“And I, my dear child,” he continued in a gently taunting voice, “am equally certain that if we agreed to, say, a wager between the two of us, you would quickly renege, and rant to me of my wickedness, like the gentle young lady that you are.”
“I assure you that I would not.” She paused a moment, eyeing him closely. “This wager, Uncle—if I agree to it and you lose, what is my prize?”
“Ten thousand pounds, Giana, a wedding present to you and your Randall Bennett.”
“Ten thousand pounds.” She could picture Randall’s excitement at such a gift, especially a gift she herself had earned. “And if I lose?” she asked, her voice shrill.
“If you lose, Giana, I will see you free of Randall Bennett.”
“I accept.”
“Just a moment, child. I wish to tell you the terms of our agreement.”
She waved an impatient hand, but he said sternly, “No, Giana, I want your understanding, for I will not accept you playing the affronted little miss once we have begun.”
“Very well, Uncle, if it will please you to shock me—for that is what you intend, is it not?”
“You will not just meet prostitutes, Giana. You will play the whore, in a brothel. You will be treated like a whore, look like a whore. You will witness things your mother could not even imagine. However, I promise you that you will not be touched. You will remain a virgin. Do you still accept?”
Giana looked away from him, her hands nervously clasping in her lap. “I have never been to a brothel, Uncle Daniele,” she said finally. “Indeed, I am not quite certain what one does at such places.”
Daniele gazed at her profile thoughtfully. There would be no more euphemisms, he thought, no more words tempered for an innocent young lady’s ears. “Brothels are houses of pleasure, Giana, places where men go to gratify their sexual desires.”
He saw a blush of pained embarrassment creep over her cheeks. He stilled his nagging uncertainty and continued evenly, “Do you know what men and women do together, Giana? When they are not talking?”
She said shyly, flushing. “Randall has kissed me, on my mouth, several times. It felt exhilarating.”
“That is all?”
Giana remembered Randall caressing her back once, when they were alone for a moment in Hyde Park. His touch had frightened her, and she had drawn back. He had begged her pardon.
“He touched my back once,” she admitted, her eyes lowered to her lap.
“Ah. Have you ever wondered, Giana, w
hy girls are kept so confoundedly ignorant until their wedding night?”
“Good girls, Uncle, are not supposed to know of such things until they marry.”
“I see. I assume that you would also expect your husband to be equally ignorant of the physical side of life? Equally pure?”
She cocked her head to one side. “I had not thought about it. I had always assumed that men know everything about that.”
“And just how do you think they learn about sex?”
She flushed again at the naked, stark word, a word she had heard only Linette, a French girl, use to scandalize her friends at Madame Orlie’s. “From loose girls, bad girls.”
“If this pool of girls is loose, bad, does it not follow that the men who use them are equally loose and bad?”
“I don’t know. Men are different, at least that’s what people seem to think. Derry, my roommate, and I would lie in bed some nights and discuss what we knew, you know, what we had heard.”
He heard the naive innocence in her voice, and winced. For a moment Daniele felt a stab of anger at Aurora. Aurora, of all women, to keep her daughter in prudish ignorance. Perhaps, he thought, stroking his thick gray mustache, it was to the good that Giana was such an innocent.
“And just what did you decide from these discussions?”
“Well, the other girls used to say that we should ignore that part of men’s natures.” She remembered her moment of pleasure when Randall had kissed her and her start of fright when she had felt his hand stroke down her back. “I don’t think it is part of love.”
You are too young to think like that, he thought. He wondered briefly if Aurora had ever discovered a woman’s pleasure in a lover’s arms. Her marriage to Morton Van Cleve had certainly been a barren desert for her.