s father was wont to speak as if he himself had lived through the Renaissance, had had the ear of the Medicis, had wielded influence and the power of life and death. Which he did, which he had, over his son
, until the day Giovanni had left the palazzo for ever.

  No, that was a lie. Count Fancini’s grip had remained tight around his son for all the years he had thought that he was free. Cressie had been right about that. Today that state of affairs would end.

  As the servant threw open the last of the double doors, the ones leading into the grandest of the salons where the ceilings were embossed with gold leaf and the tapestries which covered the vast space of the walls had been embroidered many centuries ago, Giovanni halted in his tracks. Memories assaulted him, brutal in their clarity. Beatings and tears, then as he grew older and his resentment and stubbornness grew, beatings stoically endured dry-eyed. Punishment and reward was his father’s credo. He had tried. Despite the resounding sorrow of his forced separation from Papa and Mama, Giovanni had tried to please his father. But nothing he did had ever been good enough for the count, and there is nothing like repeatedly telling a boy he is a failure to make a rebel of him.

  The servant coughed politely. Giovanni stepped into the salon. Count Fancini was seated at the far end by the window which overlooked the gardens. He did not rise, but as he approached, Giovanni saw that this was due to infirmity rather than lack of inclination. The old man sat in a wheeled chair.

  ‘Conte.’ Giovanni bent over his father’s hand. It was liver-spotted, the veins knotted through the translucent skin.

  ‘Mio figlio. So, you come at the last. They told you I was dying, I suppose.’

  ‘No, padre.’ Though it would have been obvious to even a casual observer. Giovanni took the seat opposite his father. The count had always been a robust man, as tall as Giovanni but much more heavily built. The old man before him had the gaunt, wizened look of one close to death. He could not feel anger towards a man so tragically reduced. All the things he wished to say, the recriminations and accusations, all fled from his thoughts. What was the point? It had happened. It was part of him. It was over. Giovanni took his father’s hand. ‘I came to say goodbye, padre,’ he said gently. ‘Not because you are dying, but because I must live.’