Evening Star (Star Quartet 1)

Giana shrugged indifferently. “Since I will never be a whore,” she said coldly, “I have no need to know.”

Giana took up her post behind the naked statue, thankful she had hidden herself from the longing glances of Señor Alfredo. She gazed about the brightly lit salon and rested her eyes indifferently upon Elvira, whose hand nestled comfortably upon a gentleman’s thigh. Laughing, brash Elvira, only twenty years old, a whore since she was fifteen. “Sí, little Helen,” she would say in her bright, lisping voice, “I am everything you are not, but what you are, I cannot understand. Non capisco. Men,” she would say, “are such simpletons. One has but to toss them a smile, caress them ever so gently, and part one’s legs. And the money they will pay.” She would roll her glinting dark eyes. “So much easier than being married to some poor macellaio, how you say, ah, butcher, and cooking and having babies every year.”

“Do you ever feel anything?” Giana had asked her once.

Elvira had raised her lovely thin black brows. “My poor Helen—this is my occupazione, my business. My pleasure will be one day with a man I choose.”

Giana started at the touch of Lucia’s hand upon her arm. “Look, cara,” Lucia whispered. “Is he not the most beautiful man you have ever seen?”

Giana followed Lucia’s pointing finger. A man stood in the doorway of the salon in the company of Signore Travola, a wealthy shipowner. He was handsome, Giana admitted, tall, broad-shouldered, and narrow-waisted. He rested his topper against his double-breasted black dress coat, set over straight black trousers. His waistcoat was pearl-gray silk, his shirt and cravat snowy white. She judged him to be in his late twenties, very dark, with thick black hair and nearly black eyes. He was much too large a man to be Italian, and he was clean-shaven, without the fashionable bushy side whiskers. He was doubtless a foreigner, but what nationality, she could not guess. He smiled at something Signore Travola said, displaying even white teeth. “Sí,” she said, “he is attractive, I suppose.”

Lucia sighed. “I hope he chooses me. He has an air about him . . . a man who knows women and enjoys them.” She gave a delicious shudder.

“He is still a man . . . and a client.”

“Ah, cara, you are so funny. If you met him at one of your fancy dinners or at a ball, wouldn’t you be drawn to him? Want him to take you in his strong arms?”

“No.”

“You are such a child. A little moth, afraid of the blazing flame. Wish me luck. I would certainly prefer him to that plump little Mario Galviani who sweats all over me.” Lucia danced away, her eyes bright, her full hips swaying provocatively. She took a glass of champagne in her hand and struck a pose against a high-backed chair, one meant, Giana saw, for the beautiful young man.

Giana watched him as he gazed about the salon. Though he seemed to laugh easily when his companion spoke, she thought he looked bored. He smiled perfunctorily toward Lucia, but made no move toward her. His dark eyes found Giana’s for a brief instant, and she quickly drew back into the shadow of the statue. She found, to her surprise, that she was shaking. He was too large, too overpowering, and he frightened her.

* * *

Alexander Saxton raised a thick black brow as he studied a tall honey-haired girl.

“Dio, Alex, you have the look of Satan himself,” Signore Travola said, grinning over the wide space between his front teeth. He followed Alex’s gaze. “That is Margot, my friend. From what Madame Lucienne tells me, Margot arrived on her doorstep some five months ago, after the bloody French had killed her sister in the February riots in Paris.”

“Rome’s gain, undoubtedly.”

“She has the saddest eyes and the softest mouth, so I have heard. She is just the medicine I would prescribe for a man who has the look you do.”

Alex said, “Medicine, Santelo? I do not particularly care for a medicine that has already been taken by so many men.”

Santelo laughed. “Always so fastidious, Alex. Since this is your last night in Rome for a month, you can hardly find a virgin and set her up as your mistress before you leave. That would be a waste in any case. And you are mixing pleasure with business on this trip, are you not?”

“Si,” Alex said, his dark eyes on the girl Margot again. He admired the graceful curve of her long neck, and her sloping white shoulders. Her waist appeared tiny in the huge bell-shaped gown. He sighed, and said more to himself than to Santelo, “I do have the need, and the girl is tempting enough.” His gaze swept the now crowded room. “Who is that other blond girl? The one who seems to be hiding behind the statue?”

Santelo shrugged and shook his finger. “You had better hurry, Alex. I see another gentleman interested in your Margot. Your obvious preference for blond-haired girls can prove a problem in Rome.”

“It is not particularly a preference, Santelo, it is just that I enjoy discovering if all the hair is blond. Now, my friend, if you will excuse me, I think it is time I took my medicine. I will doubtless see you in the morning before I leave for Milan.”

Signore Travola watched his American business associate wend his way toward Margot, his stride graceful for so large a man. He was not particularly surprised to see Margot’s amber-colored eyes light up in genuine pleasure. Most women responded to the handsome American like that. He wondered what it was Americans ate that made them grow so large. He watched Alex take Margot’s arm and guide her from the salon. As they passed him, he winked broadly at Alex. “Do not forget that

lovely mouth,” he said.

“Who is that beautiful man, caro?” Lucienne asked, handing Santelo a glass of champagne. “So large he is. A foreigner?”

“Si, an American, Lucienne, a businessman from New York.”

“He has the look of a wealthy man.”

“His shipping empire grows by the day.”

“And yet he is young.”

“And in need of the tonic your Margot will provide. He lost his wife last year. He works like a demon—perhaps to forget.”