Chapter 20 #2
“It’s what she wanted.” Rita’s tone climbed to strident. She heard it, hated it, and dropped her spoon to her saucer with a clatter. “It’s what Inez wanted, so it’s what we did. She’s his wife, and I was in no position to argue with her about it. Everything was so—just so—”
“Of course,” Pauline soothed.
Rita set her jaw. “We did what we had to do. We did everything we could do.”
The room sank into silence. Beyond the opened windows, a conversation was taking place in the garden about the lanterns, how many more to go. A dove began to coo.
“Sorry,” she muttered. Giuseppe brushed his fingers along her wrist; she shot him a tight smile.
Papa sighed. He seemed much older than she remembered from her last visit. More silver in his hair, deeper wrinkles around his eyes. The backs of his hands were lightly spotted now, veined in blue. He took another salmon sandwich from the serving tray, transferred it to his already untouched plate.
“We’ll all go back,” he said in graveled French, “and pay our respects in person, as soon as we can.”
“En anglais,” Pauline prompted softly.
Charles looked up at them, surprised, as if he hadn’t heard himself speak. In English, he said, “We’ll all go back, for Inez.”
ALTHOUGH COUNT DE Cippico had been at Winter Queen before as Rita’s guest, she wasn’t sure he knew his way around well enough to find her bedroom in the dark.
Nor was she sure he’d defy convention that far anyway, not in her parents’ domain.
For his three previous stays, Pauline had assigned her eldest daughter’s suitor a room in the wing opposite Rita’s, respectable as could be. They’d slept apart for days.
So it was up to Rita to find Giuseppe that night, long after supper was finished.
Without the starlight or moonlight pouring through the windows, without the stained-glass panes stripped of their colors but still glowing, it wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be.
She was unused to this forced darkness and carried a candle with her, ready to snuff it out at a moment’s notice.
But Winter Queen kept her secret. No one was around this late, not even a hall boy.
No one materialized from the gloom to demand sotto voce what she was doing, as if they wouldn’t know.
She closed her hand on the scrolled knob to his room, and slowly twisted it.
The tongue of the latch bolt clicked free.
She glided into his chamber in her Irish pongee wrap and her bare feet, because barefoot was always the most hushed way to walk, the most clandestine.
There was no light in here, either; it was too warm to light a fire, and none of the lamps were burning.
She carried the candle, dripping tears of wax, to his bed. Giuseppe was awake, no nightshirt, his arms crossed behind his head, watching her with his dark and knowing look.
She placed the candle on a bureau. He lifted the covers for her with one arm, a silent invitation. Rita slid out of the wrap and into the bed next to him, both shifting to the center of the mattress. He lowered his arm and the covers settled over them in a puff.
“You came,” Giuseppe said.
“I thought you might not. So I took the initiative.”
He drew a finger along her collarbone, dislodging the satin strap of her nightdress, easing it down her shoulder. “Your mother is formidable. I fear if she catches you in here, you’ll be compelled to wed me after all.”
“About that,” she said, and his fingers paused their unhurried examination of her inner arm.
Rita took a breath. “I wanted to tell you that you’ve ensorcelled me, after all. I’m still greedy for my life, but even more than that, I’m greedy for you. For the life that you and I could build together.”
He studied her, cocked his head. “Margherita. Is this change of heart because of what’s happened? Because if so, you must know I’m still willing to wait for you. This misfortune, this great misfortune, does not need to decide us.”
She sat up, tugging her strap back into place.
“I promise you, I’d decided before I ever boarded that cursed ship.
I decided the last day we were together in New York, on the harbor, as I watched you sail away from me.
My heart was so full, and so empty. I knew I’d made a terrible mistake, just letting you leave like that.
Letting you go without telling you how much I love you. ”
The flickering light sent copper along his raven hair, the lean curve of his jaw, the scant growth of whiskers that roughened his skin. But he didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“And then, on the water … in the water … when it was all cold and hot and dire, out there among the dead—sorry—out there, and in those awful days after, everything became so clear. I’ve been selfish, and I’ve been cowardly, and unfair to you.
Unfair to us. It’s the worst sort of cowardice, really, to deny the truth living in your own heart. ”
A sideward smile, barely there. “You? A coward? Never.”
“Not anymore. And not ever again. I don’t want to waste another day without you.”
Finally he shifted, but it was only to duck his chin and run a hand through his hair. “Are we really doing it like this? Here and now?”
“Yes, here and now. I told you before, I like it when you call me Margherita. I want to hear you call me that for the rest of my life.”
“You’ve stolen my … how do you say it? My moment. My thunder.”
Before she could react, he’d rolled gracefully from the bed, walking to a leather case he’d left atop the secrétaire. He opened the case, withdrew something she couldn’t see, although she certainly saw the rest of him, by heavens, nude and beautifully sculpted against the night.
This time it was she who lifted the covers for him. But Giuseppe didn’t join her in bed. He went to one knee beside it, offering up the ring box to her on the flat of his palm.
“But this thunder,” he said, “it’s not stolen, because it was your moment, ours, all along. It belongs to us both.”
He opened the box. In it was a platinum ring set with an emerald as green as that grass back in Ireland, the band studded with diamonds. He took her hand, slid it over her finger.
It was heavy, the stones throwing dramatic sparks. It was also a perfect fit.
“NO MORE BEING a butterfly?” he asked her much later, after the candle had guttered out and the night fully enveloped them. They were panting still; he pulled her closer. “Or the swallow, always moving?”
“No.” She slid her hand along his chest, enjoying the weight of her ring. She opened her fingers over his heart, skin to skin. “No. Now I’m a swan. Ready to live out my years beside my dearest.”
THE NEXT MORNING, a letter from Alfred arrived from parts unknown, wrinkled and heavily censored in thick black strokes, but with enough sentences left intact to reassure his family that he was well, that his spirits were good, that the food wasn’t as bad as they’d probably heard and his pals in the battalion were all grand chaps.
He’d ended it with: My love to you all. See you when I see you!
P.S. Send some socks and a wheel of Beaufort, will you? The canteen here doesn’t know what’s what about fine dining, and we’re dying for some cheese the rats haven’t tried first, ha ha.
He’d written the postscript in French, which might explain why it hadn’t been censored.
GIUSEPPE WANTED TO delay the announcement of their engagement out of respect for Inez’s bereavement, but Rita reminded him that her sister already knew about it, or at least had known about the possibility of it, before anyone else—except for him, of course—and if anything, telling everyone might lift her spirits.
“If you’re sure,” he’d said, still dubious.
“I am.”
And it seemed that Rita was right. Perhaps buoyed by the relief of hearing from their son, her parents appeared genuinely pleased at the news, genteelly pleased.
Papa insisted upon a champagne toast, and Maman threw a special celebratory dinner of beef bourguignon and hot, fragrant baguettes that she managed to whip up God knew how, since a year of steadily increasing food scarcity meant that butter and flour and red meat were rapidly vanishing from everyday life.
(When asked how she’d pulled it off, Pauline would only laugh.)
Inez emerged from her bedroom for the champagne and bread and savory stew. She congratulated them both, admiring the ring, slanting Rita an impish smile over it when no one else was looking. For a moment, she resembled her old self, and Rita’s heart lifted with hope.
YET INEZ WAS determined to sail back to New York.
Nothing anyone said persuaded her to stay.
She told them that she needed to return to their—to her penthouse apartment.
She needed to begin the process of contacting her attorneys, settling George’s affairs, taxes or probate or whatever needed to happen next.
All of it was true, no doubt, but no one could look at her, so bloodless and whisper-thin, and imagine it a sound plan.
There were law firms that could be hired from overseas, they pointed out; there were estate managers who might take care of it all from a distance.
And weren’t his parents still there, out in Vermont, or Virginia, or wherever it was?
Maybe they could hire movers to box up their things, have professionals figure where and how to store it.
“No,” she insisted. “I need to be there myself. I need to go home. I’m going.”
Rita offered to join her for the voyage, but Inez dismissed that as well. She said not to worry; she was fine alone. She needed to be alone, at least for a bit.
Besides, she continued, Rita had already mentioned that the Ambrosio Company in Naples was itching for her return, and now she had an especially good reason to consider the list of films they’d offered her.
“Countess,” Inez added, with that same impish smile.
“But I’ve got to head back to Manhattan soon anyway,” Rita said sternly.
“I have obligations there still. A flat to manage. A stack of screenplays from Lasky. This damned war has us all tossed like a salad, but I’ll follow you as quick as I can, and then we’ll sort out what to do next.
I’m not going to let you just hide away. I mean it.”
Inez took her hands. “I know you do. So don’t fuss. Whenever you get back, I’ll see you then. We’re only a heartbeat apart, you and I, wherever we are.”