A Heart Most Worthy (9 page)

11

“Italians? Of course not.” Madame Fortier had long since ceased to be Italian. She had given up her heritage to embrace proprietorship and had become all things to all people. She hardly noticed anymore when people disparaged her fellow countrymen. What’s more, she was inclined to agree with them. So although the building was filled above the shop floor with Italians, she lied through her teeth and had no compunction about doing so.

Since Mrs. Quinn insisted on leaving her jewels and Madame could not imagine life without the dual blessing and curse of her patronage, the shopkeeper finally acquiesced.

Now, Billy Quinn had been leaning against the counter all that time, watching the goings-on. He wasn’t opposed to stopping in at a dressmaker’s the way some of his friends might have been. To his mind, dresses and girls went together. And why would he forgo the opportunity to haunt the former if it guaranteed the presence of the latter?

Madame Fortier’s.

It had been a while since he’d been in the shop. He’d graduated from college, and then they’d gone away for the summer. He hadn’t minded so much being dragged back to the city. He was tired of sun and sand and surf, though he wouldn’t have wanted to admit it. Not to his set. They wouldn’t have understood. But he’d run through all the girls in his crowd. They only knew how to giggle, dance, and flirt. It didn’t seem quite right, in his opinion, to carry on that way, as if nothing in life were serious, when half the world was dying a mere continent away. He supposed that meant that he was growing up. And that a job at his father’s bank and marriage couldn’t be far behind.

A job and marriage. He stifled a yawn.

No, he hadn’t been to Madame Fortier’s in a while. A trip to the shop was usually just a prelude to distributing leaflets on behalf of the National Women’s Party, or charming his mother’s friends over tea. Sometimes even stopping by his father’s office on the way home. The shop hadn’t changed much, and neither had Madame herself. She was an interesting one. Not French. He’d spent enough time in the vicinity of the family’s French chef to know that her accent was not from that country. If he had to guess, he would say Hungarian, or Romanian. She had that dark look about her.

His eye settled on the girl standing to the side, over by Madame Fortier. Not quite behind the counter, yet not quite on the shop floor. She didn’t seem to belong to either realm. She wasn’t a customer, of course. She’d been assisting Madame Fortier, hadn’t she? But he wasn’t yet convinced that she was a shop girl either. She seemed to hold herself apart, from all of them, through an act of choice rather than deference. She was, however –

Luciana looked up at him just then.

She was beautiful.

Her gaze sank from his again just as surely as it was weighted with a stone. And it told him, just as surely, that she wasn’t American. American girls in Boston didn’t mind meeting a man’s look straight on. So this girl wasn’t American. Her skin . . . it wasn’t swarthy. Not like the Italians’. It had more of the golden tones of Madame Fortier’s. Her hair was dark, it was true, but he’d have bet anything that it didn’t tend toward coarse. And her eyes . . . he’d caught a glimpse of startling sadness in their sable-colored depths. But if she wasn’t American – and she wasn’t Italian – then what exactly was she?

He removed himself from his end of the counter and draped himself closer to hers.

Alarm fired the look that she gave him, and she moved back toward the screen.

He’d never have the chance to speak to her if she kept moving away like that!

“You’ll have the gown finished by November?” The strega had put up a hand to adjust her hat.

Madame nodded. “But I’d like you to take a look at another design I just got in.”

Mrs. Quinn had already turned from the counter toward the door. “I haven’t the time.”

“It’s a lovely gown that mixes wool serge and silk satin.”

“I haven’t the time to be lounging around here all day, looking at books.” Indeed, she didn’t. There were so very many tedious things that had to be done oneself if one wished them to be accomplished properly. “Send them later. With your girl.”

Billy lifted his hat toward Luciana before he put it on his head and sauntered out of the shop behind his mother, regretting that he hadn’t been afforded the chance to speak with the girl.

Both Madame and Luciana let out a sigh of gigantic proportions as soon as Mrs. Quinn and her son had left the shop. Madame retreated behind her counter, pulled the sample book close, and turned to the design Mrs. Quinn had ordered. And then she turned to the page after it.

Luciana raised a hand to hide a smile. It seemed Madame Fortier had persuaded Mrs. Quinn from the gown her heart had been set on into another gown entirely. The one on the very next page.

Madame looked up and caught the glimmer of humor in the girl’s eyes. “Sometimes it seems my clients don’t know what they really want. In that case, it is my job to tell them.”

Although, that wasn’t quite the truth. Not in this case. During many other appointments over the years, with many other clients, Madame had done exactly that. But with Mrs. Quinn, things had always been different. Madame had a particular image and particular look she had in mind for Mrs. Quinn. She always had. Ever since the beginning. Ever since she had made the woman’s wedding gown. And so it wasn’t so much a case of Madame talking Mrs. Quinn into a particular style or color; it was more a matter of trying to talk Mrs. Quinn into the person Madame thought that she should be. And Mrs. Quinn had always been amenable. Until now.

Madame summoned Luciana once again, late that afternoon, placing several sample books into the girl’s hands. “I need you to deliver these to Mrs. Quinn. She may look at them while you wait, but she is not to keep them.”

Luciana nodded, though she couldn’t imagine what she would do if the woman tried.

“She shouldn’t keep them. If she tries to keep them, then I won’t be able to order her new gowns.”

Luciana nodded.

“You can remind her of that.”

But of course she couldn’t. Luciana didn’t speak English. A fact that Madame had conveniently forgotten if she had ever known it at all.

The shop owner frowned. She wasn’t sure about this. She’d never sent her books to any of her clients before. Without her books, Madame was worse than useless. She was impotent. She was nothing. Her customers made appointments to view them at the shop. That’s how it was done. Before now. But what else could Madame do? Mrs. Quinn had changed the rules.

Madame glanced at the girl before her. A very frightened-looking girl. “I’d send Julietta, but the girl is sometimes too bold for her own good.”

Sometimes?

“I’ve called a car for you. You’ll present Mrs. Quinn with the books, and you’ll wait to bring them back. You must bring them back.”

Luciana was handed into the car by the chauffeur. She cowered on a seat in the back, not quite daring to look out the window for fear of being seen as she was driven from Temple Place around Boston Common and up Beacon Hill. Down not-quite-straight Mt. Vernon Street, lined with its bow-fronted faded brick townhouses. It was here that she started to relax. What could happen to her in a motorcar, after all? And wasn’t it wonderful to be riding in one again?

At tree-lined, iron-fenced Louisburg Square, the plethora of cats that sunned themselves in the dappled shade and the general feeling of serenity reminded her of nothing so much as Europe before the war. Of languid and leisurely summer days spent in the tidy boroughs of Germany and the dignified neighborhoods of Vienna. They made her long for all that she had lost. So it was not with a sense of great awe or meek humility that Luciana descended the car; it was with a familiarity and ease, a sense of coming, if not home, then into her rightful domain.

Which is why, you see, she ought to be forgiven for walking right up to the front door.

The butler, upon understanding what her visit entailed, tried to shoo her around to the back, but Luciana didn’t understand him. She didn’t know what he was saying and her only acquaintance with a service entrance had been at Madame Fortier’s. In front of that house in Louisburg Square, she had quite forgotten, for a moment, whom she had become.

Eventually, Mrs. Quinn, bothered by the commotion at the front door, came out of her sitting room and into the hallway. Upon seeing her, Luciana stepped forward and offered up the sample books as the doorman made his mistress aware of the girl’s breach in etiquette. Soon both the man and the strega were berating her.

Luciana didn’t understand the words, though she understood the intent. She was being scolded. And the daughter of the Count of Roma didn’t take well to scolding. The more voluble Mrs. Quinn became, the more remote, the more patrician Luciana became. Until screeching at the girl became as satisfying as trying to engage her husband’s attention.

Finally, she did something Luciana understood. She pointed toward the door at the far end of the hallway.

Luciana went toward it as she was bid, though she had no idea what to do or where to go once she had reached it. She stopped once, halfway down the hall, and turned back toward the front door, but Mrs. Quinn and the doorman had disappeared.

Narrow doorways set into dark corners of hallways were not within her usual realm of existence. Before having fled to the North End, that is. In her experience, such things had usually been meant for servants. She was rather enjoying the prospect of a brightly lit hallway that smelled of nothing but furniture wax and carbolic. It was a well-proportioned hallway at that. Not marble, like she had been used to, but the wood paneling on the walls and the floorboards at her feet gleamed with quiet dignity. So she decided to enjoy that place of quiet and relative peace. And as she stood there, she made a decision. She decided that she needed to learn English. If for no other reason than to be able to understand people like the strega when they yelled at her.

For then, she would be able to yell back.

In any case, that’s where Billy came upon her. He’d long ago shed the suit he’d worn downtown. Clad now in his white duck outing pants and white canvas oxfords, he was on his way to The Tennis and Racquet Club.

Luciana was standing in front of a picture, head tilted, wondering if, in fact, it was the Canaletto it claimed to be. She had her doubts.

But he didn’t. It was definitely the beautiful girl from Madame Fortier’s shop who now stood in his hallway. “Delighted to see you again!”

12

Luciana jumped at his words.

He put out his hand in welcome. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Forgetting who she was trying to be, she put her hand into his. She expected that Billy would raise it to his lips, so she let it lie in his palm.

Billy, having expected to be given a hand to shake, had no idea what to do with such a treasure. But he was not his father’s son for nothing. Smiling in a way that displayed all of his innate Irish charm, he led her to the bench that sat in the hall. The invitation was unmistakable.

Luciana sat.

And he sat down beside her, elbows on his knees, spinning the racquet that was in his hand.

“I’m Billy, by the way. Quinn. Billy Quinn.”

Luciana smiled.

“And you are . . . ?”

Luciana smiled once more.

“ . . . going to make a game of this? Make me guess?” She was a coy one, wasn’t she? “All right, then. I’m up for the sport.” He stilled the racquet between his hands, turned to face her, head cocked to one side. “You’re not a Florence, are you?” He narrowed his eyes. Florence? He hoped not. He hadn’t much admiration for the Florences he’d met, though he had no doubt she could change that impression.

She said nothing.

“A Louise perhaps?”

Her brow rose.

“No? No.” Definitely not a Louise. “Are you a Marie?”

She shrugged.

“Helen? Hélène?” He said it more to himself than to her. He studied her eyes, those beautiful, shining eyes.

She said nothing.

“Lucy?”

Ah – he was so very close! If only he had known it. But Luciana had an Italian-sounding
c
and she did not recognize her name in his. But she caught the question in his tone and shook her head ever so slightly.

“No?” He lowered his head, raised his brow.

She shook her head once more.

“No. Fine, good. Then are you . . . Carolina?”

Nothing.

“Suzanne?”

A door near the entry swept open and Mrs. Quinn stepped out into the hall. “Smith?” She called for her butler. He materialized quite suddenly from . . . it was difficult to tell exactly where. “Will you have that girl come – ” She paused as she turned toward the back of the hall and saw her son. “Billy?”

He saluted her with his racquet.

“Is that Madame’s girl there?”

“It is.”

“What’s she doing? I told her to go through and wait in the kitchen.” She was used to servants rushing to do her bidding, and to her way of thinking, the shop girl was one of them. So it was irritating that the girl should stay seated when she was being spoken to. “You – girl. Come here. I’m done with you. I’ll have to keep these books for another day. I don’t have time to go through them now.”

Billy stood, and when he did, Luciana did the same. She looked at him inquiringly. He shrugged. Gestured her forward. She walked to where Mrs. Quinn stood and held out her hands for the books.

But Mrs. Quinn would not relinquish them. “Come tomorrow. I’ll be done with them then.” She disappeared back into her sitting room and shut the door.

There was nothing to do about it. The strega had the books, and she wasn’t letting them go. Luciana thought of trying to make an appeal to the butler, but that venerable personage had already vanished, and even if he had been there, she wouldn’t have known the words to say.

Billy opened the door and gestured her through. They both went out into the summer’s bright sun, supremely unsatisfied. Luciana was going back to Madame’s without the books. And Billy still hadn’t learned her name.

Julietta, however, was supremely satisfied with herself as she started home that evening. The embroidery she was working on at the shop was almost done. Though she’d enjoyed the novelty of working with the gold- and silver-wrapped threads, she was looking forward to the next project even more. She had the pleasures of a new pink and white messaline gown to revel in, and there were so very many good things in the coming weeks to look forward to. There was Saint Marciano’s festa, there were Saturday evening dances at the Sons of Avellino Hall. And there was also Angelo Moretti.

“Buon giorno.”

For a moment, as she turned a corner from the glare of Temple Place into the shade of Washington Street, she thought she’d managed to summon the spirit of her beloved. She looked over in the direction of the greeting, expecting – oh. Her hopes died. “I was thinking I could walk home with you.”

It was only Mauro. She smiled. But it was purely reflexive.

She looked him over from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He was carrying his bag. But that didn’t mean much. He always carried his bag. He was a doctor, after all. One of the few during the war who had been allowed to stay and work in the North End. Though that didn’t explain what he was doing downtown. “You want to walk me home?”

He shrugged. Shifted his bag to his other hand. “If you want me to.”

If she wanted him to. She didn’t. Not really. And she refused to think of him as Dr. Vitali. To her he was, and always would be, Mauro. Mauro, her big brother Salvatore’s friend.
Old
Mauro, she might have added. He had to have been at least thirty.

But she smiled. And inclined her head. It wasn’t in her nature to turn down male companionship. “All the way to the North End?”

“Of course. It’s just I was hoping . . . there’s a war concert at Boston Common. If you want to go.” He smiled at her as if he hoped, very much, that was exactly what she would want to do.

“You want to take me to a concert?” This was both better and worse than she had imagined. A concert! A real one. But with him?

Julietta had never been able to attend enough war rallies and parades for her liking. When she did, she would clap and cheer and wave her flag with all the zeal of a newly converted soul. At rallies and parades she felt American in a way she never did in the North End. In the middle of a crowd singing “Over There,” she sang as loudly as the rest of them. Standing in line to buy liberty bonds, she knew that her money was as good as anyone else’s.

“I don’t know, Mauro. I’m sure Mama is expecting me.”

“She is. I mean, rather . . . she’s expecting you to be with me.”

Julietta’s eyes narrowed. “She is, is she?”

“I asked her just this morning where it was that you worked.

And when you would be done.”

“So she told you. And she said that you could ask me. To a concert.”

Mauro nodded.

She was perfectly amenable to enjoying a concert when there was one to be enjoyed. Even if that meant she had to do it with Mauro. But when she got home? Was Mama going to hear about it! She linked her arm through Mauro’s, and they started off down the street.

At Boston Common they dodged roving groups of children and women pushing baby carriages. An almost festive atmosphere prevailed. It was as if by hoping fervently enough, by singing loudly enough, by praying hard enough, Boston knew she could finish what those Huns in Germany had started.

Oh, if only it were true! If only the slaughter could be stopped!

Caught up in that swell of zealous, nearly reckless patriotism, Julietta almost wished she were wearing the new messaline. On further thought, however, she decided that pleasure would have been wasted on Mauro. But he always looked so distinguished that it might have been nice, in the midst of what seemed like the entire city of Boston, to have felt as if she matched him.

He steered her toward a vendor’s cart and bought her an ice cream. Though it was already past six o’clock, the sun was still so blaringly hot that she ended up eating it rather more quickly than was ladylike. And at the end, after he threw away the cup for her, there was still a splotch of it left on her chin for him to blot up with his handkerchief.

“Grazie, Mauro.”

He winked at her.

“Aren’t you going to do that magic trick? The one where you pretend you’ve captured my nose? Like you always did when I was little?”

He slid a sidewise glance toward her. “You aren’t so little anymore, Julietta.”

Nice to know that he’d noticed! Even if he was just Mauro. Such a nice, funny sort of man. In his proper hat and his proper suit, carrying a proper doctor’s case. Mauro was just too proper. He did have very nice teeth, though. Thick and straight and white. That couldn’t be said about everyone’s teeth. And he had a nice deep laugh. She’d always liked hearing it.

Their progress toward the bandstand gradually slowed as they joined the crowd surrounding it. Mauro wanted to stop at the outer edges, but Julietta grabbed his hand and pulled him right into the middle. By slipping around women and dispensing smiles at the men, she tugged him through the throngs, emerging, finally, right in front of the bandstand itself.

“But – ”

“Don’t you want to be able to see?”

He bent close so that he could speak into her ear. “It’s a concert. I only have to be able to hear.”

Nonsense. He didn’t know what was good for him!

The orchestra began tuning their instruments, and soon the first soloist climbed the steps to begin the concert. Fluffy red, white, and blue bows nearly obscured her face, but when she opened her mouth, her voice soared far beyond those ribbons. That soloist was followed by another and another. Ten soloists performed that night. And after, a treat: an exhibition of ballroom dancing.

Julietta watched, enraptured. Oh, how she would have loved to have been whisked about on a dance floor by someone strong and lithe like Angelo! To be twirled and promenaded. Dipped and spun. All too soon the spectacle ended and the last notes of the orchestra drifted away into the evening’s golden light.

She sighed.

Mauro offered her his arm. “Did you enjoy it?”

“So much!” She stood up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. A cheek that smelled of soap and antiseptic and had more stubble than she remembered. She twirled, inspired by the music and intricate dance steps. “Wouldn’t it be lovely to go to a ball?”

He considered her question with scientific detachment. “I’ve never been to a ball.”

She stopped mid-twirl. “An important doctor like you?

Never?”

He shook his head. “What do you think people do there?”

Had he gone mad? “They dance.”

“I’ve been to dances.”

She’d never seen him at any. Not at the Sons of Avellino Hall.

Of course, she usually snuck out the back door with an escort.

Early on.

“Do you like dances, Julietta?”

She shrugged. She liked dancing. And she certainly liked what went on in the alley out back.

“Would you go to a dance with me?”

“With you?”

He smiled.

“To a dance?”

“This Saturday at the Hall?” There it was again, that little boy smile. As if he hoped very much that what he wished for was finally about to come true.

She did a swift calculation, factoring in all the dances that she would miss because she’d have to save them all for him. Which wasn’t really that many, considering she didn’t usually stay at the dances for very long. But then she had to figure in all the extra time she would have to stay in the Sons of Avellino Hall because it wasn’t as if Mauro was going to take her out back to the alley. And it wasn’t as if she wanted him to.

She snuck a glance at his face . . . at his lips, if you want to put a fine point to it.

No. She didn’t want him to, although it might be interesting if he did. Nothing very bad was bound to happen if she accepted Mauro’s invitation, and intuition told her that something very good might come from it in the end. In the form of some of the boys not taking her as much for granted anymore.

It wouldn’t be like going with Angelo Moretti, but she didn’t even know where Angelo lived. And besides, he had never asked her to go anywhere, or do anything with him, at all.

“I’ll go with you.”

A smile lit his face, making it appear, for a moment, at least ten years younger. Poor Mauro. He had lost his heart to a girl too young and wild to appreciate that sacred trust.