“Randall,” she said, her voice clear and cool as the morning air, “I have no intention of wedding you. Indeed, I doubt that I will ever marry any man, so you cannot accuse me of betraying you with another. I understand that Norman Carl Fletcher, the very wealthy banker, has an unwed daughter. She is not terribly pretty, but of course, that doesn’t really matter, does it?”
Randall Bennett rose shakily to his feet. She was looking down her nose at him as if he were some sort of insignificant bug. He gazed at her white throat above a delicate row of lace, and wanted for one long moment to strangle her until she was on her knees before him, begging him.
“You cannot do this to me.” He was so beside himself with anger and disappointment that he could think of nothing else to say.
Giana shrugged and drew her cloak about her shoulders. “Good-bye, Randall.”
As she turned to go, he grabbed her arm and whirled her about to face him. “No woman casts me off, particularly a spoiled, vain little bitch like you.”
“Let me go, Randall.”
“Let the lady go, sir.”
Randall dropped his hands out of sheer surprise. He whipped about to see the Van Cleve coachman.
“Thank you, Abel,” Giana said. “I am ready to leave now.”
“You will pay for this,” Randall Bennett growled after her.
When Abel assisted her into the brougham, she turned and asked him, “How did you know that I might need you?”
“’Twas not me, Miss Giana, ’twas your mother. Said to me, she did, that even though Mr. Bennett was all smiles and oozing charm, he had the look of a man who could turn nasty.”
Giana stared at him. She had not told her mother what she intended to do about Randall—perhaps, she thought now, to punish her. But her mother had known anyway, and had protected her. She said dryly to Abel, “Let us go home. I want to ask my mother if she is ever wrong about anything.”
“You do not look happy, Giana,” Aurora said carefully as she handed her daughter a cup of tea.
“No? Well, I suppose that I’m not. Seeing the man one believed a prince of men for the first time as he really is is not a particularly happy experience.” She sighed. “But I am relieved, Mother, very relieved that it’s all over.”
There was silence between them, an uncomfortable silence. Giana said suddenly, “The medicine was bitter, Mama, so bitter that I still believe I may choke on it.”
“I’m sorry, Giana.”
“Mother,” Giana said, interrupting her with a raised hand, “my bitterness, such as it is, has nothing to do with you.”
What in God’s name did Daniele do? “Will you tell me what happened, Giana?”
Giana did not want her mother to know that her valued friend, her trusted friend, had done everything to her daughter save stake her to a bed. “I cannot, Mother, really,” she said at last, shaking her head. “I wish only to forget and to carry on with my life, such as it is now.”
Aurora searched her daughter’s face. “The prostitutes you met and spoke with—were they so very awful?”
To her surprise, Giana smiled. “No, they were not awful.”
“Please try to understand, and forgive me, Giana. I could think of nothing else that would allow you to see Randall Bennett as he really is, no way to make you understand that marrying him would be the worst mistake of your life. I intended merely that you see with your own eyes the underside of people, the kind of men who use their wives, and condemn them and their daughters to unutterably empty lives.”
“I know, Mother.” She wondered whether Daniele had told her mother anything of what occurred, then realized that it would be ridiculous to imagine him doing such a thing. No, what had happened had been between the two of them. She devoutly prayed that she would never see Daniele again, for just to see him would bring it all back.
“It is odd, you know,” Giana continued to still her mother’s questions, “but now I can see my father quite clearly as one of those men. And I can see you, Mother, how you must have suffered under his negligent cruelty.” She remembered a paunchy, mustached man from Germany who had not been content with one of Madame Lucienne’s girls. No, he had demanded to be pleasured by three. A pig of a man.
Aurora struggled with her startling words, and suddenly gaped at her. Giana’s eyes were clouded, as if there were too many unhappy images, too many painful memories vying for possession. They still held innocence, but it wasn’t the innocence of a young girl’s romantic dreams, it was a dark innocence. She said slowly, “I made the decision after your father’s death that I wanted no more of living with a man. That is not to say I have not had men become dear friends. Nor must you think, my love, that you will not meet a man who will be much more to you, a man you can trust, and respect, and love.”
Giana gave her mother a twisted smile. “I think, Mother, that after Rome, I cannot imagine ever trusting a man like that.” Before Aurora could contradict her, Giana rushed on. “I was really quite good in mathematics, you know, despite all my letters to the contrary. And though I am abominably ignorant of finance and commerce, I do not think I am precisely stupid. Will you teach me, Mother?”
Aurora looked at her daughter sadly. What price had Giana paid for her victory? If only, she thought, she had not shut her out, had not left her to governesses, and to that ridiculous girls’ seminary.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I will teach you, Giana.”
“Excellent.” Giana rose from her chair and twitched out the wrinkles from her gown. “You see before you a pupil who intends to excel.”