Glittering Promises (29 page)

“He believed it was the godly thing to do, going to fetch you in Dunnigan. To try to make right what he had done wrong.”

Done wrong.
The words stung. And yet I knew what the man meant. “He gave me little choice in that fetching. Me
or
my folks.”

Mr. Morgan turned partially my way. “And if he hadn’t? What would have become of you and yours, Cora? Was it not the hand of Providence that he came to you after Alan suffered his first spell?”

“Are you equating Wallace with God?” I asked wryly.

Mr. Morgan huffed a quiet laugh. “The Lord knows that Wallace did try, on occasion, to give Him a run for his money.”

I sighed, and we both sat in silence for a bit, lost in our own thoughts.

“Do you wish to tell me what transpired last night?” he asked. When I glanced at him in surprise, he gave me a small smile. “Young people do not rise at this hour unless they are suffering the ill effects of drink or a troubled mind.”

“I
was
thinking about last night,” I admitted, crossing my ankles. Speaking of Andrew and Vivian hardly seemed appropriate. But there were other things on my mind too. “Will and I had…a falling out. And Pierre de Richelieu has arrived.”

His brown eyes seemed to pierce mine, and I looked away. “I see.” I could sense neither victory nor empathy in his tone, just a simple acknowledgment.

“I thought such news would make you happy.”

“Happy?” He shook his head a little. “I have no desire to see you hurt, Cora. Nor did your father.”

His kind tone left me feeling raw, vulnerable. Why couldn’t my father and I have gotten to this sort of conversation before he died? I was suddenly teary again, and I glanced warily about the park. I wasn’t ready to break down here, not where some reporter might be lurking, nor with Mr. Morgan. We weren’t close enough for such intimacies. “Shall we?” I asked, throat tight, my eyes blinking rapidly.

He rose and offered me his arm. We walked side by side for a time in silence. “Cora, it will ease in time, your pain.”

I stiffened but kept on walking. “What do you mean?”

“With your father. I understand that things between you weren’t ever quite…resolved. But then, don’t you see that some things in life never are? Try as we might to place everything in its proper box, we must accept some things as they are and move on.”

CHAPTER 26

~William~

When Mr. Morgan and Pascal walked in with Cora, Will looked up at them in surprise. He’d thought they were all still asleep. He pulled out his watch from Cora and looked at the time. “You all are up early,” he said. He hated the nervous tinge in his voice and had to make his eyes settle on Cora.

She looked away.

“We went for a lovely morning walk,” Mr. Morgan said. “Nothing like a stretch of the legs and a nice conversation to begin the day right,” he said, smiling at Cora.

She gave him a tense smile and then nodded, as if excusing herself. “Thank you, Mr. Morgan.” She turned to leave.

“We’re gathering at eleven to go to the Coliseum,” Will called.

“I won’t be able to go with you,” she said, glancing his way. “Regrettably, I have other things to attend to. It looks like a lovely day. Enjoy it.”

She disappeared around the corner, and Will wiped his mouth with a napkin and hurried after her. He caught up with her just before she reached her room. The hallway was empty.

“Cora.”

She paused at her door and bent her head, as if the sound of her name on his tongue hurt her.

He drew closer. “Cora,” he said miserably. “We need to talk.”

“Do we?” she asked, looking up at him with such pain in her eyes that it made him want to weep.

“It was only a dance,” he said quietly. “One dance.”

“Was it?”

They shared a long look. Defense and anger shot through him. “I would have been dancing with you,” he said stiffly. “If you had not been…entertaining Pierre.”

She took a deep breath, as if keeping herself from saying something she’d regret. “I was merely saying hello. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“No?” he said, his anger now quickening his pulse. He put a hand on her doorjamb and leaned closer. “Lexington showed me something of interest too. A drawing. Of you and Pierre. In a garden. In a rather…intimate scene. Any idea where he got that?”

She looked up at him in surprise. “What?”

“A drawing. Of you and Pierre,” he repeated, so close now that he could see the tiny beads of sweat on her forehead and upper lip, making him fear the worst. “Is it a scene of you two from somewhere here in Rome? Did you have an artist sketch it to remember some romantic moment?”

“Where…where did he get that?” Her expression turned from confusion to anger.

“So you admit it. It’s yours?”

Cora shook her head. “It was mine, once. A gift from Pierre earlier in the summer. But Will, he sketched me, on a bench alone, and added himself later. It was what he wanted to be. Not what truly was.”

“And yet you kept it.”

She stared at him, aghast, her wide blue eyes searching his. “Will,” she said, turning fully toward him. “What is happening to us?” She reached out and took his hand. “How have we become lost in…these jealousies?”

He stared back at her, his emotions warring within him. Part of him wanted to fight against his fears, his twisted visions of Cora with Pierre. Part of him wanted to press further, make her admit it. Admit that she still had feelings for Pierre. That she was going to leave him. Leave him as his parents had left him. Show him that risking his heart only would leave him vulnerable to the worst kind of hurt…

She lifted her small hand and touched his cheek. “
Will
,” she said again. “Please. Dig deep. Is this us? Is this what God wants for us? Or have we each given in to the worst possible distraction? Away from love? Away from light?”

He gazed back into her blue eyes, searching, searching, searching. And found his anchor point. She loved him. Loved him. And he was about to lose her, because he did as she feared…he gave in to distraction. Lies. “Oh, Cora,” he moaned, leaning his forehead against hers. “But what about Pierre? Did you keep it because you still wondered yourself if you had made the right choice?”

“I don’t know why I kept it,” she said, shaking her head a little against his. She looked back into his eyes. “But Will, I haven’t been with Pierre. I love you. I’m with you. Can you believe that? Or not?”

He took a breath, then took her hands in his. “I believe you,” he said, throwing his trust outward as if he were tossing it over a cliff, hoping it would drift down into safety and not get crushed against the rocks below. “I believe you,” he repeated more strongly. He bit his lip. Then, “And I need you to believe me. Eleonora is a friend. A friend I find attractive. But nowhere near the attraction I have with you. Can you trust that?”

She stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then she nodded. “I trust you, William McCabe. Now
trust me
.”

~Cora~

I closed the door, feeling bruised from my discussion with Will, but slightly relieved, too. As soon as my hand left the knob, I hurried over to my chest holding the books and rifled through them for the one that had held Pierre’s drawing. The one he’d sketched for me in the garden, positioning us as if we were lovers, sharing secrets. The one that Lil had found.

It was gone.

Madly, I searched through the other books, until they lay in a pile at my feet, then through the bottoms of each trunk, thinking it might have fallen out. But it was nowhere to be found. Surely, that was the drawing Will referenced. How had Lexington gotten hold of it? Only Lil knew it was here, right?

I opened my door and looked down the hall. It was empty again, and I strode two doors down to the room Lil and Nell shared, and knocked. Lillian answered it, her head covered in rag curls. “Cora? What time is it?”

“Time to get up,” I said, pushing my way in. I closed the door behind me and saw that Nell was still asleep in the big four-poster bed. “Lil, do you remember the drawing that Pierre made of us? The one you asked me about?”

She frowned and nodded, her rag-tied curls bouncing.

“Did you take it?”

Her frown deepened, and then she slowly shook her head. “No. Why would I do that?”

I bit my lip, considering her, but the girl appeared as utterly confounded as I.

But if she hadn’t taken it and given it to a reporter, then who had?

“Are you going to the Coliseum with us?” Nell asked.

“Oh do, please,” Lil said.

“I wasn’t going to…but now I just might,” I said. Someone in the house had betrayed me. Perhaps I could figure out who.

~William~

Andrew arrived as they were just assembling to depart. Will felt an urgency now. If they hurried, they might just escape the palazzo before the reporters came to lie in wait for them.

But Andrew insisted they pause for him. He brushed past, smelling of body odor and wine. “Please, Vivian,” he said to her, taking hold of her hand. “Just give me today. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

She sighed and looked to the rest of them. They all seemed to sigh with her and stand back, waiting for the man to go get changed and join them. If Vivian didn’t break up with Andrew—once and for all—soon, Will decided he’d do it for her. He glanced at Cora.

She still refused to meet his gaze, fussing first with her gloves, then her pocketbook. Ill at ease in his presence. Making some excuse that sent her upstairs for a time.

Perhaps she was embarrassed for making such a fuss over him and Eleonora last night. Or worse, she was still angry at him. On his suggestion, the women wore colors, rather than their mourning black, to make them less conspicuous and perhaps to allow them to avoid the wandering reporters. While it was a superficial change, it made Will feel as if the group was somewhere near to what it once was, even if every relationship between them all had changed, deepened, divided.

At last, Cora and Andrew came back down the stairs, an incongruent pair, and everyone hurried into the waiting motorcars, the girls stubbornly sticking together, a bevy of massive hats that had to make it difficult to sit in one car.

They got out beside the Coliseum, and Will breathed a sigh of relief as the tension in the air melted into wonder. It was the same for everyone, it seemed, spying the structure, walking up to it. Pockmarks littered the stones of the front of the Coliseum, where metal pieces had been scavenged over the centuries. Roman officials had stopped masons from stealing the stones, at least, and had done a tolerable job at securing what remained so tourists could enjoy the monumental structure. If they hadn’t, would there be anything left today? Uncle Stuart had often pondered that.

Will led them inside, lecturing them on the various ways the ancient Romans had utilized the structure. They walked out atop a reconstructed stage on one end and peered over the edge, down to the Hypogeum. “For five centuries, no one saw that floor exposed,” Will said, gesturing to the complex series of tunnels and rooms. “It was there that the gladiators, as well as all the animals, waited to emerge on the Coliseum’s floor, to fight until the death.”

The younger girls twittered. “Oh, Will,” said Nell, “can we go down there?”

“I wouldn’t be much of a guide if I didn’t take you to both the greatest depths and the greatest heights of this structure, would I?” He smiled and dared to look at Cora, but she was looking away, as if he’d said nothing at all. He hesitated, again feeling a twinge of separation from her. “This way,” he said, leading them to a small circular stairwell that led them downward.

In minutes, they stood below and walked along the walls as Will pointed out slices in the rock that indicated where capstans once were placed. “Four men would man each, and at the appointed time, they would turn it and raise a lion or bear to the arena floor.”

“In a way, it was theater at its finest,” Hugh said.

“A theater in which men were chained, awaiting their deaths?” Felix asked, running a hand down a stone wall.

“Indeed,” Will said. “They were called the
damnati
—prisoners of war, criminals, for the most part.” He paused where they could look up and see the Coliseum’s upper stories rising high above them. “In later years, the Coliseum housed cobblers and blacksmiths. In the twelfth century, even a group of warlords. Pilgrim books incorrectly called the arena a temple to the sun, which attracted necromancers who came to summon demons.”

“Boo!” Hugh said, tickling Nell. She screamed. Will widened his eyes at the piercing sound and waited for the echoes of it to fade as Nell turned to hit her brother.

“You stop that, Hugh,” Nell said, “or I’ll tell Father.”

“Ooh, even
more
frightening,” he said with a pretend shiver.

“Did they truly flood the entire floor?” Cora asked him, daring to look his way. “I’ve heard they flooded it for naval drama.”

“They did. They removed all the wooden supports and diverted a nearby aqueduct to bring in enough water to flood the base of the arena to a depth of three to five feet. That ended after the first century, when all wooden supports were replaced with masonry.”

The group was spreading out, dispersing as they explored. “Not too far,” Will called. “Not much of the Hypogeum has been fully excavated and restored.” He gestured to the guards to keep an eye after their charges.

“Is it true that they even brought in elephants and rhinoceroses?” Lillian asked, accepting his proffered arm as she stepped over a hole. She looked up at the walls as if they might turn into a menagerie intent on gobbling her up.

“That and more,” Will said. “The Romans liked to bring in such spectacles because they thought it was symbolic of how they’d conquered far-off, wild lands—even nature herself, when you consider their aqueducts and roads.” He peered around the hall, aware that the group had separated, ignoring his entreaty to stay close. He couldn’t blame them, really. The place was fascinating. But he frowned when he saw that a number of them were out of sight.

Will was about to give a whistle—trying to alert Antonio—when he heard the worst sound possible.