Evening Star (Star Quartet 1)

“I suppose so, Uncle Daniele.”

But Daniele knew it was not the heat. Giana had fallen into brooding, thoughtful silences more and more as the weeks passed. He decided to test the waters.

“You will be returning to England in two weeks.”

“Yes,” she said. “I hope it will be cooler in London.”

Not an auspicious beginning, he thought, tugging on his mustache. “Your mother writes that she misses you.”

“Yes, I saw her letter.” She paused a long moment, then looked squarely at Daniele and said, “I look forward to seeing those I love again.”

Damnation. What could he do to convince the stupid girl? He grinned to himself, but only briefly, remembering his encouragement of Signore Barbinelli and his favored son, Bruno. Giana, by all accounts he had heard, had seen through his flowery blandishments and sent him about his business. He wondered if Bruno was less skilled than Randall Bennett. Evidently so. That, or Giana, at an eight-hundred-mile distance, had preserved Randall’s image, perfecting it with a kind of nauseating piety.

He grew suddenly angry, both with the endless situations he had created for Giana and with her for clinging like a drowning person to a man who had no more substance than a dream. And she had grown seemingly indifferent lately to the scenes she witnessed in the Golden Chamber. He glanced at her set profile. There was steel in her, and a core of stubbornness. He would have to write to Aurora and tell her there was more of her father in Giana than she suspected. But for now, Morton Van Cleve’s heritage was his problem.

“Go to Madame Lucienne’s room, Giana,” he said when they arrived at the brothel, “but do not bother to change your clothes or put on your blond wig. Stay there until I come to fetch you.”

“Why

?” she asked him shortly.

“You will see soon enough,” he told her.

She quirked a black brow at him and smiled mirthlessly. “So the gentlemen are to be deprived of my charming conversation this evening?”

“I believe they will survive their disappointment.”

She asked him again what he had planned for her amusement this evening, when he returned to fetch her. He glanced at her sharply, for her voice sounded bored, as if she were inquiring about the weather.

“It is rather difficult to describe, my dear,” he said finally as he took her by the arm and led her down the long corridor toward the small door that gave onto the Golden Chamber. She stopped at it, but he waved her forward, and pulled open the door that led to the fourth floor.

“Are those not the servants’ quarters?”

“Some of them are. Come.”

She followed him silently up the narrow stairs until they were at the top of the house, with tilting eaves overhead. He ushered her into a small room that was very different from the other one. There was only a small table and two chairs set in the middle of the room, and the walls were papered in stark dark blue.

“Sit down, Giana. We will have supper here. The entertainment will begin a bit later.”

It was very warm in the small room, and Giana tugged at her high-necked collar. She felt drained and tired. Despite Daniele’s air of secrecy, Giana supposed that her entertainment was to be another evening of watching a man, ridiculous-looking in his naked, sweating lust, heaving and grunting over a girl. She no longer found them disgusting; indeed, they no longer intruded in her conscious thoughts. She had set herself apart from them, had retreated for many weeks now from the nightly spectacles. They no longer touched her.

A light dinner of fresh shrimp, fruit, and cool white wine was brought in by a servant soon after they were settled. Giana ate sparingly, for every bite she swallowed made her corset press that much tighter against her sweat-damp shift. They ate in silence, and Giana sensed that Daniele was not particularly pleased with her tonight. She thrust her chin forward. Let him sulk in his failure, she thought. I have kept my end of the bargain. It was odd though that Randall’s face was no longer clear in her mind. What was clear, and what was precious to her, was his remembered gentleness and his trust in her. She had known weeks ago she would not let him down; he was her lifeline. Her eyes clouded as she wondered if her face was as blurred to him as his was to her. She became aware that Daniele was speaking to her, and lifted her eyes from her plate. She smiled, hearing his words, for he was speaking about business, a carefully neutral topic that would raise no arguments between them.

“Forgive me, Uncle, what did you say?”

“I was telling you about the business venture I am considering with your mother. It involves some speculation, admittedly, but with the unrest plaguing Europe, I fancy there is little risk in banking on still more immigration to America. And the poor souls will need ships to travel on, ships that will not dump them below with cargo, to risk dying before they arrive in New York.”

“You are providing the capital, Uncle?”

“Yes, and your mother will have the ships constructed in the Van Cleve shipyards.”

“They cannot be simple cargo ships, then. Nor can they be constructed like the passenger liners, because the souls immigrating to America will not have the money to pay.” She tilted her head, and her voice became grim. “After all, if the Irish must leave Ireland because of the terrible potato famine, it cannot be expected that they will have two sous to rub together for a voyage to America.”

“True. Design is the crux of the problem. Aurora has several of her designers working on a solution: how to make ships equally suitable for cargo and for families without compromising either the safety of the cargo or the lives of the passengers.”

“I trust you will not pour your capital into the project until there is a solution.”

“I have no intention of living out my old age as a pauper,” he said, grinning at her.