Glittering Promises (28 page)

Wasn’t it?

CHAPTER 25

~Cora~

I awakened before the sun the next morning, my first thought being Will. I wondered if he was still sleeping. If his waking thoughts would be of me—or of her. I groaned and tried to turn over and go back to sleep, but to no avail. Minutes later, as the sun rose, adding a delicate pink to the purple morning sky, I sat up, slid off the tall bed to the cold tile floor, and padded over to my dressing table.

I picked up my black crepe and then decided I couldn’t take another day in it. Instead, I pulled on a rose-colored skirt and jacket with a lace dickey beneath, then wound my hair into a quick bun. If I hurried, perhaps I’d be able to eat alone in the breakfast room before the others arrived. My room, while lovely, felt stifling this morning. Perhaps, after a quick bite and a cup of coffee, I’d be able to awaken Viv or Lil and convince them to walk with me. Antonio was often up at this hour, so he wouldn’t mind keeping watch over us. It sounded appealing to me, walking the streets as Rome stirred, seeing her people begin their daytime routine. A chance at a completely different sort of day than yesterday.

As I rounded the corner, a sleepy-eyed footman straightened with a start. He surprised me too—there hadn’t been a footman on duty yesterday. Given our late hours, our party was rarely up and dressed before nine, and my 6:00 a.m. arrival probably stunned the poor fellow. He forced a smile and pulled out a chair for me, helping me slide closer to the table before unfolding a cloth napkin and handing it to me. I spread it across my lap.

“Coffee, Miss? Tea?” he said in a thick Italian accent.

“Coffee, please,” I said. He went to a side table and lifted a sterling pot, then came back and poured it for me. It was so hot, steam rose from the cup immediately. Perhaps it had just been brewed.

“Pastry?”

“Please,” I said, and he immediately slipped a croissant onto my small plate, using silver tongs.

“Melon?”

“No, thank you. This will be quite enough.”

“As you wish,” he said, moving to the corner again and standing straight, with his hands at his side. I gave him a nervous glance. I hated that the servants were required to do such things—as if they were toy soldiers rather than living, breathing people who might be much more comfortable sitting or being in another room altogether. But I’d tried my hand at such suggestions—and usually neither my family nor the servants favored my ideas for change, looking at me as if I had every odd thought possible in my brain. It was as if they drew comfort from their routine, their understood roles and tasks and environments.

I sipped at my hot coffee, mouthing the bitter brew, willing it to fully awaken me, prepare me for the day. I split open my pastry, admiring the flaky layers, even as I slid a bite into my mouth, letting it melt. Tall French doors lined the far wall on the other side of the breakfast table, and I watched as the morning sun moved across the highest windows in a palazzo across a swath of greenery. The sky was now a rosy peach, and again I longed to go out and see it without the barrier of a window. To stretch my legs, give my mind space, my heart room.

I was eating the remainder of my croissant when Mr. Morgan arrived. I felt him pause at the doorway behind me, and instantly, without turning, I knew who had come.

“Good morning, Cora,” he said, entering the room.

“Mr. Morgan,” I returned.

“You’ve risen early.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I see.” He went to the end of the table, to my direct right, and sat down. The footman immediately poured him coffee, unasked. Mr. Morgan asked for a soft-boiled egg and reached for the morning paper, which was sitting at the corner, neatly folded.
La Repubblica.
I sucked in a quick breath. While I knew Mr. Morgan spoke little Italian, I didn’t doubt he’d page through the whole thing. Everywhere we’d been, he and my father had read every paper they could put their hands on, just as Andrew had with the French paper yesterday.

But not every paper had an editor who had hosted the party we’d attended last night. A party also attended by almost every reporter in Italy and beyond.

Nervously, I sipped my coffee, taking too big a gulp as he unfolded the paper and snapped it flat, reading the front page. On the back, from top to bottom, were several pictures surrounded by three columns of copy. One was of Pierre, shaking hands and posing with some Italian businessman. Another was of me and Vivian pausing before an archway in the Forum.

I struggled to swallow the hot brew as he lowered the paper and frowned at me. “Are you quite all right?”

“Fine,” I choked out, nodding hurriedly.

I couldn’t stand it. “Mr. Morgan,” I said before I’d even thought it through. “Would you fancy a morning walk?” I nodded toward the windows, the morning sun illuminating the day with a golden glow.

“Right now?” he said, frowning.

“If you’d rather not…”

“No! No, I’d be delighted to take a morning constitutional. Perhaps a turn around the park below?”

“Yes,” I said hurriedly, nodding. “I’d like that.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I like to see how this city awakes,” I added. “Will says that if you see how a city awakes, and how she closes down for the night, you get a good sense of her personality.”
Will
… Never had he felt more distant, even while he was likely in this very building.

He stared at me a moment. “Indeed.” He folded the paper again, never reaching the end, and dug into his soft-boiled egg. He cracked it open, then scooped into its soft center, rapidly reaching the bottom. The newspaper sat to one side of him, forgotten. I dared to take a breath as he swallowed his last bite. Would he pick it up again? He wiped his mouth with his cloth napkin and then finished his cup of coffee. “Well, shall we be about it then?” He didn’t wait for an answer but merely shoved back his chair, rose, and came to assist me with my chair.

I hurriedly finished my coffee, wiped my mouth, and then rose, tentatively taking his arm. I’d wanted to distract him, as well as get out into the Roman morning. But now that I’d succeeded at both, I wondered what we’d talk about. In all our days together, never had we been alone for any length of time. He was my father’s closest friend, but he was so terribly quiet, I doubted I’d heard him speak more than three sentences at a time.

He motioned to the footman and then waited for him to bend close to him, wishing to speak in private. After a word, he offered me his arm and led me outward. By the time we reached the front door, his directions had apparently reached a detective, because we were joined by the tall, broad-shouldered Pascal, who opened the door for us, then followed us by a few paces.

“Which way, my dear?” Mr. Morgan asked, gesturing down the thoroughfare beside the palazzo.

I nodded to the left, knowing there were several shops and coffee bars along the way. We walked half a block in silence, finding our pace together. We passed a coffee bar where several locals stood at the front, swallowing tiny cups of espresso, talking with their friends and neighbors. “Will would want us to step in there,” I said. “Experience Roman dawn as the Romans do.”

Mr. Morgan smiled, even as a shadow of sorrow covered his face. He nodded. “The McCabes are good guides. I rather miss old Stuart, don’t you?”

“I do. But I think Will has done a fine job, assuming his responsibilities.”
Will…

“Indeed.” He walked a few paces. “I thought Stuart and Wallace were both strong enough in constitution to last another good decade.” He eyed me. “It must’ve been a terrible blow, losing Wallace when you were just getting to know him.”

“In more ways than you could know,” I said tiredly. “We were at odds…constantly at odds. And I don’t think either of us wanted that.”

He shook his head, agreeing with me.

“And now there’s no way to fix it,” I said.

We passed a florist just opening her shutters and depositing her pots of fresh flowers, as if they were organically spreading out onto the street. She bent and lifted a broken bloom from the ground, offering it to me with a toothless smile, and I accepted it with a grin, twirling the white daisy in my gloved hand, admiring the flash of gold at its center as we walked on. We passed a grocer setting out a table with hard cheeses in several varieties, two of them in huge wheels, the rest in chunks as big as my head. Then we passed a produce market with baskets of zucchini, onions, and apples.

When we reached the corner, there was another coffee bar, and Mr. Morgan asked, lifting one silvering brow, “When in Rome?”

I blinked in surprise and then nodded. We entered just as a young couple left, opening a space at the small counter. “Espresso,” Mr. Morgan said. “
Due
.” He lifted two fingers.

“
Due espresso arrivano subito
,” said the young man behind the counter, winking at me when Mr. Morgan fished in his pockets for his wallet.

I smiled and looked away.

The coffee merchant set two small cups on the counter, without even a saucer, smiling again at me.

“Watch yourself,” Mr. Morgan growled in warning, setting several lira on the counter. His tone conveyed what his lack of Italian could not.

The young man, clearly stunned at the reprimand, took a step back, then turned toward others who laughed at him and called to him from deeper within, eyeing me and Mr. Morgan.

I picked up my tiny white porcelain cup, hiding a smile. The protective, fatherly stance he was taking made me feel cared for.

“I know just enough to keep the wolves at bay, my dear,” he said, giving me a wise smile. “A wise business practice, if I may say so.” He lifted his cup. “
Salute
.”

“
Salute
,” I said, gearing up for what was to come. I took a tentative sip and nearly gagged on the hot, intense brew. It was incredibly strong, as thick and dark as oil, and tasting the same as it slid down my throat.

Mr. Morgan’s eyes grew wide, and he covered his lips with a gloved hand, staring at me in shock.

“Perhaps that’s enough,” I said, willing my tongue to unfold from its pucker, “of what the Romans do?”

He nodded and smiled, then took my arm and ushered me out. I was still smiling several steps later, and I thought it at once both odd and wondrous to be sharing such a moment with Mr. Morgan, in Rome of all places. There was a sense of shared adventure, camaraderie, that drew me and gave me hope that we might succeed, pursuing our shared enterprise together. And it was keeping me from having to deal with Will and the drama of last night. At least for a time…

It’d be better for him to hear it from me than to discover it on his own, I recognized. I struggled with what to say.

We turned the corner and moved down the block, back to the wide, green park that lined the back gates of the palazzos and buildings we’d passed. Once there, surrounded by green, the morning sky now bright, I took a deep breath and thought about what I wanted to say to Mr. Morgan. And what I didn’t.

Grace
, it came to me.
Trust. Honor.

Those were the things that I had missed in my relationship with Wallace Kensington, things that my heavenly Father offered to me in spades. Things we had never worked out. Had I wanted him to give me more than what was humanly possible?

We strolled to the very center of the garden and then walked back toward our palazzo via the central avenue. Already the morning spoke of heat and dry. Densely planted azalea bushes flowered in a riot of purple and magenta near clumps of exotic-looking grasses taller than I could reach. Artfully placed benches were surrounded by specimens of an Italian horticulturist’s dreams. Above us was Roman pine after Roman pine, each like a massive umbrella spreading its cover forty feet above us despite the lack of rain.

“So I gather you faced some difficulty last night,” Mr. Morgan said at last.

I looked at him in surprise, wondering how he knew. He laughed softly under his breath, paused, and looked up at the trees, then straight to me. “After all this time, Cora, do you not know that fathers see everything?”

I stared at him. Then, “No, not really.”

He gestured to the nearest bench, and I reluctantly sat down. He sat too, carefully, as if his knees or hips bothered him. “I believe that you were so intent in standing against Wallace,” he said wearily, “that you might have missed that he was
for
you.”

“For me?” I repeated. I shook my head. “It seemed as if he was standing against me at every turn.”

“No, no,” Mr. Morgan said softly, looking up again to the trees. He lifted a gloved hand. “Well,
yes
, I can see how you’d think that. But never, never had I seen him consider anyone as he did you.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.” He lifted a gray brow again. “I know that he stood between you and Will, favoring Pierre, but it was only because he could see what was coming. How your world would so radically change, for good, not just for a season. And he truly thought Pierre would be a better partner for you.”

“I know,” I said. And in that moment, I did. Father had done his best to control me, dictate my future, but at the heart of his actions, deep down, I had glimpsed a father’s heart, his concern.

“And the manner in which he considered your suggestions at the mines… Well, that was unprecedented. It’s one thing for a man to accept a woman’s thoughts, but Wallace? Until you came along, he only listened to two others. Me. And the Lord God Almighty.” He still looked surprised over this, but then he shrugged. “He could see you had a smart head on those slim shoulders. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

I was silent a moment, absorbing this. “You said he listened to the Lord.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding.

“He wrote to me of his faith, but I didn’t ever hear him talk about it.”

“Well, like most gentlemen who don’t wear a clerical collar, he didn’t wish his faith to be overbearing.”

Overbearing? From the outside, any faith the man had seemed a cursory thing, rather than something that was at the core of who he was. But Mr. Morgan was right. It wasn’t fashionable to wear one’s faith on one’s sleeve. Not in their circles.