“Yes, she is, for a long three weeks now. Home and determined to marry a miserable bounder, a fortune hunter. She is all of seventeen years old,” she added in a bitter voice.
“I had hoped that you would present me with a problem worthy of my abilities, Aurora.” Daniele shrugged. “Truss the fellow up in a sack and send him off to India in one of your ships.”
“The idea did occur to me, but it won’t serve in this case.” She gazed up at her longtime friend, feeling herself grow more steady and confident. Daniele had always had a calming influence on her, despite his occasional lapses into grand hyperbole. His clear gray eyes, set deep beneath bushy gray brows, were either serene or glinting with suppressed excitement. He was brilliant, a financial wizard, unlike his poor brother who had killed himself several years before. Once, some five years before, she had considered him as a lover, and, to
her chagrin and subsequent amusement, it had been he who had refused. “One never mixes business with delight, cara,” he had told her. “You are too valuable to waste time in an old man’s bed.” Thus it was that she told him everything, omitting nothing. She could see the intricacy of his thoughts as he inserted questions here and there.
“So that is how everything now sits,” she said. “I have scarce spoken to Giana, since she accused me two days ago of ruining her life.”
Daniele shifted slightly in his chair, and readjusted his exquisite pearl-gray waistcoat over his narrow chest. He was quiet for a long time, for such a long time that Aurora could not stay seated. She bounded to her feet and began pacing, clasping her hands in front of her.
“Stop playing Lady Macbeth, cara. It would appear that your Giana has forgotten that she is Aurora Van Cleve’s daughter.”
“How could she be so stupidly foolish and naive?” Aurora said, disregarding him and resuming her frantic pacing. “How can I make her realize that she will be nothing but a pet possession—and that for only a short time. How can I make her understand that to really experience life, she must be in charge of her own destiny and not hand herself over lock, stock, and body to a husband, particularly a husband like Randall Bennett?”
“Calm yourself, Aurora,” Daniele said. “Not all men, you know, are like Morton Van Cleve—cold and rapacious.”
“Oh, I know that,” she said, whirling about to face him. “But still, the temptation is well-nigh impossible to withstand, even for the best of men. After all, in our just and proud land, a woman is naught but a brood mare, raised to view herself as an addle-headed, worthless—oh, I don’t know, Daniele. I know that I’m not making much sense, but it is so angering that my own daughter would willingly wish to imprison herself, to stay a child, and never know anything of the world, the real world, the world that men possess.”
“Your world, cara.”
“Yes, my world. I was nothing but an empty husk until Morton died. God, the freedom, the knowledge that what I say and what I think mean something.”
“Have you said this to Giana?”
“Oh yes, but she merely stares at me like I’m some kind of oddity. She cannot see beyond her nose or hear anything but Randall Bennett’s charming soliloquies. She is too young to begin to understand how very arid her life could be, and our fortune hunter has smothered her in romantic illusion.”
Daniele said quietly, “Most women could not conceive of the world as you experience it, Aurora.”
“That is because their brains have been rotted by the time they are twenty.”
“Perhaps,” he said. He added thoughtfully, “I trust that you did not accuse the man of having designs on your life in front of Giana. Surely he would not go that far, cara.”
Aurora drew a ragged breath. “Yes, I did tell her that he was, I thought, utterly ruthless. Would he remove me, her mother, were I to continue to thwart him?” She shrugged her shoulders angrily. “I do not know, Daniele. At the time I did think he was capable of such a thing. Now, well—it does seem rather melodramatic.”
Daniele waved a dismissing hand, and rose abruptly to pace thoughtfully along the path she had trod. “It was wise of you to send for me, cara. Si, I can see that this problem requires an unusual solution to resolve itself appropriately.” He paused a moment, and asked her quietly, “Is Giana truly your daughter, Aurora? Are you certain that she would not be quite happy with a husband to master her, and her belly filled yearly with child?”
“I refuse to believe that. I see the intelligence in her eyes, Daniele, and flashes of pride, that is, when she is not acting the giddy chit. If Randall Bennett were not the cad I know him to be, I would allow her to lie in the bed of her own making. But, hear me, Daniele, I would be the most despicable of women were I to allow my daughter to wed him.”
“It is a problem of the most profound sort,” Daniele said. “I must ponder, cara. I beg you to stop wearing a hole in your Axminster carpet.”
Aurora obligingly sat down on the sofa, and watched his brow pucker and his gray eyes narrow in thought. She was beginning to believe that this problem was beyond even Daniele’s cunning, when he suddenly smiled and slapped his hands to his thighs.
“A very original solution, Aurora, and most daring,” he said modestly. “Are you a prude, cara?”
“A prude?” she repeated, cocking her head at him. “I do not believe so, Daniele. Why do you ask?”
“Because, my dear,” he said slowly, “our solution to Giana’s infatuation is not one a mother would readily accept.”
“Explain yourself, Daniele.”
“I will, cara, but first you must agree not to interrupt me until I have finished.”
She nodded, unconsciously leaning toward him.
He paused a moment, his eyes gentle upon her face. “You know, Aurora, before I tell you of my plan, it seems to me that you must yourself face the truth. It is not only Randall Bennett who distresses you, it is any man who would take Giana to wife.”
“Of course it is,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “At least until she is a woman grown, and has the sense and perspective to wed a man who would accept her for what she is, a man who would be content, if she wished it, to let her control her own money, to direct her own affairs.”