• • •
WHEN THEY HAD dropped Mary Augustin off at the New Amsterdam to return to Sister Xavier’s room, Jack motioned for her to come sit next to him on the front bench. Anna hesitated for just a moment. Under other circumstances she would have gone inside to check on her patients, but it was her day off, after all, and Jack was leaving.
Even on Sunday afternoon there was a good amount of traffic, and they were quiet as Jack negotiated the way south on Broadway. He would have to return the borrowed surrey to the police stables, and then what? She hated the nervous fluttering in her stomach, the wondering what he had in mind. Most likely he would take her home and then go home himself to get ready for his trip.
With that thought still in her head she put her hand on the bench between them and then shivered when he covered it with his own.
• • •
IT WAS FIVE by the time they were free of the surrey, and then they stood for a moment in the tumult that was the corner of Mulberry and Prince Streets. Across from the police headquarters was an unbroken line of taverns and dance halls and theaters, cheek and jowl with oyster saloons and stale beer joints. She had once wondered how they could stay in business under the nose of the law, but from Jack she understood that this was nothing out of the usual. The beer would cost a penny more, and all those accumulated pennies would end up in the pocket of a roundsman and the superiors who had perfected the art of looking the other way, so long as they got appropriate recompense.
They had walked back to Waverly Place from this very spot more than once, but now Jack hailed a cab. Anna kept her confusion to herself; he never did anything without a well-thought-out reason that he was willing to talk about, if she asked. And this time she was afraid to ask because she suspected that they weren’t going to Waverly Place at all.
Jack helped her up and then went to talk to the cabby. In the span of ten seconds or so it took to give the man directions, Anna reminded herself of her age, education, sensible disposition, and ability to make responsible decisions, and the fact that she wanted to go with Jack, wherever it was he was taking her. To his home, was her guess. She had never even seen the house, but not for lack of trying. The first time she had found a reason to walk past Mezzanotte Brothers Florists after he had explained to her exactly where he lived, she realized that only the very front, the shop itself, could be seen from the street. Everything else was hidden behind a high brick wall interrupted by recessed doors painted a deep glossy green.
Anna wondered if the power of speech had left her permanently, then realized that Jack was just as quiet. He held her hand in the cab, one finger tracing back and forth across her wrist very gently. The nerves of the wrist, Anna reminded herself. She could name them all and still she had had no idea that such a simple touch could be so engrossing. Even while this thought came to her, Jack opened the buttons on her jacket cuff with a shocking nimbleness.
She heard herself make a low sound, a clicking in the back of her throat while his fingers moved over wrist and forearm with a fine rasping touch. When he let her go Anna was breathing fast and the pulse at the base of her throat echoed like a drumroll.
Jack said, “We’re here. I can ask the cabby to take us back to Waverly Place, if you’re uncertain.”
“Don’t you dare.” Her voice was a little creaky, but she managed a small smile.
• • •
THE SHOP WAS closed on a late Sunday afternoon, but he used a key to open the door and took her through to the greenhouses, stopping to name plants and flowers, bending down to examine a leaf or break off a bud to show her. Anna breathed as deeply as she could to slow her pulse. She tried to ask intelligent questions and sometimes succeeded. A rose that originated in France in 1820, how exactly did they know that? He answered, and she immediately forgot.
Jack was in no hurry. He held her hand, never giving up the soft stroking of her wrist and palm that made her fingers jerk. Anna forced herself to concentrate.
“It’s very quiet here, considering how close we are to Union Square. Peaceful.”
Somehow it was the right thing to say, or maybe the wrong thing. He was studying her face now, and his expression was not hard to interpret.
She said, “You’re the one who isn’t sure.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” He used both hands to cup her face and tilt it up so that he could kiss her. His hands and his mouth and nothing else, at this moment, and that was enough. For a long minute they were satisfied with the soft warm suckling and then Jack dropped one hand to press it to the small of her back.
Against the corner of her mouth he said, “Would you like to see the workrooms too? Or I can show you the house right now. If you like.”
They left the greenhouses by a back exit that opened onto a narrow path paved with flagstones. An overarching arbor was dense with deep green foliage and flowers as white and round and flat as a plate. Another time she might have asked for a name to pass on to Mr. Lee, but the capacity for speech had left her.
Jack started to say something and then stopped, his head canting sharply toward the far end of the passageway and the green door in the perimeter wall, small with a rounded top. As it swung open a conversation came to them. Two women, speaking Italian. Jack closed his eyes and shook his head in obvious disbelief and frustration.
The women stopped where they were, as surprised to see Jack as he was to see them.
“Anna,” he said. “Let me introduce you to my sisters. Just returned from New Jersey. Without notice.”
16
ANNA HAD HEARD enough about Jack’s sisters to be able to tell Bambina from Celestina. Bambina was the youngest, but her gaze was sharp and unflinching, while Celestina was confused and struggled to make sense of the unexpected sight of her brother with a woman.
The introductions were short and to the point, and then Jack disappeared to carry luggage into the house while his sisters made soft exclamations of pleasure: Such an honor, please join us, coffee, cake?
Celestina showed her into the parlor, excused herself, and disappeared down the hall to what Anna assumed was the kitchen, leaving her alone for the moment. By rights she should have found someplace to sit and stayed there with her hands folded in her lap, but curiosity was a powerful thing. She was calmer now than she had been a half hour ago when she thought the evening would end very differently. More than that, she was enjoying herself, as long as she didn’t think too hard about what Jack Mezzanotte might be telling his sisters. That’s Anna, she imagined him saying. A heathen. Unsuited to housework, clever with only one kind of needle. Overeducated, stubborn, an advocate for rational dress, women’s education, birth control, orphans, and the poor.
She got up to explore after all.
• • •
WHILE HIS SISTERS made coffee and cut up the cake they had brought with them from home and lamented the lack of anything more substantial to offer their guest, Jack did his best to hide his irritation and answer their questions—very reasonable questions—with calm certainty. It was Bambina—it was always Bambina—who spoke the question he had been waiting for.
“Who is this Miss Savard to you?”
Jack considered. He would let Anna tell them that she was not a Miss, but the crux of the question was his to answer. On the promenade of the new bridge he had been glib, a mistake he would not make here. Nor would he be coy or dismissive or anything but honest. Anything else would be disrespectful to Anna and to his sisters and by extension, his parents as well.
They had paused their work to wait for his answer. Bambina studied him as she would a dropped stitch, weighing alternative approaches to get the solution she desired. Round faced, full in the chest and hips, she struck most people as the matronly type, which was a serious miscalculation. Many shopkeepers who had thought she was too dull to notice a miscalculation in cost had learned differently. And now she wanted to know about Anna.
; They had gotten the tea cart ready, and he opened the door so it could be pushed into the hall.
“I’m going to marry her.” It was the easiest, truest thing he could think to say.
• • •
ANNA WALKED THE perimeter of the parlor, a large, square room with a Dutch oven tiled in blue and white in one corner, and what looked to be an embroidery frame beside it, the same dimensions as a baby’s cradle. Wainscoting ran all the way around the room, the ledge crowded with cabinet cards and small watercolor paintings, bits of very old lace and pressed flowers preserved behind glass, china birds with gilt-edged wings and a trio of dogs carved from yellowing ivory. On the low table in the middle of the room topped with a lace tablecloth was a huge earthenware crock that was bursting with flowers, exuberant and unconstrained by the current fashions.
At the center were a half-dozen white roses with the vaguest hint of pink along the edge of the petals. The sight of La Dame Dorée gave her a jolt, though she should have remembered that they would be grown here. At home she had a small spray of the same rose pressed between the pages of an anatomy text where no one was likely to come across it. Except she herself. Every few days she opened it, and the lingering scent brought those few minutes in the courtyard outside Alva Vanderbilt’s kitchen back in bright detail.
She forced herself to concentrate on her study of the parlor where nothing made of fabric—the draperies, the tablecloths, the bolsters and pillows and the deep armchair by the fire—had evaded the embroiderer’s needle. Margaret would be able to tell her about the stitching, but to Anna’s eye much of it looked like silk laid down, thread by thread, with precision.
She heard the sisters talking in the hall in a quick, vaguely agitated Italian, pausing to listen to Jack’s calm, slow answers only to interrupt with more questions, all of this undercut by the squeak of a tea cart’s wheels. Anna sat down abruptly on a horsehair sofa heaped with pillows, each embroidered with—she had to look twice to be sure—some kind of barn animal. She pulled a sheep with a stalk of lavender in its jaws into her lap. She had the sudden urge to march into the hall and announce that she could cook. Not that she had any interest in cooking, she might have to admit. But she had been trained because Aunt Quinlan was adamant: everyone, man and woman, should be able to feed themselves when necessary.
Celestina came through first with Bambina close behind and then Jack pushing the tea cart. There was a plate of cake and cups and saucers, sugar and cream and a coffee carafe.
“Brought from home,” Celestina told her when she saw Anna looking.
It was comforting to realize that they were as nervous as she was. She stood up to greet them again, and together they came to stand in front of Anna as if this were a complex dance they had been studying for years, waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate their graceful mastery of the footwork.
Celestina put her hands on Anna’s upper arms and then leaned forward to kiss her on one cheek and then the other. “You are going to be our sister. We are so pleased.”
• • •
JACK KNEW IT would be very bad form to laugh out loud, but he couldn’t help smiling. Anna looked in that moment like a girl. Her color was high and her eyes darted from Celestina to Bambina to Jack, where they stayed. He saw her draw in a deep breath and compose herself, draw all the dignity she could muster around herself like armor, and then she smiled at Celestina and Bambina in turn.
“Yes,” she said. “It seems that I am.”
• • •
ANNA CONTEMPLATED THE best way to kill Jack, or at least to make him sorry that he had called all this down on her head with no warning. While his sisters asked questions without pause and she answered the ones she could, she tried to convince herself that she had no grounds for anger. He knew how best to handle his own sisters. She hoped he did. The fact that he had never uttered the word marriage to her was irrelevant; it was marriage that they had been talking about, and it would be silly to claim otherwise.
The things she admitted to not knowing were many: they had no specific date in mind, they hadn’t discussed a ceremony, she doubted that they would want a large wedding but it was something still to be decided; she did not, in fact, have a chest of wedding linen.
This seemed to surprise and unsettle them more than anything else.
“Is that a custom in Italy?” Anna asked.
“It is a custom everywhere,” Bambina said. “We often embroider linen for young women even before they know if they will ever marry.”
Anna managed a small smile. “I haven’t had much experience with weddings, but my cousin will be getting married next month and it will be good practice for me, watching the preparations.”
Jack was giving her a doubtful look. He knew her too well to buy what she was selling; she would never take time away from her work to make wedding arrangements. Before he could challenge her—in front of his sisters, no less—she sidestepped his objection.
“I hope I can count on you,” she said to his sisters. “To guide me in this. I have so little experience, and I am very busy with my work.”
That she had work at all was another surprise to Bambina and Celestina, one that struck them so forcefully that even Bambina sat speechless for a moment when Anna had explained her work.
“A surgeon?” Celestina said finally. “How unusual.”
Jack stood up. “Bambina, do you want to show Anna your linen chest, since she’s unfamiliar with the custom?”
He was up to something, but Anna saw no option and so she let herself be shown upstairs. She cast Jack a baleful glance, and got nothing more than a grin and a shrug in return.
• • •
IT WAS ALMOST eight before Anna could convince Jack’s sisters that she had to get home. Celestina extracted a half-dozen promises before Anna reached the door. As soon as they were out of sight Anna stopped and turned to him.
“Don’t yell at me,” he said. “I had no idea they were on the way back.”
She tapped her foot and waited.
“I would have handled it better with more warning,” he went on. “Just how mad are you?”
“Not so much mad,” she admitted.
“Really?” He was studying her face.
Very odd, Anna thought. He looked almost guilty.
“Maybe I should be mad. You’re up to something,” she said. “You asked Bambina to show me her linen chest to get us all out of the parlor. Admit it.”
Instead of answering, he pulled her into one of the recessed doorways and produced a very large, old-fashioned key from his pocket.
She said, “Ah, that was why you needed to distract them. You stole the key to your own greenhouse.”
“It’s mine as much as theirs,” Jack said as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. “No thievery required.”
“Then why not just say—”
He took her wrist and pulled her after him, shut the door behind them, and locked it.
Then he smiled down at her. “You told my sisters you were going to marry me.”
Anna commanded herself not to blush. “As you heard.”
“I think that’s something we need to talk about.”
“Certainly. As soon as you get back from Chicago.”
She saw now that they were standing in a workroom in a narrow corridor that ran between long wooden tables all laid out with gardening tools, trays of terra-cotta pots, neatly labeled bins and barrels, and stacks of buckets.
“I can’t wait that long,” Jack said. He stepped over a coiled canvas hose and Anna followed him, let herself be drawn along through the dim workroom, laughing at the absurdity of it all.
He looked at her over his shoulder. “Something funny?”
Anna said, “Did you realize that the minute they got me upstairs they started undressing me—”
He jerked around to look at her.
“They wanted to look at the construction of my skirts. My split skirts? You did realize—”
Jack laughed. “I realized. I have given your skirts quite a lot of thought.”
They came to a sudden stop in front of another door, this one so low that Jack had to duck to get through it.
On the other side was a small room such as a groundskeeper would have for his own use. A standing desk in one corner, two chairs and a small table in the other, a bookcase filled with ledgers and manuals and catalogs, and under a single window where a white curtain rose and fell in the evening breeze a bed, neatly made. The pillowcases were edged with lace and embroidered; more of his sisters’ work.
“Whose room is this?”
“Nobody’s, now. My cousin Umberto lived here before he married.”
Anna crossed the room. “The house is right there. And why is this window open?”
“You would make a good detective,” Jack said dryly. “It was musty, so I opened it earlier today.”
“You had this planned.”
“I didn’t plan on my sisters. This room was in case you were uncomfortable in the house.”
“Your sisters would be shocked. I should be shocked.” But she wasn’t, and couldn’t hide the fact.
“You don’t need to worry, their rooms are on the other side of the house from here.”
“Hmmm,” Anna said. “Can I trust you on that?”
“You can trust me on everything. Anything.” He paused. “Almost anything.” He backed her up against the closed door and leaned in, his hands to either side of her head.
“But—”
He interrupted her. “Do you really want to be talking about my sisters just now?”
• • •
A FEW MINUTES later when he let her go Anna realized she had been robbed. Her mind was blank, emptied of common sense and reason both. And they were sitting on the edge of the bed.