Glittering Promises (26 page)

“I agree,” Andrew said, still behind his paper.

Felix shot me a wry grin at the improbability of Andrew agreeing with anything I would say. I bit into my croissant.

“I’m not saying we stop our touring,” Felix said. “During the day. But at night… At night, there is yet another side of Roma for us to get to know.”

I shifted through the envelopes a footman handed to me and spotted a rich cream-colored envelope. “It appears we’ve received an invitation,” I said, handing it to Felix.

“Excellent,” he said, using his table knife to slice it open.

“And?” Hugh said, waiting for Felix to read it to him.

“Are you two men,” Andrew said in disgust, folding his paper and rising, “or silly girls, waiting for the next invitation to the dance?”

Felix and Hugh shared a look.

“Um…yes,” Felix said, with a straight face.

Andrew rolled his eyes and exited the room without a further word.

Felix tossed the card to Hugh. “Francesco Botticelli,” he said, “the owner of
La Repubblica
.”

“Oh, yes,” Hugh said in satisfaction. “It will be a most excellent party. Just the thing to shake us out of our grim doldrums.”

“Don’t you think it’s too soon?” I asked. “After Father’s death? Is it even appropriate?”

“No one follows the old rules,” Felix said. “And it’s time this family had a little fun.”

I lifted the newspaper that Andrew had left behind. It was a French paper, dated three days prior, one of ten different papers on the table. I hadn’t realized that Andrew spoke French, and then I wondered if he’d simply been paging through, trying to avoid us. I found myself doing the same, after so long on our journey—scanning the foreign press in an effort to gather some word of home or the world that I’d understand. I paged through the section and was folding it to set aside, when I paused and backed up a page.

There was a picture of Pierre de Richelieu in front of the Coliseum.

He was already here. But why had he not made contact? Was he waiting for me to reach out to him? Or just for the right moment to appear?

“Cora?” Will asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to casually fold the paper and set it aside.

But he was watching me so carefully that he guessed I was trying to hide something. Slowly, he reached for the paper and quickly found what I had.

“So,” Will said, setting down the paper, “he’s here.”

Felix and Hugh exchanged a look, rose, and excused themselves, clearly sensing the tension between us. We were alone in the breakfast room at last.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Hasn’t it?” he asked, squinting at me. “Then why hide the picture?”

“I…Will, I knew this would be awkward. I was simply surprised.”

He shoved back from the table, rose, and walked to the window, hands on hips. After a long moment, he looked at me over his shoulder. “Have you seen him?”

I blinked. “Seen…
Pierre
?”

“Yes,” he said, turning to face me. “Have you seen him?”

“No.” I shook my head. “
You’ve
been with me every day since we arrived. Our days have been full. And why would I want to see him? In secret?”

“I don’t know, Cora. Would there be a reason? Is there a reason he’s here, other than that he doubts our love?”

I felt the heated flush of anger. “If he doubts it, then he must be sensing
your
doubt,” I said, rising. “Not mine.”

“So I won’t find a paper with your picture in it, an article by Jefferson or Lexington detailing your covert romance in Rome.”

I stared at him in mute fury. Then I turned to leave. I was too angry. I’d say something I regretted just as certainly as he’d just said something he’d regret. Or, at least, he should regret.

“Wait, Cora,” he called, sounding sick and frustrated.

But I ignored him. Because for the first time in a long time, I wanted a good distance between us.

~Cora~

After an afternoon touring the behemoth St. Peter’s basilica and an hour standing beneath the glorious Sistine Chapel dome, I was glad to return to our quarters. I had hoped that some makeup might disguise how exhausted I felt, but my black evening dress made me look all the more drawn. My stomach and nagging sense of weakness was better, but not entirely gone. And every time I thought of Will and our argument, I felt worse.

“As fun as this is,” I said to Vivian, who was sitting across from me, next to Andrew, as we traveled to the party, “I confess I’m beginning to dream of our staterooms aboard the
Olympic
and a long, quiet voyage home.”

“I can’t stop thinking about home,” Lillian said. She swallowed hard. “I really don’t think I can stop thinking about Father until we get him buried, back home.”

I nodded and looked outside the motorcar. Gas lamps cast a warm golden glow on ancient buildings deep in shadow. Rome felt more like a stage to me, I decided, than a city. And I the actress with all sorts of ill-fitting roles. The newest socialite. The grief-stricken daughter. The suffragette. The woman in love with the wrong man. The gowns, the parties all were becoming more familiar to me, not nearly as frightening as when I began the tour, but they still didn’t feel like the right place for me. Who I really was. These parties were all so much about being seen, about making a statement, desperate stabs at creating some idle identity. To me, it all felt desperately hollow. What was the point? Did we all not have so much more to occupy our minds and hearts?

Lillian was crying again, quietly sniffling, and digging for her compact to powder her face repeatedly. All of it combined made me want to call for the driver to pull over so I could run. But my days of running were over. Like it or not, I was tied to this family. And I would not put them through any further grief.

CHAPTER 23

~William~

The party was extraordinarily lovely, under wide Roman pines spreading their umbrellas of branches above the party attendees and littering the grass beneath their feet with needles and cones. The night was sultry, warm and thick with the scent of pines and sage, and the wine and champagne were plentiful.

But it all felt so wrong. Not simply because he and Cora had quarreled. Because it was all too soon after Wallace’s death. How had he allowed Hugh and Felix to convince them to come? Even those two seemed false in their frivolity, forced, as if determined to make it work.

Will leaned against a marble balustrade, drinking, alternately agitated and feeling the dark surrounding him, blanketing him, surrounding him, entering him. Cora had immediately been pulled into one circle and then another, everyone eager to meet the new American heiress who had captured so many headlines. He’d seen her look for him once or twice, but each time, someone new engaged her in conversation and he was apparently forgotten.

Terrible thoughts entered his mind.

She was slipping away… Her involvement with her family and their enterprise would not leave him any room… She thought them more important than she thought of him—she always had… She never was committed to him—a part of her still fancied Pierre de Richelieu.

“I never thought of you as a tortured soul before tonight,” Eleonora said, suddenly beside him. Her scent wafted past him, over him, like a delicate net.

“Why, Eleonora!” he said with surprise, turning toward her and giving her a kiss on each cheek. “I’m so glad to see a friend. What brought you to Roma?”

“Francesco’s party,” she said, lifting a goblet. “Since I supplied the wine, he felt obligated to invite me.”

“Nonsense,” Will said, smiling down at her. “You clearly belong here. And now I know why the wine is so good.” He lifted his goblet and gave her a quick glance as she turned away to survey the party. She wore a gown of cream, which made her skin seem exotic, olive and lustrous. Her hair was pinned up in a sophisticated knot that allowed some tendrils to dance against her neck.

She smiled back at him, the dimple in her cheek deepening. She looped her arm through his, turning him to look upon the city instead of at her, as a true friend would. “Francesco has one of the finest views of the city. If you had to leave Villa Masoni, at least you’re seeing vistas such as this.”

They stood side by side, staring outward. “I guess there are perks to being a newspaper magnate,” Will said.

“I suppose you are right. Perhaps I ought to forego my vast investments in the vineyard and try my hand at newspapering,” she said.

“I think you could do anything,” he said, looking down at her. He meant it. He’d watched her with her workers. Her neighbors. Her friends. And in every interaction, he so admired what he saw. “How is it, Eleonora,” he said gently, feeling the heady buzz of the wine on an empty stomach, “that no man has yet claimed your heart?”

She gave him another shy smile and sighed. “There are not many in Italy who care to be with a widow who keeps her own counsel. Her own business, enterprise.”

“Then they have missed a treasure.” Will swallowed hard, knowing he’d said too much. What was he doing, speaking in such a way to anyone but Cora? And yet, how could he stay silent? Eleonora was beautiful. Passionate. Compassionate. Why were the fools not leaping at the chance to be with her?

He glanced behind them, over at the dance floor. “Have you danced tonight, Eleonora?”

“No, no,” she said lightly, as if it didn’t matter.

He frowned. “Would you care to dance with me?”

She laughed under her breath, and her white teeth flashed. “If you insist, Mr. McCabe.”

He smiled and pulled her toward the dance floor—a wide stone patio surrounded by the soft brush of lavender and crisscrossed above with strings of lightbulbs. It reminded him of something else… It came to him, then. The dance floor in England, the first time he’d danced with Cora. His eyes searched for her and found her on a patio slightly elevated above the one where people were dancing. She hadn’t spotted him yet with Eleonora. She was engrossed in conversation with…

Pierre de Richelieu.

Will’s fists clenched, and he took a step forward, unable to believe his eyes. Cora was smiling, listening as Pierre said something to her and then to the reporter beside her. Lexington. The man had a notebook out and was furiously scribbling down notes as Pierre gestured in the air and then casually let his hand rest between Cora’s shoulder blades.

Woodenly, Will turned from them and back to Eleonora, forcing a smile to his face. There wasn’t any reason why he shouldn’t dance with her, he reasoned. He needed to dance with her, to get his mind off his blind jealousy. But as the orchestra finished a fox trot and turned to a slow, elegant waltz, he paused and frowned, feeling a jolt of warning.

He ignored it. He couldn’t leave Eleonora stranded now. It would be rude. Besides, a part of him hoped Cora would see them together. Feel the pain he’d just experienced himself.

He bowed to Eleonora and lifted his hand, casting aside his doubt.

She smiled and gave him a small curtsy, and then she was in his arms. She felt different from Cora, more stout across the shoulders, the hint of a greater curve at the hip beneath his hand, but about the same height. It pained him, feeling the longing within Eleonora, her need for love, companionship. Surely there was some good fellow here in Rome, even at this very party, who would make a great husband for her…

~Cora~

I managed to excuse myself from Pierre and our host, madly seeking Will out, knowing he’d misconstrue things if he saw us together. I looked up and saw the outline of the Roman pines against a starry sky and, down below, dancers flowing across the floor. In the distance, the lights of Rome cast a warm glow across the city, illuminating points like Saint Peter’s and the Coliseum.

“Heavens, it’s beautiful,” I said to Hugh as I joined him on the stairs.

“Indeed. But no one will have eyes for the city with you in view.”

I smiled at his idle flirtation. There was none of the predatory tone to his voice that had once made me leery of him. Only genuine admiration. “Thank you, Hugh.”

He gave me a wry smile. “I do not lie. You are the prettiest woman here.” He paused, waiting for me to turn to him. “Let me be the first to escort you to the dance floor?” He pushed his hair away from his eyes and over to one side. “Please, Copper Cora. Make me a star this night,” he said. “Your reporters are about. Share some press with a young lad only seeking to meet some eligible heiresses.”

I matched his teasing grin. “I’ll do what I can,” I said, well aware by now that other reporters moved through the crowds, following us. The relative darkness and constant movement on the dance floor would allow me a measure of rest, even under their watch. I knew that in such conditions, taking a photograph was nearly impossible.

Hugh lifted my hand as if I were some grand lady, and I swept down the wide marble stairs that sprawled wider with each step. I knew my new black gown fit perfectly, even if it made me look even paler than I had of late, and a part of me welcomed the admiring glances all about. How different this was from that terrible night at Syon House in England. When all had found out I was the illegitimate daughter of Wallace Kensington and cast me out. And only Will would dance with me.

Here, now, everyone knew exactly who I was and how I’d gotten there, and yet I felt accepted. Welcomed. Adored, even. It was much to take in. I nodded as others acknowledged my presence as though I were some sort of nobility. And oddly, I felt as such, as if I deserved it, as if I’d
worked
for it. There was something wrong in the thought even as I accepted it as truth. It was all so empty. So false.

Hugh and I reached the dance floor and waited as the last notes of the waltz faded.

And that was when I saw them.

Will and Eleonora, smiling at each other.

They looked beautiful, perfect. He in his black and white, somehow far more elegant than I’d seen him earlier, enhanced by Eleonora in his arms. And she in her ivory dress—like some fantastic bridal gown—looking up at him in shy admiration.

~William~