A Heart Most Worthy (19 page)

27

Julietta and Luciana were both shocked into silence. Annamaria had spoken. Again! And not only that, she sounded as if she . . . had she scolded them? Both of them?

“She started it!”

“She did!”

“Then you had both better finish it.” She said the words with quiet vehemence.

Their glances bounced past Annamaria, toward each other, then down to their work.

“You’re the lucky ones. I go home to even more work every night. Annamaria, do this. Annamaria, do that. Annamaria, go buy tomatoes from the Sicilians.”

“Sicilians!” They both gasped. Buying tomatoes from Sicilians was vastly more offensive than being accused of stealing jewels.

Only Julietta dared to speak. “And do you?”

Annamaria had regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them. It was her own business, wasn’t it? The only thing she had to call her own. And now she’d gone and cast it in front of both of them. But then maybe . . . maybe she’d wanted to. She lifted her chin. Nodded.

“And do you . . . speak to them?” Sicilians were even more of an abomination to Luciana than they were to Julietta, for Julietta had lived within sight of them for over twelve years in the North End. They had become a worrisome, if acceptable, evil. But to Luciana, Sicilians were a breed of peasants akin to the Barbary pirates of which she had only heard tales. And sordid ones at that!

Annamaria shrugged.

“What are they like?”

She shrugged again as she pulled her needle through an impressive number of pleats. “They’re nice.”

Julietta’s eyes narrowed. It almost sounded as if Annamaria liked them. “And why do you have to buy tomatoes from them?”

“Because Maglione, the Avellinesi, sells rotten ones.”

Julietta frowned, took a stitch at her own work. It was a dirty business when one couldn’t trust one’s own countrymen.

Luciana lifted a brow at that perplexing bit of information. A Sicilian? Selling good tomatoes? When an Avellinesi sold bad ones? Not, of course, that Avellinesis were that much better.

But Annamaria’s secret had achieved what her admonition had not. Julietta and Luciana worked the rest of the day in relative silence, pondering the wonders of buying from, and actually speaking to, a Sicilian. How nice – how pleasant! – the workshop would have been had that peace reigned for even one day more.

But it could not. How could it have when both Julietta and Luciana sent withering looks across the table at each other? How could it when each suspected the worst of the other? They glowered through the morning, then began sniping at each other that afternoon. Until finally Annamaria had had enough. Again.

“Stop it! The both of you!”

They each turned from the other.

“I am sick unto death of both of you!” She might have been her own mother scolding her youngest brother. The same frustration, the same eternal weariness were evident in her tone.

“Then tell
her
to stop glaring at me.”

“And tell
her
to stop insulting me.” Luciana hated the way her words had come out in a whine, but Julietta seemed always to bring out the very worst in her.

“You’re both at fault. Admit it. Julietta, you think Luciana stole Mrs. Quinn’s jewels. And Luciana, you think Julietta stole them.”

“She did!” They both said it at the same time.

“I didn’t. You did.” Those words, too, were spoken in unison.

It was enough to make long-suffering Annamaria want to weep. “What if
I
stole the jewels?”

Julietta hadn’t considered that possibility before. “Did you?”

“No. None of us did.”

She spoke the words with such absolute assurance that Julietta knew her first guess, her first thought, might just have been right.

How it would grieve her heart to know it! But she couldn’t admit it. Not yet. “It had to have been Luciana!”

And now Annamaria wanted to pull at her hair. But she didn’t.

Manifesting infinite patience, she talked to Julietta as if she were her youngest brother, Stefano. “But why would she steal them?

She needs this job.”

“Then it was Julietta!” Luciana had had enough of the girl’s constant arrogance and scorn. If she’d been a servant in Roma, Luciana would have had her fired. Days before. Weeks even!

Annamaria turned her efforts to Luciana. “And why would she steal them? She wants to own this shop one day.”

Julietta felt her spine straighten as Annamaria spoke. It was true. She did. And she was going to get those jewels back if it was the last thing she did. For how could she own part of the shop if there wasn’t a shop to own?

“But if she didn’t steal them and I didn’t steal them . . .” The only person left, in Luciana’s mind, was Annamaria.

But the girl was already shaking her head. “I didn’t take them.”

Luciana looked at her with all the cool disdain of the daughter of the Count of Roma. “And why wouldn’t you have?”

“Why would I? I’m the eldest daughter of the Rossi family.” She turned her attention from Luciana back to her work. Began a row of delicate bullion stitches. “I’m expected to spend my life looking after my family. What would I want with money or jewels?” She frowned as she leaned over her work to inspect it more closely. Using her needle to separate and count the pleats, she sighed. She’d missed one; once again, she’d have to start all over.

If Julietta didn’t steal them and Luciana didn’t steal them and Annamaria didn’t steal them, then who did?

One of them had to be lying.

Two floors down, Madame had her own problems to work through. Her client, the strega, was weeping. She’d never done such a thing before. Ever. Which just served to illustrate what a manipulative and devious strega she was. Trying to make Madame feel sorry for her. For her – Mrs. Quinn! As if she had anything to weep about.

Madame could have shown her sadness. Regret. And misery? Why, Madame had miseries by the armful. By the heart-full. But Madame was nothing if not discreet. And so she drew from an immense reservoir of self-possession and spent some of it on Mrs. Quinn. Silently, she pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and handed it to the woman.

“I don’t know what to do anymore.” The strega took Madame’s offering, swiped at her eyes with it, then put the handkerchief to her nose and honked into it. “I’ve tried to be interested in what interests him. I’ve tried not to be interested in what interests him.” She moved to give the handkerchief back before thinking the better of it. She’d have it laundered and returned – or not – as it suited her. “I’ve tried to help him with his rallies. I’ve stayed away from his rallies. I’ve gone to Washington when he’s in session and I’ve stayed home. I’ve tried to be supportive and dutiful and . . . and good!”

Good? The strega?

“But mostly I’ve been resentful and bitter and hateful.”

Only a strega would know such things about herself and freely admit them. “But have you tried . . .” Should Madame say it? Could it really be as simple as that? “Have you tried loving him?” “Loving him.”

Madame nodded. And then she took a step backward, behind the woman’s shoulder so that she wouldn’t have to see the strega’s face. Loving him? Had she really suggested that?

“I married him
because
I was in love with him! Don’t you understand? I was a Howell and he was nothing. Nobody! Some Irish immigrant’s son from the North End, who didn’t know a soup spoon from a salad fork. I made him who he is. Without me, he’d be married to some brazen Italian girl, tending a bar on Hanover Street.”

Some brazen Italian girl. It was providential indeed that Mrs.

Quinn couldn’t see Madame’s face.

“But have you never simply loved him?”

“I just told you I had!” Mrs. Quinn turned in her seat to stare at Madame. Really! She’d just poured out her heart to a shopkeeper and the woman hadn’t even bothered to listen.

“I mean, have you never simply appreciated him as a man.

For who he is and what he wants.”

“I appreciate him every day. I’ve given him my money. I’ve given him a son. I’ve given him my family’s contacts and a whole voting district! What more could he possibly want from me?”

“Perhaps he simply does not want you to want anything at all.”

Why had Mrs. Quinn expected Madame to understand? She swept from the chair to her feet, determined to make an exit with her pride intact.

“Perhaps he does not want you to make demands on him.”

Mrs. Quinn halted. Demands? And when had she ever made a demand? All she’d ever done was support him in his career. Push him, perhaps. Just a little, when necessary. And what did she require in return? “Demands? Such as . . . summer at the shore? A box at the opera? My birthday ball?” She only ever asked for those things so that people would know they were happily married. That he was her husband. And she, his wife.

Madame raised one of her slender, elegantly clad shoulders in a shrug.

“But if I don’t demand those things, then I would never see him at all!”

Ah, poor Mrs. Quinn. The problem was that she had never trusted love. She had never quite believed that she might be enough, without her money, without her family, without the heir. Without her thousand petty, incessant demands. It was fear that drove her. That had caused her, month after month, year after year, to take on the person of someone else. Someone else who might, in fact, be able to deserve the love of her husband. In truth, she had tried to turn herself into her husband’s first love. Or, at least, the woman she imagined that first love to be.

“What if, instead of insisting, you let him choose?”

“Choose what? To claim me or to abandon me? What kind of a choice is that? And what do you mean, have I never loved him?”

What Madame had meant to say, of course, was,
Have you never loved yourself? Have you never decided for yourself what might make you happy?
Had Madame just been able to find the words, she would have offered these: Have you never thought to be yourself? For which of us, in offering another the truest self that we have, have ever been disappointed by those who really love us? Which might have led round once more to the first question: Have you never trusted love?

Madame Fortier, for once at a loss for words, turned to the only thing she knew. The only thing in which she was an expert. She turned to her gowns. She picked up a new spring season sample book and put it into Mrs. Quinn’s hands. “Show me what you like.”

“What I like?” How would Mrs. Quinn know? She had been guided for years by Madame Fortier. For years she had allowed herself to become shaped in Madame’s image.

Madame gestured toward the book. “What do you like?”

Mrs. Quinn looked up at the shopkeeper, frustration etched onto her face. “How would I know?
You
tell me what looks good. You always tell me what I want.”

Madonna mia! She was giving the woman a chance to choose. To throw off the fetters of Madame’s rigid taste and blossom, finally, into a woman of her own making. Madame bent to turn the pages herself. “That one?”

Mrs. Quinn simply sat there.

“How about this one? It could be made up in tricotine or even in taffeta.”

Mrs. Quinn, poor woman, didn’t know what to do. That’s what she paid the gown maker for: to clothe her in the latest fashions. And hadn’t Madame Fortier been doing that all these years? Why was she asking for her opinion now? Mrs. Quinn looked down at her watch. Opened the fob. “I’m afraid I haven’t any more time. You should send the book up to the house. And note your suggestions.” She stood and offered Madame the book. Then she gathered her bag, put a hand to her hat, and hurried out of the shop. Before that woman could ask her any more ridiculous questions.

28

And so it was that Madame had to send Luciana up to Beacon Hill. Again. As if Madame Fortier had nothing better to do with her girls than to send them on expeditions to her clients’ doorsteps. She entrusted the spring sample book into Luciana’s hands. “You can return home from there.”

Well, that was something, then. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon. Luciana had arranged to have a woman on her floor look in on the contessa several times a day. And leave her door open in the meantime. Luciana just had to hope that if the contessa tried to leave, the woman would see her. In exchange for the woman’s services, Luciana had given her one of Madame’s precious castoff gowns. With the promise of another closer to Christmas.

The woman wouldn’t expect Luciana for another two and a half hours. So if Mrs. Quinn didn’t make her wait, then she had at least two hours for her own. Maybe more. She could go to the Settlement House early and sit in on the English class that took place before her own.

Madame tapped the book. “But make sure – ”

“That she returns the book before I leave.” Luciana nodded.

Madame tried to smile but wasn’t quite able to do it. They both understood how it was with the strega. And so, Luciana climbed into the back of the waiting motorcar, knowing all the while that she was bound to fail. Not twenty minutes after her arrival, she was dismissed from the Quinn mansion, absent the aforementioned book, having been told to return for it the next day.

And she couldn’t have been happier!

She even smiled at the butler. And didn’t mind at all when he showed her the door. In fact, it was this woman, pleased with the outcome of her errand and in a hurry to reach the Settlement House, who saw Billy Quinn lounging on the front stoop as she stepped through the door.

Her smile disintegrated into a frown. “Where is my motorcar?” He glanced up, as if surprised to see her. “
Guten Tag
. What did you say?” he continued in German.

“Where is my motorcar!” The volume of her words had risen quite impressively for one so small of stature. A passerby cast a suspicious look at her as he walked by.

There’s a word some people might apply to Billy Quinn. But I urge you not to do so. Firstly, because you oughtn’t think such things of people you don’t know very well. Secondly, because he was desperate to spend time with Luciana. Desperation makes people do foolish things. Thirdly, because really, it was a rather complicated relationship they were developing: an American and Italian who could only communicate in German; a Boston blueblood and a displaced noblewoman who didn’t know the first thing about each other’s lives. And finally, because if you had seen Luciana’s eyes as she spoke, you might have noticed that beneath the anger lay something more. Something more akin to disappointment. Which means, in fact, that she expected more and greater things of him. And the whole problem with Billy was that he’d never had any expectations at all. At least not any that would call forth his best and most noble self.

He put a finger to his lips. “I wouldn’t speak so loudly.”

“It seems I have to. You have not yet answered my question.”

“Ah – but since we’re speaking in German, we might want to speak it a bit more quietly.” He had dropped his voice as he spoke and picked himself up off the stoop to stand rather a bit more closely to her than she was comfortable with.

She took a step back toward the door. “Why?”

“You wouldn’t want anyone to think that we’re collaborators, would you?”

Her brows peaked at that suggestion. Collaborators? With the Boche? Certainly not!

“So why don’t I just drive you home myself?”

No. Oh, no, no, no. Luciana shook her head. If he had dismissed her motorcar, which she had every reason to believe that he had – again! – it was for her to find her way home on her own. And she had no injuries this time to dissuade her from doing so. She’d rubbed so much olive oil onto the leather heel of her shoe that she could probably have fried an onion in it if she’d wished to. “I shall walk.”

“Then I shall accompany you.” He crooked his arm and offered it to her.

She ignored it, marching right past him and down the steps.

He grinned at the tilt of her pert little nose. Billy hadn’t been so highly amused since . . . well . . . since the last time he had seen her. He started down the steps after her. “It’s a free country you know, here in America.”

Oh, sì. She agreed with that. Freer than most!

“I might just decide to take a walk myself.”

She sped her pace.

He matched his to hers, easily coming apace with her in several strides. “And I might just decide to take my walk wherever it is that you’re going.” He winked at her.

She flushed. Winks were impertinent. When they were unsolicited. She snuck a look at him from beneath her scarf. And not so very rude when they weren’t. He had such green eyes! She’d never seen their like before. And such glossy auburn hair.

They walked several blocks in uneasy silence.

“It’s a glorious day.”

Luciana thought about the words for a moment before responding. She could sense no trap. No reason for him to misinterpret a response, whether she agreed with him or not. So she nodded. Because it
was
glorious. A glorious September day. Summer’s scorching dry heat had subsided, and even the birds seemed to know that autumn was coming. The pigeons were flying lazy circles in the air, the wind caressing her cheeks.

When she might have turned left at Beacon Street, he offered up his arm as they crossed and steered her right instead. Into the expanse of green that stretched up and away from them.

“What is this place?”

“Boston Common.”

She stopped, forcing him to stop as well. Boston Common. A park? With him? It wasn’t what she’d wanted to do with her extra time.

Sensing her ambivalence, he placed a hand atop the slender fingers that rested on his forearm. There was something about her . . . something that called forth from him his most gallant behavior. As well as a grin or two.

He took a cautious step forward.

She followed.

He took another. And another. And soon they were walking along those paths like a pair of lovers. As they walked along, he kept sliding glances at her from beneath his shock of auburn hair. And as she hurried to keep pace with his long strides, she kept shooting up glances at him from beneath the fold of her scarf.

Really, he didn’t seem like an American at all. At least not the kind of American who had visited Roma. Those Americans had been loud and boisterous. They dined much too early and drank much too late and then cavorted in the city’s fountains like children. They spent their days consulting guidebooks as if the pages were sages and speaking in their street voices beneath the dizzying vaults of the cathedrals.

He smiled with the bright enthusiasm and innocence that she remembered. But beneath those charms seemed to lie a vast well of intelligence. And she had to admit that when she closed her eyes at night, she was haunted by the memory of his tourmaline-colored eyes. And so she decided to give him the test. The test she had given every suitor that had ever called upon her at her father’s estate.

“What do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world?” As soon as Luciana asked the question, she regretted it. It wasn’t as if she had so many suitors here in this new country that she could afford to be discriminating. And it wasn’t as if she was even looking for a suitor at all. But he made her . . . curious. She wanted to see where he might have fit into her past had he been among her circle in Roma. It was a question born of curiosity. Nothing more than that.

“In the world?” He was buying time, for something told him that her question was important. “The whole world?”

She nodded. But she did it with a tide of disappointment pooling in her stomach. He wouldn’t pass. No one had ever passed. It’s not that she considered herself superior, or even more intelligent, than other people. And she wasn’t naïve. She’d known what was expected of a society marriage. But when she had tired of balls and wearied of dinner parties, when she had taken out her beads and gone to work, it wasn’t just handsome princes of which she had dreamed. She had wished for a marriage of mutual respect. She had wanted a life that mattered. To someone other than herself.

Billy was tempted to take his handkerchief from his pocket and use it to blot the sweat that had suddenly appeared on his forehead. What is the most beautiful thing in the world? Why, it wasn’t a thing, was it? And it certainly couldn’t be one thing. There were many beautiful things in the world. And it was quite difficult for him to think poetically in a language that wasn’t his own. “The most beautiful thing in the world? Well now, that would depend, wouldn’t it?”

She looked over at him, startled from her thoughts.

“That’s what they say, right? That beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”

Her spirits sagged once more. For soon he would be telling her that the most beautiful thing in the world was her. That’s what all the others had said. But for the first time, here in America, she had felt hope – anticipation even – while waiting for her answer.

He knew he hadn’t really given her an answer. And so it was with honesty, as well as frustration, that he tried to put into words what he had known for a very long time. “It’s almost as if . . . I don’t think . . . well . . .” He very nearly gave up, lacking German words to put to an idea he didn’t fully understand himself, but he decided to try one last time. “It’s almost . . . it’s almost as if I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Really.”

“
Ja
. I mean to say, I’ve almost seen it. Once or twice. As dawn broke over a mountain in the Berkshires. And one time, when I was in California, as the sun set over the ocean. I feel like if I could just – ”

“See it from the other side.”

“Exactly. If I could see it from the other side.” He’d been taught by his father to believe in the pooka, fairies, and the mysteries of the Church. And he’d been coached by his mother to believe in the power of progress and the sanctity of mankind. But he couldn’t quite help believing that there was something else. Something more waiting for him on the other side of the sunset. It was as if he’d only been granted a glimpse of something he knew had to exist in full.

Luciana began to smile. He had said the magic words. And like some princess of old being rescued from enchantment, she turned toward her handsome prince, breathless with expectancy. Hope shining in her eyes as she looked at him with great wonder.

He looked down into those eyes and, though he was feeling rather foolish, dared to ask the same question. “And what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world?”

“That. The very same thing. Something that I know for certain exists, but something that I haven’t yet been able to see.”

“I can’t believe – ”

“And you too – ”

They beamed at each other alight with the sudden knowledge, the absolute certainty, that it was Providence who had brought them together. As they walked the path, bound together in perfect agreement and intimate silence, they soon happened on the bandstand that was being set up for a rally after a Win the War for Freedom parade. Several of the musicians were tuning their instruments. Practicing phrases of the music they would play later that afternoon.

For the first time, Billy held out his hand to her, not simply for courtesy’s sake or in vain flirtation, but with honor and respect.

“Do you think we could . . . would you care to dance?”

Would you care to dance?

The phrase triggered a response that had lain dormant within the fiber of the daughter of the Count of Roma. She raised her chin as she offered him her hand.

He put a hand to her waist and then whirled them around a grassy dance floor.

She kept the rhythm on light feet, dancing as gracefully as she had in Vienna or Paris. Just as stylishly as she had in the arms of the Duke of Prussia or the Baron of Kubinzsky. And he guided her across that patch of ground just as ably as he’d guided Helen Putnam or Eloise Winthrop.

But what they had achieved apart on the dance floors of the world was nothing compared to what they achieved together. And after the last musician gave up his tuning, still they danced to some melody unheard by mortal ears. They danced until Luciana could ignore the decline of the sun no longer.

“Really, I must go home.”

“You can’t stay? For just a few minutes more?”

She would have liked to, but no, she must not. The contessa was waiting and the ballrooms of Europe existed no more. Though how she wished she could be that girl for this man.

They walked to the edge of the park. He hailed a taxicab and then he got into it beside her. She told him to direct the driver to Cross Street. When they came within view of it, she told Billy to have her dropped there.

“This is where you live?”

“I can walk from here.” It was only six blocks and a couple of alleys farther up the street.

“I’ll drop you where you live.” It was nothing less than any gentleman would have done. Only she was no longer a lady and she did not need – did not want – such courtesies. It would only draw attention to her. Attention that could be very dangerous. “It’s fine here. I just live up there, at the corner.” Six blocks up.

“Then the corner is where I’ll leave you.” He didn’t like the looks of this part of the city. And, frankly, he couldn’t remember ever having come here. For all of his mother’s talk about the common man and all her professed sympathies, he had never actually met one. And he was not prepared to do so now. The girl beside him could not live in such humble circumstances. He would not believe it. Surely there was a nice, quiet street in the midst of all the filth and squalor. Surely there was a place in that warren of alleys that did not require propping up or reek of sewers.

They had reached the end of the block. “Here?”

She inclined her head, not willing to lie and not quite willing to tell the truth either. He skipped around the front of the cab and opened up her door. Offered his hand once more. “Thank you. For your time. For . . . everything.”