Ch 3: Revolt
I looked up at the Tuscan villa perched at the top of the grape vine-clad hill as I drove up from the harbor town of Marina de Massa. I was a true son of Tuscany and had returned here after my education in Paris and Florence, drawn by visions just as this—the ancient Villa Montebella, seat of the Tuscan Ghibertis for centuries, basking in the September Italian morning sun, master of all that fell under its shadow on the slopes tumbling down to the turquoise-blue Mediterranean waters of the Ligurian Sea.
I was both exhilarated at the prospect of coming up to the villa today to paint and in great trepidation, caught between my worship of—and lust for—the Conte's granddaughter, Gabriella, and the Conte's potential wrath in the face of my audacity. It didn't matter to the Ghibertis that I was an accomplished portraitist already. I was a son of the Tuscany peasantry, necessary, in a servile sense, to the Ghibertis of the world but hardly worth their notice. I was cursed not to be able to curb my pursuit of Gabriella—for my obsession about the silky triangle the raven beauty kept under those skirts of hers—even knowing that any advances I made would be my undoing in Tuscany.
Still, I hadn't been able to resist bringing my little present for Gabriella, the chocolates I knew she loved, the very expensive Leonides chocolates imported all the way from Belgium.
When I reached the forecourt of the villa, I parked my old Fiat as unobtrusively to the side as I could and approached the gigantic double wooden doors into the villa's entrance hall. The door was promptly answered by that little minx of a housemaid, Rosella, whose ample charms I had enjoyed on occasion before the Conte had claimed her as his exclusive property. She gave me a red-faced look that hinted at having been very naughty and being afraid I'd find her out, bobbed her head, and held the door open to where I could see the pandemonium that had been set forth beside the villa's ornate marble stairs to the upper reaches of the small palace.
Gabriella was in full rail at her younger brother, Paulo, who had taken leave of his seminary studies in Rome to help with the harvest of the family's grape harvest. Gabriella was a ravishing vixen when she was angry, and she was certainly at her peak this morning. Paulo was just standing there, taking her tantrum calmly, as she tattooed the floor with her pretty little feet, let her luxurious black hair fly around her head, and pounded her small fists on a terribly vulnerable Louis the Sixteenth chest leaning precariously against the staircase.
The vixen broke whatever loud complaining she was doing as soon as she realized someone had arrived at the door, turned toward me with flashing eyes, and screamed her welcome.
"Giovanni! And what the hell are you doing here so early in the morning?"
I nearly melted on the spot. She was so lovely and enticing. I loved her to death, and wanted ever so much to get inside her panties. I lifted my love offering, the Leonides chocolates, in front of me in homage to her. She just stood there, fists on hips, chin jutting out, and foot tapping angrily on the marble floor. I turned to Rosella, thinking perhaps that she might take the chocolates and deliver them across the cavernous hallway to her mistress, but Rosella just gave me a withering look and turned and left the room. I turned my attention back to Gabriella and to her brother, Paulo, who was shrinking away from us behind Gabriella's voluptuous figure.
"Well?" Gabriella challenged me again. "As if we didn't have more than enough to endure already, do we have to have the entire peasantry of Marina de Massa tromping up here to gloat? I said, what are you doing here, Giovanna?"
I wasn't listening to a word she was saying, really, which probably was fortunate, because I would have had no idea what she was talking about.
"The sitting," I managed to stammer. "Your grandfather, the Conte's, portrait. We have a sitting scheduled for this morning."
"I'm afraid the Conte won't be able to sit for some time," a cool voice, in quite foreign Italian wafted down from the staircase. We all looked up and saw, caught in the rays of the Tuscan sun streaming through the Palladian window above the entry doors, a handsome, well-built blond man in linen trousers and a billowy white, gauzy shirt open almost down to his navel. I saw Gabriella's nostrils flare in anger and heard a gasp from Paulo as they looked up at the foreign stranger, who I'd never seen in the region before, let alone on the staircase up to the private apartments of the Ghibertis.
"The Conte told me to tell you that he is indisposed this morning. I'm afraid he won't be up to whatever morning activities he had planned. And you are?" He directed this question to me, and I got the impression that he was closely appraising me, and in ways I found a bit uncomfortable.
"I am Giovanni," I stammered out. "I am painting the Conte's portrait."
"Ah yes, I saw it up in Luciano's bedroom," the stranger answered in his cool terms.
