Evening Star (Star Quartet 1)

Giana’s eyes rested on the sloe-eyed Jennifer to see her reaction, but there was none. She was playing with her food, her mouth sullen. Jennifer must, Giana thought, taking a ladylike bite of her creamed artichokes, resemble her dead mother, with those distant gray eyes of hers, so unlike her father’s.

“My dear Derry,” Charles said, “you are telling me that two such well-brought-up girls indulge in such wickedness?”

“Ah, our conversations were much more wicked, sir.”

Giana shivered suddenly, not from any draft, for the parlor with its blazing fire was cozily warm against the cold winter night.

“I hope you are not cold, my dear,” Charles Lattimer said, leaning forward in his gilt-armed chair.

“Oh no, sir,” Giana said.

“I do not believe,” Charles Lattimer continued, addressing the table at large, “that I should like to spend the winter in Switzerland. Much more snow than we suffer in New York, and the winds of the lake penetrate the thickest coat.” He turned toward Derry. “My dear Derry, since we will be married right after Christmas, I will tell you that I have already done some refurbishing of your wardrobe. I trust you will approve the sable-lined cloak.”

“How absolutely decadent, Charles,” Derry said, laughing.

“And how devastating on you, my dear,” he said, lifting Derry’s hand to his lips. He leaned closer to her and whispered something that neither Jennifer nor Giana could hear.

To Giana’s surprise, Derry, always so clever and so sure of herself, stammered and blushed.

“I feel a draft, Father,” Jennifer said suddenly. “And everything is drowned in thick sauces.”

“You must become more worldly in your tastes,” Charles Lattimer said easily, leaning back in his chair. “I dislike provincialism.”

“Would you like my shawl, Jennifer?” Derry asked her future stepdaughter.

“No, thank you, Miss Fairmount,” Jennifer said. “If you caught a chill, Father would never forgive me.”

“I trust I am not so heartless, Jennifer,” Charles Lattimer said smoothly, “but I would dislike having to postpone our wedding.”

“No need for you to worry, Charles,” Derry said. “I never catch chills. You’ll find that I have a very healthy constitution. My dear Giana,” she continued without pause, “you have scarce eaten a bite.” Her eyes twinkled wickedly, falling for but a moment to Giana’s bosom. “You will never grow unless you eat.”

Giana quickly forked a bite of stuffed veal into her mouth.

Chapter 2

London, 1847

Aurora Van Cleve stared out of the bowed front windows that gave onto Belgrave Square. She watched the nannies in their starched gray uniforms gossiping quietly, their vigilant eyes on their young charges who romped in the lush green grass, some tossing a brightly colored ball around a circle to each other. Every couple of years, the young faces changed as the children grew too old to be taken to the park by their nannies, and new ones took their places. Odd that the nannies never seemed to change, save for the graying of their hair beneath their caps.

She looked down at her hand and muttered at herself, for she had teased and fussed with a fingernail until it was jagged. Millie would be aghast when she saw it. The prissy old dear would likely scold Aurora as if she were still a child, and not a widow of forty.

Dear God, what am I to do? Aurora turned away from the bowed windows and gazed about her library, the only really comforting room in her twenty-two-room barn of a house. She had seldom been allowed into the library until Morton died, and on these rare occasions when she had been commanded by her husband to appear, it had been to heighten his vanity by exhibiting his young and beautiful wife to his business cronies, as if reminding them that he, a man of the merchant class, had succee

ded in aligning himself with the aristocracy. She had been his prize purchase, his most brilliant possession. How your colorless eyes used to stare at me, Morton, continually examining me for my worth to you. It had taken her months after he died to step into this dark paneled room with his musty books creeping up three walls, its heavy mahogany-and-leather furniture still permeated then with the smell of his pipe. Aurora looked about the room and smiled, shaking off memories of her husband, their bitterness dulled with time. Even his library, his man’s domain, had been hers for twelve years, and it was no longer the starkly masculine library of a man of vast business interests, but a warm, feminine room—her room.

She gazed at the portrait of her and Giana over the fireplace, painted when Giana was but six years old. It had long ago replaced his portrait, buried now among discarded furniture and boxes in the attic. Giana looked a glowing miniature of her mother, even then. This beautiful child, her only child, had returned from her exclusive young ladies’ seminary in Switzerland a beautiful young lady, and a stranger to her. How could she have been so blind as to believe that Giana would grow up as she had always imagined?

Aurora walked slowly to her delicate French desk and eased herself into a frivolous Louis XV chair with graceful gold-gilt curving arms, a chair that Morton would have despised. She looked down at a sheaf of papers that required her attention, but she soon pushed them aside. I can never forgive myself for what I did to her. There, she had admitted it, accepted the fact that it was she who was responsible for Giana’s frivolity and her young girl’s romantic foolishness. Aurora rested her head upon her hands and stared blankly before her, thinking yet again about the talk she had had with her daughter but two hours before.

Giana had gazed at her sullenly, her pretty eyes narrowed. “Really, Mama, I have no interest in all of this,” she had said, waving her hand negligently toward the neat stacks of papers on Aurora’s desk. “You tell me you want me to become like you, to immerse myself in business, and spend my days dickering over money.”

Aurora ignored the insult, and kept her voice calm. “It is all new to you, Giana, as it was to me twelve years ago after your father’s death.” Never tell her that Morton would have carved out my heart if he had guessed that his fortune would fall into my hands. “You are my heir, Giana, my only child.”

“It is a pity that John died, for then you would not bother worrying me with all this, would you?”

Stay calm, Aurora. “Perhaps, Giana, but your brother did die. The Van Cleve business interests are now in my hands, and if you will agree to learn, someday it will be you who is in control.” Aurora saw an excited glint in her daughter’s dark blue eyes. My eyes looking back at me. Perhaps, she thought, she had finally gained Giana’s attention and interest. “You are intelligent, Giana, I have known that since you were a child. You are really much like me, you know.”

“If you believed me so intelligent, so much like you, Mama, why did you send me away?”