Page 29 of The Wandering Season
We ate pizza and drank Chianti until the wee hours of the morning. And it was better than great. It felt like a high school slumber party again, but with better food. The wine was a nice improvement too. And definitely useful given the heavy topics we ventured toward early in the evening. I had to admit, I wasn’t sorry when the conversation grew lighter as the evening wore on. I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I’d have to make some decisions about how to move forward with the information Avery’s Christmas gift had dumped in my lap, but I wasn’t even sure how to start processing it.
The girls eventually had to give in to their jet lag, and I hoped the wine would help quiet my mind well enough so I’d be able to sleep as well. Steph and Avery deserved more than a zombie travel companion, and given my track record over the past couple of weeks, it was even odds as to whether sleep would come.
I ascended the stairs to my little room, grateful for the fatigue I felt settling into my bones. I was at the point of curling up under the starched white down comforter when the plastered walls of the farmhouse and the modern furniture gave way to rough-hewn furniture and worn curtains and linens.
Again.
My hands trembled as I waited for the scene to come into focus, wondering what new people would come to me. What pain they would be suffering.
Because that was the common denominator between Aoife and Imogène. They had experienced such pain that the only option that seemed tenable was to leave everything behind. They shared a desperation I hoped I would never know for myself, and I couldn’t help but brace for the heartache the echoes might show me.
A woman, perhaps middle-aged, paced the floor, letter in hand. A younger woman, practically the mirror image of the elder, lay on a small sofa, hands over her ears. I had to assume they were mother and daughter given how much they looked alike. They were statuesque like Avery, and similarly had glossy black hair, large intelligent eyes, and flawless olive skin I couldn’t help but envy. Their dresses were crafted of fine fabrics—the mother in a deep crimson, the daughter in a light blue. The waistlines were high—regency style, right out of a Jane Austen movie adaptation, so I hazarded a guess that this was roughly in that era. The 1820s perhaps?
The mother placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “I know, cara. It’s never pleasant when your father comes to visit, but we must make him feel welcome.”
A low moan escaped the young woman’s lips. The news of her father’s arrival wasn’t just unwelcome, it was a source of acute dread.
“Please, Donatella. Your father will only stay a short while. We need more time and must keep him happy until then, or it may all be for nothing. You remember the last time he got into a temper, don’t you?”
Another groan, this one quieter, and somehow more pleading.
“Darling, it’s only for a couple of hours at most. No matter his intentions, his work lures him back to the city, praise be. I know how awful it is for you, but it won’t be long.”
A forceful knock sounded at the front door. The sounds of a maid scurrying to answer, followed by the sound of a man barking indistinct instructions came from the foyer. A diminutive man, given to fat in his middle, barged inside without waiting for a reply. He wore a fine suit of clothes, befitting a wealthy merchant or even a lesser noble, and walked with a confident swagger I could sense he hadn’t earned. Everything about his attire seemed too new, everything about his manner overly varnished. I felt the hairs at the nape of my neck stand on edge, perceiving he was not a kindly sort of man.
The man threw his head back in exasperation at the sight of the young woman, presumably his daughter, on the sofa. He turned to his wife. “Another fit of pique is it?”
She straightened to her full height but took care not to tower over her husband. “She’s been well for weeks here in the solace of the countryside and my family home. The news of your sudden arrival simply gave her a bit of shock. A bit more warning might have been warranted.”
“I sent a messenger an hour ahead. Am I supposed to wait for an invitation chiseled in stone like the commandments to visit my own home? My own wife and child?”
The woman bristled but appeared to swallow back her words that, from the expression on her face, would have been laced with acid. I got the feeling this was an old argument rehashed many times over.
The mother steadied herself. “Of course you are welcome in my home whenever you wish to grace us with your presence, Giacomo. But your messenger was delayed, and we had almost no time to prepare to receive you properly. You must forgive us if your welcome isn’t what you hoped.”
His expression softened by a fraction of a degree. “It’s of no consequence, Carlotta. I’ve come to collect you both to come back to town. It’s high time you both returned. People are beginning to talk. I’ve asked your maid to have the staff gather your essentials. Anything else can be brought later.”
Carlotta retained a calm mien, but her rage fairly glistened beneath the thin veneer of serenity. “You didn’t seek to ask me first? Give us time to prepare?”
The color rose in his cheeks. “I don’t ask you, wife. I give orders. Whatever ideas your family may have put in your head, I am the head of this family, and my wishes are to be obeyed.”
Try though she might, the anger that gripped at Carlotta’s soul with its talons and fangs finally belied its presence in the form of blazing hatred in her eyes. “You would do well to remember what your life was like before my blessed father took a liking to you, before you treat his daughter like a willful servant boy in need of a lashing.”
The unspoken words hung heavy in the air: You would be nothing without me. Tread lightly.
He grunted in frustration. “Dammit woman, she’s the prettiest girl in all of Milan, and we must leverage that before the bloom has gone off the rose. She’s already twenty, for heaven’s sake.”
Carlotta scowled. “Be that as it may, the town isn’t good for her. The noise, the smells, the crowds. It’s overwhelming to her. Not to mention the unrest against the Austrians. If you want her to receive suitors, better to do it here where she’s at ease.”
“The Austrians will quell the rabble-rousers before long.”
Giacomo shook his head and crossed to the sideboard to pour himself a measure of thick red liquid. Some sort of fortified wine like a port perhaps. “But more to the point, no suitor worth having will want to venture this far to call on a prospective bride. The sort of man I have in mind will want a wife who can be a social asset to him in the city. She’ll be a charming bride for one of the Austrian officials if she’ll just come to her senses.”
Carlotta’s expression was unyielding. “Austrian dignitary or not, if a suitor isn’t willing to ride two hours on easy roads to meet our daughter, he’s not a suitor worth having. You have seen the fits of melancholia that plague her in town. She simply isn’t fit for the role you envision for her. Better you find her a quiet country squire with a large estate where she can find peace.”
“Fits of melancholia indeed. I won’t see her chance to make a great match squandered by marrying her off to some nobody in a backwater. I would be remiss as a father. How can I possibly be expected to fulfill my duties and see her well-married if I cannot make arrangements?”
Carlotta’s expression turned hard. “I believe your chief duty, husband, is to love your daughter. Your daughter as she is, not as you wish her to be.”
He scoffed. “You speak like a simpleton. You know full well that she must be married well to have any sort of a future. All this comes from you coddling her, you know.”
Daggers shot from Carlotta’s eyes and she met him toe to toe. “I don’t coddle her; I love her. You would understand the difference if you had some semblance of a feeling heart in you. I’ve told you countless times she needs to see a doctor about these spells.”
Giacomo took one step forward, and a wave of fear washed over the room that I could feel in the pit of my stomach, even if the emotions weren’t my own. This was a dangerous man, and Carlotta knew it from firsthand experience. “We cannot risk taking her to be seen for such an affliction, and you well know it. If word got out, no man worth having would take her.”
Carlotta sighed. “So we tell everyone she was going for her hay fever or a stubborn cold she couldn’t shake off. No one will be the wiser.”
He set down his glass with an audible clink against the wood. “These things always have a way of spreading. Indiscreet nurses. Doctors who jabber too much over their wine. Nosy neighbors who put two and two together. And it’s not like you’ll be taking her to the corner physician. All it would take is her being seen walking up the steps to the wrong office and all her prospects would disappear.”
“So we go to Florence or Rome. Perhaps Paris or Vienna if you want to be even more discreet. The Austrians you’re so enamored of take extended foreign holidays at every possible occasion. It would lend us cachet, don’t you think?”
Giacomo sighed. “As much as I wish we could claim such status, we are not on the same level as they. If we take any sort of prolonged holiday, we will simply cease to exist in the eyes of their kind. Your absence in town these many months hasn’t helped matters.”
Carlotta’s voice lowered. “Would it really be so terrible to remain in the station we were born to? Your father was the most respected jeweler and goldsmith in Milan, and you’ve turned his business into an empire. You don’t need the approval of barons and counts. They have done nothing to deserve their status, but you’ve earned the admiration of everyone in this city on your merits. You’re above their notice, not below it.”
Carlotta spoke with the passion of true belief. She had loved this man once and found him worthy, but sadly he had not done himself the same kindness.
“If only the world worked the way you see it through those naive eyes of yours. It wouldn’t matter if I amassed a fortune to rival the Hapsburgs, I would still be seen as a tradesman and a merchant. A talented one, yes. But a common tradesman all the same. It’s not enough to have my jewels glittering about all the finest ballrooms. I want to be welcomed in them.”
“Is entrée into ballrooms truly your biggest concern? Don’t you want to see our daughter happy? She needs a quiet life in the country, not the maelstrom of city life and society.”
“Happy at what cost, Carlotta? Wasting her beauty and her opportunity to make the match of the decade? To be the envy of all Milan?”
Carlotta’s jaw clenched as she fought to temper her rage. “Those are your ambitions, husband. Not hers. To foist them on her is a cruelty and you know it. I believe she can be helped. We can research treatments and facilities together, and I’ll take her on my own with Filipe, Eduardo, or whichever one of the footmen you can spare. You can stay in Milan and look after our interests and tell all of society that your wife and daughter are off on a decadent tour all over the continent, but you simply couldn’t bear to be away from the city for so long. I’ll have some new clothes made in Paris to lend credence to the story, and if you spin the tale properly, you’ll be the most talked about man in Lombardy.”
“Yes, and I shudder to think what they’ll be saying. Now get that girl in the carriage in the next fifteen minutes, ready to head back home, or I’ll take a strap to her backside. Maybe that will wake her up.”
He turned on the ball of his foot without a backward glance and slammed the door so hard the walls shook.
For a fleeting moment Carlotta buried her head in her hands. Her shoulders racked with silent sobs, but just as quickly, she straightened her spine, stood, and knelt beside her daughter.
“Cara, I need you to get dressed. You can sleep all day tomorrow. I promise to get you help, but you must not make your father angry before I can do it. Vincente and I are working on a plan, but it will take time. You remember Vincente the solicitor?”
Donatella sat up. “Yes. He’s going to help us?”
“Yes, but making inquiries to the doctors is taking time, dearest. We can’t leave without a sound plan.”
Donatella buried her face in her hands for a few moments but then looked at her mother with a pained expression. Like her mother, she was the very picture of Italianate beauty, but the deep pools of her eyes were haunted. She suffered in a time when such afflictions were either dismissed as caprice or, worse, punished as wanton disregard for the established order. She was still young, but her life had already seen more than enough misery.
“I must go?”
Her voice was a raspy husk.
“Yes, cara. I’m afraid it’s for the best. We can’t have your father in a state again. It will only make things harder for both of us as we bide our time.”
Donatella’s eyes locked on the door he’d exited moments before. “I hate him, Mamma.”
Carlotta’s shoulders sagged. “You aren’t alone in that, dearest.”
“You . . . hate him too?”
Donatella asked with wide eyes.
“There’s a reason we live here and not in Milan, cara. Beyond your need for tranquil surroundings.”
Grief suffused her voice. I supposed she was mourning the loss of her most vibrant years living with an overbearing lout of a man.
“Then why did you marry him?”
Donatella stood so her mother could help her to the carriage where Giacomo waited.
Carlotta held her daughter’s lovely face in her hands for a moment. “I was blind to many of his faults at first, as any seventeen-year-old girl would be. But I’ve grown wiser. My father urged the match because he was such a promising young jeweler. Mamma saw him for what he was, but she wasn’t able to dissuade my father. He thought that I, and my family’s money, might help him grow to greater things. And that I did . . . but I created a monster in the process.”
“Me,”
Donatella mumbled.
Carlotta took her daughter by the upper arms. “Donatella Regina Maria Del Vecchio Valenti, I never meant you. Your father and his unholy ambition. That’s truly the evil bubbling below the surface. I never confessed this to you before because you are from his seed, and I didn’t want you to think any less of yourself.”
Donatella turned to her mother with pained eyes. “But I am broken, Mamma. I am no use to him. So I am less than dirt in his eyes.”
Carlotta crooked a finger under her daughter’s chin to force her to meet her eyes. “You listen to me, daughter. We do not concern ourselves with the opinions of those who think little of us. Their bitter thoughts are none of our affair. And that especially includes your oafish father.”
Carlotta wrapped her daughter in a velvet cloak of rich cobalt blue, which lifted her color and reflected the light so she appeared to glow like an apparition from heaven. Her eyes were heavy and glazed as she dissociated from the reality in front of her and the one that awaited her.
Carlotta gave her daughter one appraising look. “Your father was right about one thing, cara. You are the most beautiful girl on the continent.”
Donatella’s eyes seemed to snap back into focus. “Thank you, Mamma.”
Her voice was stronger, and she stood taller.
“Just do what you can to quell your father’s anger, dearest. I promise I’ve got a plan to get us out. We must bide our time until I can set it into motion.”