What a Gentleman Desires Read online

  “If you’ll please wait, I’ll fetch him for you.”

  Gina shut the door and leaned against it. She placed her hand on her breast, feeling the rapid beating of her heart beneath her fingers. She’d never seen the like! He was so handsome! She gathered her wits and rushed into Milo’s studio. “There’s a man come to see you. He says he purchased Aphrodite.”

  Milo grabbed a cloth and wiped his hands. “Perhaps he wants to purchase another painting. Where is he? Didn’t you invite him in?”

  She scowled at him. Really, was Milo ever on this earth? “You let him in. I’m not about to do so dressed like this.”

  She ran to her bedroom and shut the door. The smartest among her sad array of dresses was the apple-green satin she’d trimmed with tartan. She struggled into her stays and pulled on petticoats and red stockings, thankful that her dress fastened in front. As she buttoned her leather shoes, she heard Milo conversing with the stranger. The man’s voice had a pleasing lilt to it. Irish. She twisted her hair into a bun and secured it with the deft placing of her mother’s tortoiseshell hair combs. Pinching her cheeks, she bit her lips, opened the door, and ventured out.

  The Irishman perched on a stool, studying the canvases Milo had pulled out for him to inspect. He stood as she entered and smoothed a hand over his dark hair. Her attention focused on the unruly lock that sprang from a widow’s peak, slightly off-center. It made him look a little less ordered, more appealing somehow.

  He studied her intently while Milo fussed among his canvasses.

  “May I get you coffee?” she asked, pleased she could offer it. Coffee was the first thing she had bought with Milo’s money. A luxury she couldn’t resist.

  Black lashes fringed his smiling blue eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m at a disadvantage. I don’t know your name.”

  “Where are my manners?” Milo straightened up still holding a canvas in his hand. “Mr. Dunleavy, my step-daughter, Giovanna.”

  “So, the lady in the painting,” Mr. Dunleavy said in his attractive voice. He held out his hand.

  A jolt passed through her body at the touch of his fingers. As if her entire skin from top to toe had come alive. She turned away, afraid he would read her thoughts. “Or tea. Everyone here seems to prefer tea.”

  “Coffee will be fine, thank you. When did you leave Italy?”

  “Eight years ago. I was twelve.” She bit her lip realizing she’d given away her age. Her mother said a lady never revealed her age. Her cheeks burned. “I’ll get the coffee.”

  At the door, she turned. Mr. Dunleavy had dropped one of his gray gloves and bent to pick it up.

  As he straightened, his eyes sought hers across the room.

  Her hands shook, and a pulse beat in her throat as she piled the cups and saucers, milk jug and coffee pot onto a tray. She carried it carefully into the studio. He was studying the painting of a woodland scene, one of Milo’s recent works. Milo had captured her in oils sitting beside a stream where wildflowers floated in the water. She wore a filmy white slip which clung to her body, and her hair hung about her waist garlanded with flowers.

  “Shakespeare’s Ophelia,” Mr. Dunleavy said. “This is beautifully done, Mr. Russo. More reminiscent of Hughes than Millais. You have made Giovanna a wood nymph.” He smiled at her. “I’ve won a bet I made with a friend…” he paused, and something in his gaze made her body heavy and warm, “… that I’d discover the model of the painting to be more beautiful in the flesh.”

  Milo chuckled. “How much was the bet?”

  “One hundred pounds.”

  “One hundred pounds?” Gina echoed, aghast at the waste of money.

  Dunleavy smiled. “I should have made a larger bet.”

  “I think you gentlemen have more money than sense.” She set her hands on her hips. And, a decided lack of propriety. If he began to utter empty compliments laden with insinuation, like so many others, she would throw the coffee in his face. Even if he was a customer.

  “I’m afraid you may be right, Miss Giovanna,” he said seriously, but his eyes danced.

  “Gina is beautiful, is she not?” Milo interrupted, turning from his easel where he’d picked up a brush.

  “Not in any way to devalue your work, Mr. Russo, but even more so in real life,” he said gravely. “It is difficult to capture a goddess. But you have, superbly.” He reached into his coat pocket and drew out his wallet. “I should like to buy the wood nymph, if I may.”

  “I place a higher price on my work now,” Milo scratched his head with the end of the paintbrush. “It’s a smaller painting than Aphrodite though, so, let’s say… three hundred pounds.”

  “A bargain.” Blair peeled off some notes and handed them to Milo.

  Was he hinting at buying her services too? The thought made Gina’s stomach churn with an excitement she quickly tried to suppress. “I don’t believe it is like me,” she said with a quick frown. “But it is a good painting.” She didn’t want to deter him from buying it.

  Mr. Dunleavy studied her and then looked back at the painting. “It is an excellent work. It captures your essence.”

  She tucked a stray wisp of hair back behind her ear with nervous fingers. “My essence?”

  “Your soul or spirit. I’ll take the painting with me, if I may.”

  “Of course. Wrap it, Gina.” As if they’d wasted enough of his time, Milo turned back to his easel.

  “I’ve interrupted you long enough,” Mr. Dunleavy said. “Please don’t worry about wrapping it. I have a cab waiting.”

  “It will take but a minute.” She hurried from the room.

  “May I call again?” he asked when Gina returned with the wrapped canvas.

  “Come anytime and welcome,” Milo called from the studio.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Dunleavy,” Gina said.

  As she began to close the door, he put his hand up to forestall her. “I would like to see you again.” His eyes were as blue as a Tuscan summer sky. Their intense expression made her quiver.

  She hesitated. It would be unwise, but how beguiling he was.

  “I don’t believe I put that well.” He captured her eyes with his. “I must see you again.”

  “You may come any time to view my father’s paintings, Mr. Dunleavy.”

  He nodded. “I look forward to that, Giovanna.”

  Gina ran to the window and watched the tall, graceful man enter a hansom cab. She went to her room to change again. Stripped naked, she studied herself in the mirror. She cupped her full breasts as a man might and ran her hands down over her softly rounded stomach to the vee of golden hair at its base. Her body felt strangely heavy and ached to be touched between her legs. Shivering slightly, she wrapped the thin silk tightly around her. She shook her head sternly in the mirror. “Never,” she said firmly. But she knew he’d come back. And when he did, it would be hard to resist him.

  “I’ve stoked up the fire,” Milo said when she returned to the studio. “A nice fellow, didn’t you think?”

  “Perhaps.” She settled back into her pose, staring up at the smoky sky through the skylight in the attic roof. She liked what he said about her essence. Not just empty words of flattery. But she wouldn’t allow herself to dream. He came from another world. One she would never be able to enter.

  Chapter Five

  As the hansom drove through the crowded streets, Blair tore the brown paper from the canvas and studied it in the daylight. Superbly crafted, it would prove to be a great investment. Russo deserved to be famous. He gazed at Giovanna’s painted face. Russo had called her Gina. He liked the name it suited her. In a way, Horace had been right. Russo had taken poetic license with his subject. Gina was taller, longer of limb than the paintings suggested, perhaps more than was fashionable, the crown of her head would be just below his chin, he imaged. The thought of holding her close warmed him. He remembered her slender hand, the fingers long and tapered. Her coloring differed from Aphrodite, her magnificent hair more fair than red, and her glowing skin seemed kissed
by sunshine, not something one expected to find at the end of a long, English winter. She was not a milk-and-water miss. Those amazing almond-shaped eyes had challenged him at one point and he suspected she wouldn’t let a man dominate her, despite her circumstances. Would their relationship be a fiery one? His loins hardened at the prospect.

  Blair had the means to rescue her from that miserable hole in the wall, and he intended to do so when the time was right. He leaned back and indulged in the vision of her tawny eyes filled with passion. Was she yet to experience real passion? He wanted to hear his name on her lips as he made love to her. Lord! He was going mad. Her image hanging on his wall would be a torment. He wanted Gina in his bed and, as his mother was so fond of reminding him, he always got what he wanted.

  It would have to be soon. He would begin immediately to search London for a suitable apartment, one that would delight her and ease that line of worry that crept between her brows when she looked at Russo. The artist had the look of one who likes the drink.

  Her glorious curves should not be so plainly dressed. The yellow rose she wore in her hair when she first opened the door was perfect. She would look superb in jewels, topaz, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. What a pleasure to dress her… and undress her.

  Blair left the cab and carried the painting into his townhouse. His manservant took the parcel along with his hat and cane. “Have this framed will you, Jarvis.”

  “A letter arrived from Ireland, sir.”

  “Pour me a whiskey, will you?” In his study, Blair sat down to read it. He rose again a moment later. “Don’t bother with whiskey,” he said as Jarvis hovered with the crystal decanter. “Pack me a bag and hail a cab for the station. I’m leaving immediately for Ireland.”

  * * *

  Milo and Gina emerged from Earl’s Court tube station into the fresh air and wide, graceful streets. They walked along Kensington High Street and turned into Melbury Road. Milo pointed out number eighteen, where the painter, William Holman Hunt lived. Gina could hardly believe her eyes; the houses were so big and grand.

  “He was the founder of the Pre-Raphaelites,” Milo said. “But he brought scandal on himself, by marrying his dead wife’s sister. His latest work, May Morning on Magdalen Tower is known to be a fine piece, but sadly, I hear his eyesight is failing.”

  They walked into Ilchester Place, admiring Sir Luke Fildes’ studio with its magnificent cupola attached to a house of several stories with many chimneys. “The garden is as big as a park,” she said breathlessly. She and Milo wandered along admiring the magnificent residences as street cleaners swept the remarkably clean streets.

  They entered the park surrounding Holland House, an enormous, ghostly Jacobean mansion. Gina had never dreamed such beauty existed. Like them, families had come to enjoy a picnic. They were greeted warmly as they strolled about, enjoying a rare, sunny winter’s day.

  Laughter filled the air as children romped with hoops and threw balls. At noon, they chose a spot on the grass to eat. Gina drew a checked cloth from her basket and spread it over the ground, then arranged two plates, a knife to cut the sausage, cheese, and bread.

  “Frederic Leighton lives near here.” Milo slapped two pieces of bread around a wedge of cheese and sausage. “You know his work. He’s a touch above us.”

  “Why?” Gina asked, with a fierce frown. “You studied art in Florence, Milo. Your work is better than his.”

  Milo smiled. “You’re such a loyal girl, Gina. Herbert Schmalz, a good friend of mine–he paints those New Testament scenes, married Leighton’s model, Dorothy. It was Leighton who formed the artist’s colony here. It’s called the Holland Park Circle.” Milo pronounced the name with great deference. He sighed. “I’d love to be part of it.”

  Gina had said very little since they arrived. She had taken in every detail of the elegant houses, the large gardens with creepers spilling over stone walls, the finely dressed people walking the clean, open streets. She looked up at the canopy of pale blue above. It even seemed to be a different sky. The fresh breeze rustled though the branches overhead and banished any thought of the foul air and city traffic. Birds twittered above them and deer wandered through the trees. It was restful to her eyes, made sore by looking at nothing but bricks and mortar and the small patch of gray sky between the tenements.

  Her heart swelled at the hope that Milo’s dream might become hers. “Could we live in this beautiful place, Milo?” she asked, the need causing her voice to catch in her throat. “Could we ever afford it?”

  Milo smiled at her as he pulled a cork from a bottle and poured red wine into two glasses.

  “Three more paintings and I promise you, we’ll come here to live.” It stung her to realize that his hair had begun to thin and his chin sagged. He was growing old. Success had come to him almost too late.

  Gina wished she could believe him. She lay back and listened to the sound of water spilling from the nearby fountain into a pool. A vision of another fountain in a paved courtyard, sheltered by a rose arbor, swam into her mind’s eye. “Milo, who was my father?” she asked again. “Mamma would never tell me.”

  Milo raised his shaggy gray eyebrows. “She asked me not to tell you when you were younger.”

  “Don’t I have a right to know?”

  Milo studied her a moment. “Perhaps it’s time.” He drank some wine. “Your father was a wealthy man. A baron. He loved your mother very much.”

  “Were they married?” She stumbled over the words, afraid of the truth.

  He slowly shook his head. “Baron Montferrer had a wife, Gina. But he protected you and your mother until his death in a riding accident.”

  Outraged, Gina bit back a reply. She would never utter a word against her mother, but how could she teach her to be virtuous, when she herself had…

  Milo put his hand on hers. “Serena didn’t want that kind of life for you. She wanted something better, Gina.”

  Gina bit her lip. “What happened to us after my father died?”

  “Your mother lost everything. His wife had you both thrown out onto the street.”

  “And that’s when you and mother met?”

  “Yes. A very lucky fellow I was. I knew she didn’t love me as she’d loved him, but I felt honored to marry her.”

  “I remember the yellow roses,” Gina said, then fell into silent contemplation.

  Chapter Six

  A footman admitted Lord Ogilvie to the house in Regent Street. The respectable house in a street of fashionable shops in the daytime became a gaming establishment where dice and cards were played during the evening. With a familiar kick of excitement in his gut, Ogilvie followed the servant into a long room lit by huge glass chandeliers.

  The airless room was dense with smoke, cologne, perfume, and excited sweat. Leather armchairs faced the fireplace at one end, and a beguiling young woman attended a bar at the other. Ogilvie went straight to the baccarat table and joined the other twenty men and women in evening dress, standing around watching the play. The intermittent rattle of dice came from smaller tables set up around the room.

  A pretty, dark-haired young woman sidled up to him. She smiled and placed her hand on his arm. “Champagne, milord?”

  “Not now.” Ogilvie shook off her hand, his eyes riveted on the game. A man could arrange for sex in one of the rooms above if he so wished, but he wasn’t interested in these available women. They weren’t needy enough to do what he wanted.

  He approached the table, his veins pulsing with a rush of blood. Tonight would make or break him. This game might take all that he had with the flip of a card, but he cast the thought away as the blissful expectation and thrill of it pounded through him.

  ***

  At the Folly Theater in William IV Street, Gina moved through the noisy rabble of acrobats, dancers, and singers, searching for her friend, Mabel Collins. Mabel had struggled when she first came to London. She modeled for an artist friend of Milo’s, but the work paid too little and to pay her rent she had to res
ort to dining with rich gentlemen. But now, she was on the up and up. She’d landed a place among the ballet dancers.

  Gina found Mabel in a dusty corner adjusting the feathers on her costume. “I came to wish you luck,” she said.

  “Then tell me to break a leg.”

  Gina’s eye widened. “Oh, surely not.”

  “It’s an expression we theater people tell each other,” Mabel said, sounding as though she’d been in the theater all her life. “It means good luck.”

  Gina grinned. “Break a leg, then.”

  Mabel grinned back, lifted her skirts, and twirled a shapely leg. “Thanks, ducks.”

  The theater manager appeared, wiping sweat from his bald pate with a big red handkerchief. “Go and join the rest of the dancers, Mabel. Who’s this?”

  “Just a friend, Dave. Come to wish me luck.”

  “You shouldn’t be back here.” His gaze roved over Gina’s body in her apple-green dress, making her feel as if he could see through her clothes. She flushed. “Not looking for a job, are you? Can you sing or dance?”

  She shook her head.

  “All Italians can sing,” Mabel said giving her an encouraging nod. Then she threw Gina a kiss and twirled away to join the dancers fiddling with their shoes as they waited to go on stage.

  “Not this one,” Gina said, waving back.

  “You wouldn’t have to. We could use a new girl for the statue number. It’s easy money.”

  “What would I have to do?”

  He frowned. “Haven’t you seen the show?”

  She shook her head. She’d never had the sixpence admittance price until now. “I’m just about to buy a ticket.”

  “Let me know later if you’re interested.” Dave turned away as another noisy group of ballet dancers descended the staircase.

  Gina bought her ticket and found her seat, heart beating like a wild thing. She sat so far up the back of the theater she had to peer around heads to see the stage, but it didn’t lessen her excitement.