“It would be my pleasure to serve a lonely widow,” he said as his fingers closed over the clasps on the back of her blue velvet gown.
Once in Giovanna’s bedchamber, he found himself staring at her as she gracefully removed her clothing. He wondered, a slight frown puckering his forehead, if his half-brother had been as dazzled by Giovanna’s white body, if he had also delighted in the touch of her mouth and hands upon him.
He lay on his back, naked, on her smallish bed, watching her brush out her thick raven hair.
“So Montalto told you that the earl had returned.”
She turned her face away. After a moment, she said lightly, “Yes. It would seem, too, that your esteemed half-brother did not return from England alone.”
Caesare propped himself on his elbows. He wished he could see her face. “I had hoped, Giovanna, that you would not care if my brother returned to Genoa with an entire harem.”
Giovanna lowered her hairbrush and turned slowly to face him, a beguiling, teasing expression on her face. “Of course I do not care, caro. I merely find it amusing that his lordship must go to such lengths to find himself a woman. It is a woman that he has brought back with him?”
“Your sources of information are, as usual, quite accurate. She is just only a woman, though.” At Giovanna’s raised eyebrows, he added, “She is hardly more than a girl, eighteen years old at most.”
“You have met her then.” Her voice was light with indifference, but her brown eyes were watchful.
“Yes.” He shook his head. Cassandra had not acted like any man’s mistress that he had ever before met, and his brother had never before brought one of his women to his precious villa. “I found her odd,” he said finally.
“In what way?” she asked softly, sitting on the bed beside him.
Caesare shrugged his shoulders and reached for her. “I do not wish to talk anymore.”
His climax came quickly, explosively. He looked at her through glazed eyes, watching her gracefully wipe her mouth.
Giovanna offered him wine, quickly drinking her own to remove the taste of him.
Caesare laughed softly. “You know, I told my brother about Montalto pursuing you. God, you would topple the old man into his grave were you to give him such pleasure.”
“And what was the earl’s reaction to that news?” Her voice was light and unconcerned.
Caesare shrugged negligently. “It is hard to know. I remember that he grinned.”
Giovanna restrained her impatience. “You agree with me, do you not, Caesare, that the earl should not discover that we are lovers? I am certain that his fierce pride would drive him to withhold even more of your birthright from you.”
Caesare stiffened. “My brilliant half-brother must soon learn that I can be trusted with his precious business dealings.”
For the moment, she sought to soothe him. “Of a certainty he will. You are young yet, only twenty-five.” Young for a man, she thought, grimacing, but not for a woman. “And what of this English girl? How did the earl treat her?”
“I found her behavior curious, if you would know the truth. She is beautiful, if one happens to admire the pink-and-white English fairness.”
“Pink and white tells me precisely nothing, Caesare.”
Piqued at her insistence, he stripped Cassandra naked in his mind. “She is taller than most Italian ladies and slender as a reed, except, of course, in those places where it is to a woman’s advantage not to be. Her eyes are dark blue, the color of the Mediterranean after a storm. And her hair, ah—like spun gold, Giovanna, thick and long; hair that entices a man to bury his face in its softness.” He paused a moment and studied Giovanna’s perfect oval face, pale now in the dim afternoon light of the salon. “You will of course meet her. My brother mentioned a dinner party. Undoubtedly you will be invited.”
She said nothing for a long moment. “I find it odd that the earl, a most fastidious gentleman as you well know, would install this slut at the villa. Does he wish to mock Genoese society?”