Glittering Promises

by Lisa T. Bergren

  “Yes, you do,” said Mr. Morgan. “Even if it’s a touch of illness, we can’t be too careful.”

  Cora

  The doctor could find little wrong with me. While I felt feverish, my temperature was normal, and after a glance down my throat, he pronounced me free of strep. But after listening to my belly, and then Viv’s, with his stethoscope, he confirmed that it must be some sort of stomach bug. “Stay down,” he said, in broken English. “Rest. Broth,” he said, making the motion of a person eating soup, “through tomorrow. Should be better soon.”

  “Grazie,” I said, smiling at him.

  He gave me a shy bow and exited the room.

  “How is Vivian?” I asked Lil.

  “Much better. It seems to have passed.”

  “Power of suggestion?” Will asked, from a corner chair.

  “Perhaps,” I mused.

  “Well, it’s been a full day,” Will said, rising and straightening his vest. “I’ll let you sleep. I pray you’ll feel much better come morning.”

  “Thank you,” I said, accepting his kiss on my forehead.

  Lillian smiled indulgently, watching the two of us, and her eyes followed him as he left the room. “He really is quite wonderful, isn’t he?” she asked in a whisper, straightening my covers.

  “He is,” I said with a smile.

  “Much better than Andrew,” she said, mouthing the name.

  “Agreed.”

  “So, how does one get two wonderful men to fall in love with her?” she asked, flopping down on her back beside me.

  “I really cannot say. I’m as bewildered by it as you.”

  She turned to her side and perched her head on her hand. “I found something as I was unpacking your luggage today. I was helping Anna, trying to find your dressing robe.”

  “Oh?”

  She gave me a devilish smile and leaped up and moved to the desk. With a look over her shoulder to the empty doorway, she slid open the top drawer and took hold of a sheet of drawing paper, then returned. Shyly, she turned it around.

  It was the picture that Pierre had drawn of me in the garden. The one in which he had inserted himself, making us look like young lovers.

  “Where did you get that?” I whispered. Now I, too, glanced to the door. If Will saw it…

  “It was in with all your books. When I set the stack aside, they tumbled over, and there it was. So,” she said, giving me a wicked little grin, “did he draw it for you?”

  “Yes,” I said, pulling it from her fingers and staring at the image. Pierre was truly a fine artist. The romance of it made me a little wistful, and that, somewhat guilty.

  “You’re not having second thoughts about Will, are you?” she whispered.

  “Not at all,” I said with frustration. “Now please, put this back in the drawer.”

  She stood up and took the drawing from my hands, and in that moment, I felt a twinge of the sorrow I’d felt at saying good-bye to Pierre in Venice. “Don’t worry,” she said, “he’s coming back, right? Here, to Rome?”

  “Please, stop,” I moaned, putting a hand to my forehead. I truly needed to send him a telegram and ask him not to come. There was no need. It’d be a useless gesture. Just one more thing I needed to do among a hundred others. And undoubtedly, the paperwork was stacking up, what with our grief-distracted days and moving to Rome and now facing illness…

  “I’ll leave you now,” Lil said. “I’ve worn you out.”

  “Good night, Lil.”

  “Sweet dreams.” She left me then, closing the door quietly behind her, and I thought about her going home to Butte without her father, without her mother. Would I be welcome there? Would I live there with them? Or would I find my own home?

  I fell asleep and was soon dreaming of being a rabbit, with a wolf fast approaching, but I was unable to find my rabbit hole…

  CHAPTER 22

  Cora

  “Ah, there she is,” Hugh said, as I entered the breakfast room the next morning. “Feeling worlds better, I take it?”

  He was sitting with Andrew and Felix. I saw Andrew glance over the top of the paper, and then he snapped it taut, disappearing behind it again. Felix rose, came over, and kissed me on the cheek. “Well done, sister. No languishing in a sick bed for a Kensington!”

  “A Diehl Kensington.” Andrew sniffed, turning the page in his paper. “Vivian is still in bed.”

  “Probably avoiding you,” Hugh jibed.

  I turned away, uncomfortable with the likely truth in his comment. With no servant in sight, I took a croissant and poured myself some tea from the sideboard before sitting down with the men. The younger girls were apparently taking their leisurely time rising as well.

  “Felix and I were just coming up with a plan to manage the press, now that you’ve chased off our Mr. Grunthall,” Hugh said. “We believe we can so fill their column inches of paper with tales of our upcoming Roman escapades, that they’ll leave the rest of you in peace.”

  “I see,” I said, sipping my tea. My stomach was definitely stronger this morning. “So you seek to aid us,” I said sardonically, “by sacrificing yourselves to the press.”

  Hugh winked at me. “We are ready and willing, my lady, to serve the families in whatever capacity we can.”

  “And get our pictures before all the socialites in Rome sooner than later,” Felix added.

  “We’ll be invited to any party of importance,” Hugh added.

  “Aren’t we weary of parties?” I said with a sigh. “And after what we’ve been through with Father—”

  “Exactly the reason to indulge,” Felix said. “It’s time to shed our mourning cloaks and embrace the city before it’s time to go. He’d want us to do so.”

  I shook my head. The idea of resuming the tour in a carefree manner felt…wrong. “What if we simply sightsee and spend these last days together before we embark on the Olympic? Surely, Will and Antonio could fill our days.”

  “I agree,” Andrew said, still behind his paper.

  Felix shot me a wry grin at the improbability of Andrew agreeing with anything I would say. I bit into my croissant.

  “I’m not saying we stop our touring,” Felix said. “During the day. But at night… At night, there is yet another side of Roma for us to get to know.”

  I shifted through the envelopes a footman handed to me and spotted a rich cream-colored envelope. “It appears we’ve received an invitation,” I said, handing it to Felix.

  “Excellent,” he said, using his table knife to slice it open.

  “And?” Hugh said, waiting for Felix to read it to him.

  “Are you two men,” Andrew said in disgust, folding his paper and rising, “or silly girls, waiting for the next invitation to the dance?”

  Felix and Hugh shared a look.

  “Um…yes,” Felix said, with a straight face.

  Andrew rolled his eyes and exited the room without a further word.

  Felix tossed the card to Hugh. “Francesco Botticelli,” he said, “the owner of La Repubblica.”

  “Oh, yes,” Hugh said in satisfaction. “It will be a most excellent party. Just the thing to shake us out of our grim doldrums.”

  “Don’t you think it’s too soon?” I asked. “After Father’s death? Is it even appropriate?”

  “No one follows the old rules,” Felix said. “And it’s time this family had a little fun.”

  I lifted the newspaper that Andrew had left behind. It was a French paper, dated three days prior, one of ten different papers on the table. I hadn’t realized that Andrew spoke French, and then I wondered if he’d simply been paging through, trying to avoid us. I found myself doing the same, after so long on our journey—scanning the foreign press in an effort to gather some word of home or the world that I’d understand. I paged through the section and was folding it to set aside, when I paused and backed up a page.

  There was a picture of Pierre de Richelieu in front of the Coliseum.

  He was already here. But why ha
d he not made contact? Was he waiting for me to reach out to him? Or just for the right moment to appear?

  “Cora?” Will asked. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to casually fold the paper and set it aside.

  But he was watching me so carefully that he guessed I was trying to hide something. Slowly, he reached for the paper and quickly found what I had.

  “So,” Will said, setting down the paper, “he’s here.”

  Felix and Hugh exchanged a look, rose, and excused themselves, clearly sensing the tension between us. We were alone in the breakfast room at last.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Hasn’t it?” he asked, squinting at me. “Then why hide the picture?”

  “I…Will, I knew this would be awkward. I was simply surprised.”

  He shoved back from the table, rose, and walked to the window, hands on hips. After a long moment, he looked at me over his shoulder. “Have you seen him?”

  I blinked. “Seen…Pierre?”

  “Yes,” he said, turning to face me. “Have you seen him?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “You’ve been with me every day since we arrived. Our days have been full. And why would I want to see him? In secret?”

  “I don’t know, Cora. Would there be a reason? Is there a reason he’s here, other than that he doubts our love?”

  I felt the heated flush of anger. “If he doubts it, then he must be sensing your doubt,” I said, rising. “Not mine.”

  “So I won’t find a paper with your picture in it, an article by Jefferson or Lexington detailing your covert romance in Rome.”

  I stared at him in mute fury. Then I turned to leave. I was too angry. I’d say something I regretted just as certainly as he’d just said something he’d regret. Or, at least, he should regret.

  “Wait, Cora,” he called, sounding sick and frustrated.

  But I ignored him. Because for the first time in a long time, I wanted a good distance between us.

  Cora

  After an afternoon touring the behemoth St. Peter’s basilica and an hour standing beneath the glorious Sistine Chapel dome, I was glad to return to our quarters. I had hoped that some makeup might disguise how exhausted I felt, but my black evening dress made me look all the more drawn. My stomach and nagging sense of weakness was better, but not entirely gone. And every time I thought of Will and our argument, I felt worse.

  “As fun as this is,” I said to Vivian, who was sitting across from me, next to Andrew, as we traveled to the party, “I confess I’m beginning to dream of our staterooms aboard the Olympic and a long, quiet voyage home.”

  “I can’t stop thinking about home,” Lillian said. She swallowed hard. “I really don’t think I can stop thinking about Father until we get him buried, back home.”

  I nodded and looked outside the motorcar. Gas lamps cast a warm golden glow on ancient buildings deep in shadow. Rome felt more like a stage to me, I decided, than a city. And I the actress with all sorts of ill-fitting roles. The newest socialite. The grief-stricken daughter. The suffragette. The woman in love with the wrong man. The gowns, the parties all were becoming more familiar to me, not nearly as frightening as when I began the tour, but they still didn’t feel like the right place for me. Who I really was. These parties were all so much about being seen, about making a statement, desperate stabs at creating some idle identity. To me, it all felt desperately hollow. What was the point? Did we all not have so much more to occupy our minds and hearts?

  Lillian was crying again, quietly sniffling, and digging for her compact to powder her face repeatedly. All of it combined made me want to call for the driver to pull over so I could run. But my days of running were over. Like it or not, I was tied to this family. And I would not put them through any further grief.

  CHAPTER 23

  William

  The party was extraordinarily lovely, under wide Roman pines spreading their umbrellas of branches above the party attendees and littering the grass beneath their feet with needles and cones. The night was sultry, warm and thick with the scent of pines and sage, and the wine and champagne were plentiful.

  But it all felt so wrong. Not simply because he and Cora had quarreled. Because it was all too soon after Wallace’s death. How had he allowed Hugh and Felix to convince them to come? Even those two seemed false in their frivolity, forced, as if determined to make it work.

  Will leaned against a marble balustrade, drinking, alternately agitated and feeling the dark surrounding him, blanketing him, surrounding him, entering him. Cora had immediately been pulled into one circle and then another, everyone eager to meet the new American heiress who had captured so many headlines. He’d seen her look for him once or twice, but each time, someone new engaged her in conversation and he was apparently forgotten.

  Terrible thoughts entered his mind.

  She was slipping away… Her involvement with her family and their enterprise would not leave him any room… She thought them more important than she thought of him—she always had… She never was committed to him—a part of her still fancied Pierre de Richelieu.

  “I never thought of you as a tortured soul before tonight,” Eleonora said, suddenly beside him. Her scent wafted past him, over him, like a delicate net.

  “Why, Eleonora!” he said with surprise, turning toward her and giving her a kiss on each cheek. “I’m so glad to see a friend. What brought you to Roma?”

  “Francesco’s party,” she said, lifting a goblet. “Since I supplied the wine, he felt obligated to invite me.”

  “Nonsense,” Will said, smiling down at her. “You clearly belong here. And now I know why the wine is so good.” He lifted his goblet and gave her a quick glance as she turned away to survey the party. She wore a gown of cream, which made her skin seem exotic, olive and lustrous. Her hair was pinned up in a sophisticated knot that allowed some tendrils to dance against her neck.

  She smiled back at him, the dimple in her cheek deepening. She looped her arm through his, turning him to look upon the city instead of at her, as a true friend would. “Francesco has one of the finest views of the city. If you had to leave Villa Masoni, at least you’re seeing vistas such as this.”

  They stood side by side, staring outward. “I guess there are perks to being a newspaper magnate,” Will said.

  “I suppose you are right. Perhaps I ought to forego my vast investments in the vineyard and try my hand at newspapering,” she said.

  “I think you could do anything,” he said, looking down at her. He meant it. He’d watched her with her workers. Her neighbors. Her friends. And in every interaction, he so admired what he saw. “How is it, Eleonora,” he said gently, feeling the heady buzz of the wine on an empty stomach, “that no man has yet claimed your heart?”

  She gave him another shy smile and sighed. “There are not many in Italy who care to be with a widow who keeps her own counsel. Her own business, enterprise.”

  “Then they have missed a treasure.” Will swallowed hard, knowing he’d said too much. What was he doing, speaking in such a way to anyone but Cora? And yet, how could he stay silent? Eleonora was beautiful. Passionate. Compassionate. Why were the fools not leaping at the chance to be with her?

  He glanced behind them, over at the dance floor. “Have you danced tonight, Eleonora?”

  “No, no,” she said lightly, as if it didn’t matter.

  He frowned. “Would you care to dance with me?”

  She laughed under her breath, and her white teeth flashed. “If you insist, Mr. McCabe.”

  He smiled and pulled her toward the dance floor—a wide stone patio surrounded by the soft brush of lavender and crisscrossed above with strings of lightbulbs. It reminded him of something else… It came to him, then. The dance floor in England, the first time he’d danced with Cora. His eyes searched for her and found her on a patio slightly elevated above the one where people were dancing. She hadn’t spotted him yet with Eleonora.
She was engrossed in conversation with…

  Pierre de Richelieu.

  Will’s fists clenched, and he took a step forward, unable to believe his eyes. Cora was smiling, listening as Pierre said something to her and then to the reporter beside her. Lexington. The man had a notebook out and was furiously scribbling down notes as Pierre gestured in the air and then casually let his hand rest between Cora’s shoulder blades.

  Woodenly, Will turned from them and back to Eleonora, forcing a smile to his face. There wasn’t any reason why he shouldn’t dance with her, he reasoned. He needed to dance with her, to get his mind off his blind jealousy. But as the orchestra finished a fox trot and turned to a slow, elegant waltz, he paused and frowned, feeling a jolt of warning.

  He ignored it. He couldn’t leave Eleonora stranded now. It would be rude. Besides, a part of him hoped Cora would see them together. Feel the pain he’d just experienced himself.

  He bowed to Eleonora and lifted his hand, casting aside his doubt.

  She smiled and gave him a small curtsy, and then she was in his arms. She felt different from Cora, more stout across the shoulders, the hint of a greater curve at the hip beneath his hand, but about the same height. It pained him, feeling the longing within Eleonora, her need for love, companionship. Surely there was some good fellow here in Rome, even at this very party, who would make a great husband for her…

  Cora

  I managed to excuse myself from Pierre and our host, madly seeking Will out, knowing he’d misconstrue things if he saw us together. I looked up and saw the outline of the Roman pines against a starry sky and, down below, dancers flowing across the floor. In the distance, the lights of Rome cast a warm glow across the city, illuminating points like Saint Peter’s and the Coliseum.

  “Heavens, it’s beautiful,” I said to Hugh as I joined him on the stairs.

  “Indeed. But no one will have eyes for the city with you in view.”

  I smiled at his idle flirtation. There was none of the predatory tone to his voice that had once made me leery of him. Only genuine admiration. “Thank you, Hugh.”