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Bronson nodded, taking the point as seriously as she had intended. He bowed again, this time staring steadily at her. Holly suddenly felt breathless, unable to stop staring into the midnight depths of his eyes…so wicked and dark they were.
“That's much better,” she managed to say. “I think I'll spend the rest of the day making a list of the subjects we'll need to study: deportment, rules of conduct in the street and in the home, rules for calling and for conversation, ballroom etiquette and…do you know how to dance, Mr. Bronson?”
“Not well.”
“We'll have to begin right away, then. I am acquainted with an excellent dancing master who will instruct you on the finer points of the allemande, the reel, the quadrille and waltz—”
“No,” Bronson said immediately. “I'll be damned if I'll learn how to dance from some fop. Hire him for Elizabeth, if you like. She doesn't know any more about dancing than I do.”
“Then who will teach you?” Holly asked, making her voice very patient.
“You.”
She shook her head with a protesting laugh. “Mr. Bronson, I am not qualified to instruct you in the intricacies of dancing.”
“You know how, don't you?”
“There is a vast difference between knowing how to do something and teaching someone else. You must allow me to hire a proficient dancing master—”
“I want you,” he said stubbornly. “I'm paying you a fortune, Lady Holland, and I expect to get my money's worth. Whatever I learn over the next several months. I'm going to learn from you.”
“Very well. I will do my best, Mr. Bronson. But do not blame me if you attend a ball someday and can barely manage the figures of a quadrille.”
Bronson smiled. “Don't underestimate your abilities, my lady. I've never met anyone with such a knack for telling me what to do. Except my mother, of course.” He crooked his arm for her to take. “Come with me to the gallery—I want to show you my da Vinci.”
“What?” Holly asked, startled. “You have no da Vinci, Mr. Bronson. At least, you hadn't as of last week, and no one could possibly—” She broke off as she saw the gleam in his eyes. “You've acquired a da Vinci?” she asked faintly. “How…where…”
“The National Gallery,” he replied, walking her toward the library and the gallery beyond. “I had to trade a few of my other paintings and promise to build them an alcove for a Roman statuary collection. And technically the painting still isn't mine—I paid a king's ransom just to get them to loan the damn thing to me for a period of five years. You should have been at the negotiations. It's difficult enough to make deals with bankers and London businessmen, but as it turns out, museum directors are the greediest bastards of all—”
“Mr. Bronson, your language,” Holly reproved. “Which painting did you acquire?”
“A Madonna and child. They said it was a superb example of some Italian art technique for light and shadow—”
“Chiaroscuro?”
“Yes, that was it.”
“Good Lord,” Holly said, bemused. “You have a da Vinci. One wonders if anything is beyond your financial reach.” There was something in his manner—a touch of boastfulness, a boyish enthusiasm—that caused a warm, unexpected pang in her heart. Zachary Bronson was a ruthless man whom many people doubtless feared. However, she sensed a vulnerability in his need to belong to the society that was so determined to reject him. Being an intelligent man, he had acquired all the trappings—the house and lands, the Thoroughbreds and paintings and well-tailored clothes—but his ultimate goal was still far away.
“Unfortunately there are still a few things I can't buy,” Bronson said, as if he could read her thoughts.
Holly stared at him in fascination. “What do you want most?”
“To be a gentleman, of course.”
“I don't think so,” she murmured. “You don't really want to be a gentleman, Mr. Bronson. You just want the appearance of being one.”
Bronson stopped and turned to face her, his brows arched in ironic amusement.
Holly's breath caught as she realized what she had just said. “Forgive me,” she said hastily. “I don't know why I—”
“You're right. If I really were a gentleman, instead of merely trying to ape one, I'd never be a success at business. Real gentlemen don't have the heads or the guts for making money.”
“I don't believe that.”
“Oh? Name one true gentleman of your acquaintance who can hold his own in the business world.”
Holly thought for a long moment, searching silently through a list of men who were known for their financial acumen. However, the ones who could truly be called entrepreneurs, successful in the way Bronson meant, had lost the sheen of honor and integrity that had once defined them as true gentlemen. Uncomfortably she reflected that a man's character was easily damaged by the quest for financial glory. One couldn't sail through stormy waters without suffering some weathering.
