He began to pace the oriental carpet. This was her sitting-room. He hadn’t been in here before. It was so obviously her own private sanctum. A satinwood veneered and inlaid writing desk stood by an open window, which was draped with billowing curtains and revealed the river frontage below. Murano glass in vibrant colours stood on the veined marble fireplace and reflected in the mirrored overmantel above it. A day bed with a dark velvet shawl thrown over it stood invitingly in a draped alcove at the side of the room, and a circular, lace-covered table beside it held a vase filled with the slender green stalks and white wax-like flowers of heavy-scented lilies. He began to shake. Would this be where …?
An inner door opened into the room and Mariabella stood in the doorway. She had changed from her muslin gown and was wearing a black satin robe. Her hair was loosened and hung down her back to her waist. Around her bare throat she wore a thin thread of gold with a small gold cross attached to it. She held out her hand to him, ‘
Viene!
Come,
amore mio
.’
In the room behind her he saw a four-poster bed, its drapes partially drawn around the downy pillows and the covers pulled back to expose white linen. The light in the room was veiled, for the blinds were drawn at the window and the sunlight filtered through in slanted strips of pale gold.
‘
Viene
,’ she repeated. ‘I am ready for you, James.’
He awoke from a doze with her dark hair streaming across his face. He gazed down at her. ‘
Bella. Bella
,’ he whispered and leant to kiss her bare shoulder.
She stirred and opened her eyes. ‘You speak Italian, James?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Only
grazie, molte grazie, amore mío
.’
Her eyes softened and she smiled teasingly. ‘
Di niente. Prego!
It was nothing. You are welcome.’
‘I was not a very good lover, was I?’ he asked diffidently. ‘Too impatient, too hasty. I did not satisfy you.’
‘Too eager, James. You had waited too long. This time was good. Next time will be more good,
si
?’
‘
Si
.’ He sighed and turned her towards him. ‘It was beautiful.
You
are so beautiful.’
‘Phww,’ she pouted, and drew a line with her finger down from his chin and throat, through the dark hairs on his chest, down to his navel which she circled with her finger-nail, making him gasp. ‘I am not so beautiful – and the first time with a woman, it is always wonderful for a man, I think?’
‘The first time?’ he protested. ‘Why do you think it was my first time?’ Her fingers sank lower and he groaned softly and closed his eyes. ‘I have to confess to you, Mariabella, that I have possibly fathered a child.’
She gave a little chuckle and took his hand and placed it between her thighs. ‘Possibly? You mean that you cannot remember? James,
amore mío
. You are telling me that you can forget something like this?’
‘No. I won’t ever forget,’ he whispered as, aroused again, he sought her tenderness between his fingers. ‘Never.’
‘I am your first, yes?’ she murmured in his ear.
He didn’t answer, unable to utter one single word as tenderly and this time, so slowly, they came together again.
‘So who is this man that you are so anxious for me to meet?’ James refastened his cravat and put on his jacket.
‘He was a great friend of my father, and was – what do you say – my protector, until I married.’ Mariabella lay on the bed and idly toyed with her hair.
‘Your guardian? Ah, I see.’ James felt relieved. There was no rival then. He looked into the mirror and straightened his hair. He felt ten feet tall.
I look older
, he mused and started to hum beneath his breath.
Mariabella smiled. ‘You are happy, yes? You are a man now? No longer a boy!’
He leant over her and kissed her. ‘So happy, Mariabella. I can’t believe how wonderful it was.’
‘And you will come tomorrow, or will you go home?’
He nodded. ‘I think another day won’t harm, and anyway my father would understand if I was detained on business.’
But it isn’t just business that delays me
, he thought as he gazed down at her.
I must see her again tomorrow, make love to her again. She has awakened such an appetite in me, that I don’t know how I shall appease my hunger until then
.
She held out her hand for him to kiss. ‘Go now, James, and close the door quietly behind you. And James, when you meet my friend Romanelli, you will remember to address me as Madame Sinclair?’ She rose from the bed and stretched, and her robe parted, showing a glimpse of pale flesh. ‘You will be discreet, yes?’ She ran her fingers around his face and pressed her mouth against his. ‘It is our secret,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘We must not share it with anyone else,
amore mío
, or it is finished for ever.’
When he returned to the studio, Batsford had gone out and Miss Gregory was drinking a glass of ale and eating a meat pie. ‘It’s too hot to go out,’ she said,
‘and Batsford wants me again later when he gets back, so I thought I would have a bit of a nap after I’ve eaten.’
‘Can I sketch you while you’re sleeping?’ James asked eagerly. He felt so buoyant, so full of energy and verve, that he was convinced he could create a perfect drawing of Miss Gregory’s form, even though he would have in mind the image of someone else.
‘I thought you were going away?’ She wiped her mouth of frothy ale with the back of her hand.
‘I was, but I’ve been detained. Will you? Please?’
‘All right, but it’ll cost you extra – and I won’t sit nude,’ she added. ‘You’ve got a look in your eye that I’m not sure about.’
‘Oh, I’m in love, Miss Gregory,’ he said impulsively. ‘You have nothing to fear. There is only one woman in the world for me; I can look at no other, except in the aesthetic or symbolic sense.’
Miss Gregory rolled her large eyes to the ceiling and uttered a sigh. ‘Come on then.’ She got to her feet. ‘If the muse is upon you, then we’d better get on with it.’
He worked feverishly and heard Batsford come in and then go out again, but was so consumed by inventive imagination that he didn’t stop or call out to him. As he sketched the sleeping form of Miss Gregory, draped by her lace shawl, which he surreptitiously moved without waking her so that her shoulder and one breast were bare, he remembered all that had happened that morning with his beautiful Mariabella, and wanted to tell the world.
He arrived early the next morning, hoping to see Mariabella before the Italian, Romanelli, arrived. He had consulted a Bradshaw and saw that the following day he could catch the six-fifteen fast train, on the Great Northern Railway line from St Pancras, to arrive in Leeds Wellington at half-past one. If he hurried then across the northern city he would be just in time
to catch another train to Hull, and from there hire a hansom cab to take him to Anlaby.
‘Madame is not yet ready to receive you, sir,’ her maid announced. ‘But if you would be good enough to wait, she will be with you shortly.’
He was a little embarrassed to be so early, but he wished to be the first there. He wanted to assess Mariabella’s and Romanelli’s greeting of each other, to ascertain if, in fact, they had ever been more than friends, more than just guardian and dependant. He waited in her drawing-room, a cool, elegant room decorated, not in the overdressed style so in vogue at present, but of an earlier period, with pale pastel colours and elaborate friezes, and pedestal cupboards topped by Grecian urns.
He heard Mariabella’s foot on the stairs at the same time as the carriage drew up outside the door, and he stood by the window to glimpse the man descending from it. He saw his face as he turned to pay the driver; not a tall man, but stockily built, a long nose and a short, pointed beard. He wore a dark frock-coat and a top hat on his dark hair, and was carrying a bouquet of flowers in his hand. James cursed beneath his breath for not having thought of bringing flowers for Mariabella also. He waited and listened as Mariabella went to the door herself to greet her friend and heard her happy exclamation as she bid him enter.
‘
Buon giorno, caríssima
.’ He heard the deeper tones of Romanelli. ‘It is so good to see you after so long.’
‘
Buon giorno, buon giorno
, Massimo. You look so well!’
He heard their laughter and a language that he couldn’t understand, and felt young and vulnerable again and wished that they would come in and introduce him so that he might get the moment over.
They came into the room, Mariabella holding on to her visitor’s arm, and James saw, now that Romanelli had removed his hat, that he was quite a
handsome fellow, his hair dark and curly with white streaks about his temples and in his beard, blue eyes which creased at the edges when he smiled. But he was much older than Mariabella, and then James remembered that she had said that he had been a friend of her father’s.
‘James! How good to see you.’ She extended her hand as if she hadn’t seen him in a long time, and James bent formally and kissed her wrist.
‘You look well, Madame. So good of you to invite me,’ he murmured and was gratified to see a look of approval in her eyes.
She turned to Romanelli, ‘
Posso presentarie
—? Massimo, may I introduce James Foster Rayner. James, this is my very good friend, Massimiliano Romanelli, who is on a visit from Florence. I wished for you to meet. I think you will have much to discuss.’
James put out his hand. ‘Signor Romanelli. How are you, sir?’
Romanelli took his hand and shook it and gave a small formal bow. ‘
Molto bene, grazie
. Any friend of Signora Sinclair, I am very happy to meet.’ He gazed thoughtfully at James. ‘You are a painter, yes?’
‘Yes, sir. At least that is what I hope to be. I am taking instruction from Batsford.’
‘Aah. How is Batsford? I must call on him. He is a good teacher, you are lucky to have him. He is a better teacher than painter. He knows better how to tell it than how to do it himself.’
‘Are you a painter, sir?’ James asked diffidently, not wanting to show his ignorance if the man should be famous. ‘Your name seems familiar.’
Romanelli shrugged. ‘It is a common enough name, but I am known as an art critic, not as an artist.’
‘He could have been the very best artist,’ Mariabella interrupted, tapping Romanelli on the arm with her fan, ‘if he had wanted to be.’
‘If I had not been lazy,’ he laughingly agreed. ‘If I had not had a rich wife and had to earn my own living.
I had no fire in my belly for painting – my passions were directed elsewhere.’ He looked tenderly at Mariabella and smiled. He took her hand and raised it to his lips, and once more James was filled with doubts. ‘But,’ Romanelli turned to James, ‘your name, too, is familiar. Many years ago I knew a family with the name Foster-Rayner.’ He rolled his r’s as Mariabella did. ‘They lived in Yorkshire. They were very fond of the arts and music, and invited artists and writers and musicians into their home.’
‘Oh!’ James was astonished. ‘It must have been my aunt and uncle, Arthur and Henrietta Rayner. They live in York. Foster is our middle name, from my grandmother. All our family have it.’
‘Yes, yes, that was the family.’ Romanelli rubbed his hands together. ‘And you, you have taken the full name, yes? It will look well on your paintings, that is why, I think.’
James blushed. ‘That is what I thought. Yes.’
Did it seem terribly snobbish?
he wondered. Romanelli seemed to be scrutinizing him rather intensely.
Perhaps he thinks that I am pretentious – but then it is my name! Why shouldn’t I use it?
‘And you, too, are from that ancient city of York? A place where Italians can feel almost at home.’ Romanelli spoke to Mariabella in their native tongue and James guessed that he was describing the Roman remains of York, for he caught the words of
Eboracum
and
colonia, principia
, and
via praetoria
.
He turned again to James. ‘Yes. It was a wonderful time for me. It was a long time ago – nearly twenty years, but I have never forgotten that period of my life.’
James nodded. ‘It is a wonderful place, that is where I found my love of art. I was at school there, though my home was not there. I live – lived, east of York, in the village of Anlaby near the port of Hull. My father is in shipping.’ His voice trailed away as Romanelli’s eyes flickered intently over him.
Romanelli stroked his beard. ‘Indeed? May I sit down, my dear?’ he asked of Mariabella who was still standing.
‘
Si, si
. Excuse me. Of course. How remiss of me. And you will take a little wine or coffee?’ She rang the bell for the maid and Romanelli sat down on one of the sofas and continued to peruse James.
‘Then I have met your parents.’ Romanelli gave a dry cough. ‘The – erm – Rayners in York had a brother and his wife staying with them at the time. They were from Anlaby. I visited them at their home.’
James was even more astonished. ‘Really, sir? How extraordinary.’
‘Yes,’ Romanelli murmured, cupping his hands together and tapping his fingertips. ‘Isn’t it!’
They had coffee and cakes with Mariabella and then Romanelli asked James to accompany him to see Batsford, where he would look at his work and hear what was happening in the art circles of London.
James reluctantly said goodbye to Mariabella; she did not invite him to return with Romanelli, and he kissed her hand and wished that he could have spoken to her privately before leaving. She expressed the wish that he would find his father improved, and requested that he call on her on his return.
‘William Morris is the man to look out for,’ Romanelli said as they walked along the riverside. ‘He has much talent. One day he will be famous the world over. You will do well to study him.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ James agreed. ‘I have met him and had conversation with him, and with Burne-Jones; but the painter I most want to meet is Rossetti.’
‘He will be returning to London in a few days, I met him in Paris only last week. I will introduce you.’