Aurora drew a steadying breath, unable for the moment to meet Giana’s eyes. She rose slowly, her palms flat against her desktop. “There were two reasons, Giana,” she said finally. “I wanted you to have everything that I did not have growing up. I wanted you to know the security that only wealth can bring.” She lowered her eyes a moment. “And I wanted you to have the education that would prepare you to . . .” She ground to an abrupt halt. The truth, Aurora, you are not telling her the truth.
“To what, Mama? To become a spinster who enjoys lording it over men and giving them orders? Your orders for me, Mama, were followed to the letter. I am quite proficient at mathematics, for example, just as you insisted. And I suppose I am intelligent, though that commodity is little valued. I won’t be like you, Mama, and I have no intention of being alone. I will not be an oddity.”
“An oddity, Giana? Is it your wish then to be like every other petted lady in England? Do you want to deny that you have a mind and be a frivolous, empty-headed girl who will do nothing more with her life than become an equally frivolous, empty-headed woman?”
“Is it so odd, Mama, to want a husband and a family, to spend one’s life loved and protected and cherished? Just because you weren’t lucky enough to gain that, you would deny me?”
“Giana, I was possibly mistaken in sending you to Switzerland. Perhaps I should have kept you here with me, to learn with me, to see how life can be when you have some say in how you live it. If you would but try to understand. There was so much for me to learn, so many decisions, so many people depending on me.” Aurora saw Giana’s eyes resting with cold condemnation on her face. “Listen to me, Giana. Can you forgive me? I had too little time for you then.”
“And now you fancy that you do. It is not a matter of forgiving you, Mama. I am a grown woman now, and I have no wish for your precious plans for my future. I will decide my own future.” Giana sensed that she had gone too far, and splayed her hands in front of her in an attitude of compromise. “Mama, the past is past. I will try to understand you, if you will but understand me.” She smiled, suddenly radiant and self-satisfied. “Mama, I am in love.”
Aurora stared at her. “You are seventeen years old.”
“You married Papa when you were seventeen.”
No, I was sold to Morton when I was seventeen.
“You have just returned from Switzerland. You have been home for but a fortnight.”
Giana’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I met him in Switzerland. He was traveling with a friend on business. His younger sister, Patricia, was my roommate after Derry left, and I got to know him quite well. I love him, Mama, and he loves me.”
“Love? By God, Giana, you have no more concept of what love is than a moth flying toward a tantalizing flame.” She saw Giana’s face pale with anger and was appalled at her own stupidity. “Who is he, Giana?”
“Yes, he is tantalizing,” Giana said, raising her chin. “His name is Randall Bennett, and he is as respectable as any mother could wish. His father is the second son of Viscount Gilroy. You should approve him, for he is interested in business, just as you are.”
“Is he in London?”
“Oh yes. In fact, I saw—” Giana stopped cold at the awful slip she had made. She hurried on before her mother could interrupt her. “Randall wants to meet you, Mama. It is I who have not allowed it, so you must not blame him. He wants your first meeting with him to be perfect. He has heard of you and thinks very highly of you. And I have told him all about you. I want to marry him, Mama, as soon as summer comes. I want to wed him in June.”
Aurora was thankful she had learned over the years how to keep her thoughts from showing on her face. She was at first taken aback at the sudden show of naive pride in her daughter’s voice, and then she felt sudden consuming fury. Was she to lose her only child without ever having had the chance to know her? “He sounds like a paragon. Since the young man wants my meeting with him to be perfect, why do you not invite him to dine with us tomorrow night?”
Giana looked at her warily. Although she did not know her mother well, it did not seem quite right that she should suddenly become so reasonable. She gave in to a rush of excitement, glorying in what seemed to be a victory.
“I will see—write him an invitation, Mama. May I be excused now?”
“Of course, child.” Giana fairly danced from the room, without a trace of her sullen, defiant anger.
Aurora looked up at a light knock on the library door. “Come in,” she called.
“Mr. Hardesty is here, madam.”
Aurora nodded to Lanson, smiling a bit at Lanson, who was so very battered-looking with his nose off to one side, the result of his last boxing match six years before. He made an unlikely-looking butler, but Aurora, as a woman living alone, was thankful for the talents he had learned in his former profession.
“Show him in, if you please, Lanson.”
Thomas Hardesty stood a moment in the doorway, watching Aurora rise from her desk. Even in the harsh daylight, she looked exquisite, no telltale shadows or lines on her face, no gray streaking her ink-black hair.
“Your message sounded urgent, my dear. I had feared you were perhaps ill.” He smiled. “But seeing you as radiant as ever blasts that notion.” Indeed, he thought, she had hardly changed in the twelve years he had worked as her partner. Such a pity that a woman as beautiful as she had no intention of ever marrying again—not even him, who admired her beauty almost as much as her vast fortune. He remembered how shocked he had been when she first told him she fully intended to take her husband’s place. But he had quickly enough come to rely on her judgment and to admire her quickness of mind and her ability to discern the most subtle of problems. He walked forward to take her outstretched hand.
“Radiant? Hardly. But no, I am not at all ill, Thomas. I thank you for coming so quickly.” Aurora turned away from him for a moment, and then said in a strained voice, “It is Giana. The foolish child fancies herself in love.”
“You should rather say young lady, Aurora. I would imagine that Giana is the image of you when you were her age.”
“And you doubt that I was ever a child.”
Thomas’s first memories of her were as the silent young wife of Morton Van Cleve, the exquisite gem he saw only on occasion. The image reminded him of the endless stream of mistresses that Morton took without a care to discretion. He had flaunted them like a string of second-rate nags before a thoroughbred.
“Now, Aurora,” he said, grinning, “would I ever be guilty of such rudeness? No, you needn’t answer that. Now, who is this gentleman Giana wishes to wed?”