A Heart Most Worthy (8 page)

Before the war.

And before the anarchists.

Annamaria smiled as she watched Luciana. “Try it on.”

Oh, how she wanted to! But . . . “Now?”

“Sì. Now.” Julietta had gone to help Luciana from her old gown. “Please! To spare us both another look at that old rag you’ve been wearing.”

Rag? That was hardly fair to the handiwork of the preeminent Parisian modiste Luciana had patronized before . . . everything . . . but she didn’t quibble; she was too grateful. And she didn’t even pause to consider what had happened to the pink and white messaline she’d given over to Julietta that past Friday. Or the lavaliere that had accompanied it. Though she hadn’t minded the absence of the one, she truly missed the other. More than she thought she would. Its rubies and diamonds had been formed in the shape of her family’s crest.

If Julietta noticed the fine weave of Luciana’s corset cover or the quality of the detailing on its yoke, she didn’t say so. She simply held up the gown as Luciana stepped inside it and then stood off to the side as the girl fastened it in the front. But her pride of workmanship was unmistakable, and she looked quite like Madame did whenever the shop owner had accomplished a particularly fine piece of work or an especially difficult draping. She quietly picked up Luciana’s old gown from the floor and dropped it into the wastebasket.

Annamaria was watching the transformation with undisguised good cheer. She had never been the beneficiary of any of Madame’s castoffs, had never expected to be, but that didn’t keep her from sharing in the happiness of the girl she was starting to consider a friend. “
Che bella!
” How beautiful. How beautiful Luciana was.

There was a moment when Luciana wondered if she ought to thank Julietta. And another moment when Julietta wondered if she ought to be bothered by Luciana’s failure to offer up gratitude. But Luciana couldn’t settle on the correct words, so Julietta counted it against her as one more instance of arrogance. Exchanging wary glances, they sat down to lunch, not as friends but as prospective enemies.

Just before the hands of Julietta’s clever little pendant watch pointed out two o’clock, Luciana descended the back stairs. She did it with trepidation and no little reluctance. She didn’t want to assist Madame Fortier. She didn’t want to meet the woman’s customers. She only wanted to be left alone.

But Madame had been good to her. Mostly. She had offered Luciana a job. She had provided clothing and money during a time when such things had been difficult to come by. If Madame required her assistance, then assist she would do. She’d just pray that nothing bad would come of it.

Pray. As if God were listening!

As she came toward the shop floor, she saw Madame escort a woman to a seat behind the screen. The very seat in which Luciana herself had collapsed two weeks before.

The woman was tall. She carried herself with confidence, if rather a bit too much dignity. She ought to have been beautiful; she had every feature required for the task. Her hair glowed with soft highlights that might have reminded you of the best of summer’s butter. The kind Luciana hadn’t seen for months. And the curve of her lips brought to mind the bow of the moon; there lay upon her cheeks a healthy glow that had nothing to do with artifice.

Yes, she ought to have been beautiful, but she wasn’t.

It is an old and tired motto that would have us believe true beauty lies beneath the skin. You might have suspected, as have I, that it is only the truly gorgeous who must think so. But as Luciana looked on Madame’s client, she came to discover that no light, save that of intelligence, shone forth from that woman’s soul. No warmth emanated from within. Those beautiful features with which God had chosen to bless her responded not to need nor to fellow man, but to principles and honor and duty.

At that moment, just as Luciana was appraising the strega, the woman looked over at her and did the same. Through narrowed eyes.

10

Luciana stepped back, for an instant, behind the protection of a doorframe and made the sign of the cross. She might have said a prayer for the woman, but she did not know, not at that point, what ailed her. And it was always a dangerous business to pray for a witch. But Luciana, from the depths of her own fear and unhappiness, had responded to a soul in pain in a way that Mrs. Quinn never had. Luciana had perceived; she had felt. She had sympathized.

It was only when she stepped into the shop once more that she realized the woman had been accompanied. By a man. A man who was handsome in much the same way as the woman, though he exuded a vivacity of spirit that the strega didn’t seem to possess.

He sent a smile in Luciana’s direction.

She cast her gaze to the floor and stepped toward the screen, placing herself at its side where Madame could see her.

Madame Fortier had asked the strega a question, and the woman was answering as she pulled off her gloves and folded them into her lap. “The same. The same as every other autumn. How many of these seasons have there been?”

“Twenty-one.” And Madame could recount them all in painful detail. “And how is the congressman?”

The woman turned her head away from Madame as if she couldn’t be bothered to answer. But then she sighed. Turned back. “Mr. Quinn? The same. The same as every other autumn. The same as every other year. He works all day.” She lifted a slim shoulder. Let it fall back down. “We entertain at night. I scarcely have time to think of him, let alone speak to him.”

“He is an important man. He is doing great things. You must be very proud to be married to him.”

Mrs. Quinn considered that statement.

“I’m sure any woman would give her . . . how do you say it? Her right arm? . . . to be married to him.”

At that, Mrs. Quinn scowled. She knew for a fact that was true. Knew for certain that there
had
been someone, some mysterious woman, that her husband had been in love with before they had married.

“It’s not what they might expect. . . .” She said it in a tone so low that Madame could scarcely hear her.

It’s not what Adeline Quinn,
née
Howell, had expected. He’d been so utterly charming, despite the melancholy she saw hiding behind his twinkling eyes and his quick smiles. And he’d been so ambitious. He’d spun visions of a new kind of city. A city where men and women could work together and immigrants could be encouraged to improve their plight.

The right sort of immigrant. The smart, hardworking, intelligent kind.

How they’d talked back then! Of anything. Of everything. As they’d shared their dreams for the future, she’d talked herself into believing that the difference in their backgrounds hadn’t mattered. That her blueblood parents would accept her marriage to an Irishman. She’d thought of it as the first step in their plan. Their first advancement for the cause.

It was to be a marriage of minds and goals.

Encouraged by their shared passions, she had hoped for love and companionship. But she had tumbled from those glorious daydreams after the wedding, straight into the treacherous seas of matrimony where she’d found herself sailing alone.

Oh, she’d known of the other woman before she’d married. Patrick Quinn was nothing if not honorable. She knew she’d turned his head and captured his imagination, and she’d told herself that she could also heal his heart. But still, after twenty-one years, she hadn’t been able to expunge the memory of that ghost. The toll that it had left on her, the weight that it had caused her to carry, had become debilitating. For how could she live up to a memory, an ideal, of some other woman when she didn’t even know who that person was?

An immigrant.

That’s all Patrick had ever told her. Knowing he had been raised in the North End, it wasn’t difficult to guess what kind of immigrant, what sort of woman it had been. And at this point, with dreams of romance behind her, she could admit that the thought of it disgusted her. Patrick had fallen in love with an Italian.

Madame could read her client’s face as easily as she could read the pull of a thread against the grain. The best cure for both was to smooth things out. “Nobody ever said marriage was easy. Perhaps a smile when he arrives home. A pleasant word or inquiry about his day?” Isn’t that what any man would want?

“You think I don’t do those things?” Adeline Quinn had taken to hovering near the door every evening until his return. Even when that hour kept creeping ever later. It was crass, undignified, and completely out of keeping with her class and station in life . . . and still, she could not seem to control herself. She just wanted . . . desperately craved . . .
something
. Some vitally important, nameless, missing thing.

Mrs. Quinn took the sample book that Madame Fortier offered. Began to flip through it. Black, brown, taupe. Wool jersey, wool tricotine, wool poplin. Buttons and beads and braids. Why should a new gown make her feel any more pleased, any more happy than the last one had? And if it did, how long would that satisfaction last? Until the season’s first ball? Until Thanksgiving? Or Christmas? Until Patrick passed by her bedroom door again without stopping to say good-night? How sick to death she was of expectations! And hope! And the city and the war and people not knowing what they were meant to do or how they were to act!

She shut the book and shoved it back into Madame’s hands. “If I wanted to order what everyone else has, then I would patronize Madame Connolly’s. Please tell me you’ve something to offer other than what I’ve already seen half the other women in Boston wearing.”

Madame had grown round-eyed at the diatribe, causing a swell of perverse pleasure in Mrs. Quinn’s breast. It made her despise herself all the more. And it made Madame Fortier try all the harder. She knew from experience the strega would be contrary about her gowns until she had become satisfied, once more, with her life in general. “Perhaps . . . sometimes men seem to shrink from obligation. Men are contrary that way. They crave attention, but they don’t want to think that they are your sole occupation.”

“Do you think so?” Mrs. Quinn looked at her with an appraising eye. Madame’s advice always sounded so sensible. So eminently reasonable. Mrs. Quinn had actually been tempted to think, once or twice, that the gown maker actually knew the man. With a nudge in this direction or a push in that one, Mrs. Quinn’s marriage had been steered from perilous shores, on more than one occasion, by the skillful hands of Madame Fortier. And that thought, that knowledge, galled her to no end. “I suppose it’s easy for an old maid like you to dispense advice about marriage. It doesn’t cost you anything, does it? And you haven’t the ability to experience the consequences of your advice.”

Madame Fortier tried to smile. “No. It does not. But then, an old maid like me does not have the pleasure of sons, either.”

Mrs. Quinn jerked toward the screen, behind which she supposed her son was waiting. Her son. If nothing else had come from her marriage, at least she had him. She took a breath. Looked up at Madame Fortier. “Have you another book?”

Madame passed the first one to Luciana and then handed a second one to the strega.

Luciana left the safety of the screen and placed the book on the counter, avoiding any contact with or any glimpse of the man.

Mrs. Quinn turned the pages, pausing halfway through. “I don’t see why you didn’t put me in a design like this last spring.”

“Because we had decided that it did not properly highlight your stature.”

The woman sent a sharp look at Madame through the mirror. “Yes . . . yes, I suppose I do recall you saying something like that.” But it had ruffles and lace. And contrary to everything she had ever believed about herself and fashion, she had come to crave ruffles and lace. Less of what was and more of what was not. She wanted something different.

Madame coughed delicately into her handkerchief. “I should think you would want less of the distractions of ruffles and lace. So that the eye is drawn to your face and fine features.”

The woman frowned and fiddled with her cuffs. Her face and fine features. It always came back to her face and fine features. But what had those things ever done for her? And why couldn’t she trade them in for something different? Something new? “Bring me that first book again.”

Madame bowed. Looked at Luciana. Inclined her head toward the shop floor.

Luciana ducked out from behind the screen and made for the counter where she’d left the book. But the man had already found it and was holding it out to her. Her gaze darted to the floor, but she accepted it from him and then turned and took it to Madame Fortier.

The strega seized it from Madame’s hands. She was flipping through the pages toward the middle of the book when she suddenly stopped. “This one. This is the one I want.”

Both Luciana and Madame tried to contain their dismay. They couldn’t imagine, either of them, that anyone would want a gown like that one. There were more than a dozen horizontal tucks circling the skirt that made the design read like a cone, wider at the hips than it was at the bottom. Patch pockets were placed at such an angle on the hips that they might as well have been potholders. It was an avant-garde gown intended for someone living at the bohemian fringe of society. Someone who cared little about what others liked or thought or expected. Someone as far from Mrs. Quinn as a Hollywood starlet could be.

Madame considered it for a moment before replying. “Perhaps if we substituted georgette crepe for the wool jersey.” That way it wouldn’t flare out quite so much at the hips. If it lay flatter, then maybe . . . maybe. But Madame feared a gown like the one the strega wanted would be an unmitigated disaster. It would take on the look of a costume. And a gown maker didn’t do herself any favors by letting her clients walk around in unbecoming gowns. Sooner or later, either the client would realize the mistake – and blame the gown maker – or the client’s friends would see the catastrophe – and blame the gown maker. Either way, Madame’s business had not become what it was by letting her clients walk around in whatever pleased them. There was an art to gown making that required far more than familiarity with needle and thread.

Mrs. Quinn pursed her lips as she considered the suggestion. The model in the illustration was the kind of person she wished she could be. Bold and bohemian. All dark, sleek hair, with a slash of red lips. Arresting and intriguing. Exotic. Exactly the kind of person Mrs. Quinn was not. “Maybe. Maybe if you do it up in georgette, then I can see if I want it.”

Madame nodded. “And might I suggest that it be made in this lovely color?” She flipped a few pages further and revealed a sample of gray-colored silk that had a supple hand.

“Is this a new shade for spring?”

It was. One of them. In a particular shade that would set off the woman’s eyes.

“I’m still rather partial to taupe.” She always had been, though she’d rarely ever ordered a gown in that color.

Taupe! It always came back to taupe with Mrs. Quinn. The strega might be partial to that color but, just between you and me, taupe was not at all partial to her. “Perhaps.” It was as close to
no
as Madame would ever come. “Perhaps the pockets could be made of taupe. With wine-colored beading.” That would be acceptable.

Mrs. Quinn squinted at the design, trying to imagine it in a different color and with a different material, but she had never been very good at imagining what she couldn’t actually see. “I suppose. I suppose . . . yes.”

“There’s a new sleeve that’s being shown for spring. Would you like me to incorporate it?”

“Does anyone else have it?”

“No.” For no one else was as eager, as willing as Mrs. Quinn, to return from vacation three weeks early just to get her orders in first.

“I won’t have what anyone else is having.”

“Of course not. In fact, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that everyone else will have to content themselves with wearing what you’re wearing.”

The strega smiled at that thought.

“That is what I always tell them. ‘Of course you know that Mrs. Quinn will be wearing the same.’ ”

“I did like all that beadwork. On the pockets. And I’d want the same on the collar. But I’ll want mine done up in jewels.” Mrs. Quinn had moved from her seat, past the screen and up to the counter. There, standing beside her son, she took from him a velvet pouch and spilled its contents onto the counter. “These were my father’s.”

If Luciana hadn’t missed her guess, she thought she’d already spied one or two made of paste among the batch. Clearly the woman’s father knew very little about fine gems.

Madame’s heart had nearly stopped in her chest when she’d seen the tumbling, flashing jewels. Now she moved to sweep them back into their bag. “So many of them! The gown will gleam like a prize.” There. She’d almost recaptured every one. “I’ve found a fabulous girl for beads. I’m sure you’ll be very happy with her work.” She gave Luciana a long look as she spoke, tying off the sack with its ribbon, and then handing it back to Mrs. Quinn.

But the woman handed it right back. “They’re to stay here.

For the gown.”

Madame set the bag on the counter. “I don’t have the ability to keep such fine jewels for such a prolonged period.” Nor did she have the insurance.

“Surely you’re not saying your shop is not safe.”

“No. I am simply saying that I would feel more comfortable if you kept them.”

“And I want them to stay here.” She didn’t say it, but she had lately begun to suspect that some of her maids were stealing from her. And though Madame was both a shopkeeper and a foreigner, she judged her jewels were more safely kept there instead of the Quinn mansion. “I must insist. As long as you don’t . . .” Her gaze traveled to where Luciana stood, holding the sample book. “As long as you don’t have any Italians working here.”