Evening Star (Star Quartet 1)

Margot nodded, her amber eyes serious. “Viens, petite,” she said gently, and led Giana by the hand to a corner of the room.

Lucienne shooed the other two girls away. “All of you rest now. You must be at your best tonight.”

She turned slowly and smiled at Daniele. “A first lesson is always the most painful, is it not, caro?”

Daniele was gnawing his lower lip and did not answer her. He rose slowly, his eyes going toward Giana. “I will not bring her back this evening, Lucienne. Luigi del Conde and his strident wife are giving a dinner party tonight, and for the most part, the gentlemen and ladies who will be present are a fine selection. Let her meet all the gentlemen in their social setting before she meets them here. And their wives, of cour

se.”

“You believe, caro, that the child is old enough to understand the hypocrisy of it all?”

“She will understand,” Daniele said, and rose. “Eventually.” He shrugged and looked toward Giana. She was standing perfectly still, staring blindly in front of her as Margot fastened the tiny buttons over her bodice.

Daniele led Giana from the elegant three-story house on the Via Crispi and hailed a hansom cab. After he had given instructions to the driver to his sprawling villa off the Piazza di Pellicceria, he turned to his still-silent companion.

To his surprise, Giana whipped her head about to face him before he could say anything, and said in a low voice, “Do not ask me to feel sorry for the plight of your precious Madame Lucienne, Uncle, or those other terrible girls, or try to make me believe that it is men who have forced them there. It is they who are the temptresses, they who throw themselves at men, not the other way around. They are without any tenderness, any goodness, without any feeling a woman should have. They are despicable. How dare that woman compare whores to wives and ladies?”

Perhaps it was a mistake, Daniele thought, to take her to such a charmingly elegant brothel. But he knew that he could not expose her to the lower houses, where girls were held in practical servitude by their masters, abused and degraded until they were old at twenty-five and riddled with disease. He pulled at the corners of his mustache, but said only, “We will see.”

But Giana wasn’t through. She felt such humiliating anger that she threatened to choke on it. “How could you make me do that? How could you make me stand like a block of wood, naked, in front of that leering harridan and in front of you?”

“Because, Giana,” he said slowly, locking his gaze to hers, “that is exactly how a whore is treated. She is to have no feelings, no modesty. Her only worth lies in how well she will please the men who decide to take her. Madame Lucienne was but doing her job. Surely you see that she would not be so successful in her business if she failed to provide all her gentlemen clients with lovely young girls who were eager to please them.”

Giana answered in a coldly vicious voice. “And does she please you, Uncle Daniele? Did I please you?”

“I did not look upon you as would a man who wished to enjoy your body. But I will tell you what such a man would say of you. Such a man would have been delighted with you. He would also have likely agreed with Madame. You are young yet and your breasts will become fuller. It is said that a woman’s breasts become softer and larger the more they are fondled. Did you not notice Margot’s fully rounded bosom?”

A great shudder passed through her. Daniele wondered what Aurora would say if she knew he had forced her daughter to strip naked in front of him and be examined as if she were a painting in an art gallery. It was odd, he thought, how very innocent of the world Aurora actually was. Her virgin daughter, if she remained in Rome, would return to England far more worldly than her sophisticated mother.

Giana’s thoughts continued in confusion, no direction or conclusion, save that the woman Lucienne was a beast, the kind of woman no lady should ever have to meet. Perhaps it was true that some men, men who had been disappointed in love, sought solace at such places. But Randall would not have to. She knew she was certainly not a cold woman, and she would always love Randall. He would not be disappointed in love.

“The watered silk is lovely, my dear. It makes you look as fresh as a rose.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Giana said to Mirabella del Conde, her hostess. The dinner had been a long one, with many courses and removes, and Giana, as the newcomer and the center of attention, had felt woefully tongue-tied in the company of the ladies and gentlemen.

“She is so very young,” Mirabella said, her words intended for none of the other ladies in particular. She sighed as she sat down and picked up her embroidery frame.

Giana sat stiffly on the edge of her chair, wishing that the gentlemen would not take long over their port. She felt so out of place, her Italian, though reasonably fluent, stiff and wretchedly accented.

Luciana Salvado, the wife of a wealthy Italian railroad investor, a tall, willowy woman whose hair was as inky black as Giana’s, said loudly, “Do you enjoy needlework, Miss Van Cleve?”

“Please call me Giana, ma’am. I would wish to improve, of course.”

“Well, you have a lifetime to learn. Perhaps if you become tired of too much sightseeing, you shall come to my house for a light collation. Many of us meet there. You see, we are embroidering an altar cloth for—what did you say the name of the church was, Mirabella?”

“Saint John.”

“Ah, yes, Saint John.”

“My children were confirmed there, Luciana,” said Signora Camilla Palli, a thin, pinched-looking woman whose nervous fingers continually plucked at the skirt of her plum taffeta gown. “My little girls were so lovely in their white gowns. And Father Pietro was so very pleasant and attentive.”

“Si, and he is so enthusiastic about the altar cloth. Mirabella has the greatest skill—she has designed the pattern, with the aid of Father Pietro, of course.”

Camilla continued in an undertone, a certain snideness in her voice, “It is because Mirabella is so much alone that she achieves such skill.”

Luciana said, “I hope to travel with my husband to your country one day, Giana. My husband tells me that your Prince Albert is planning a great exhibition.”

“Yes, ma’am. I understand that the committee is still deciding upon the architect.”