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“The playwrights—”
“Need not concern us. Are you suggesting that you should marry a shameless woman who writes for the stage? A scribbling bawd?”
“She need not write for the stage! As my wife she will—”
“She cannot be your wife, my son.”
“I can support a wife.”
“Not in the style that anyone would wish for you. But in any case, she is not my choice. She is completely unsuitable.” She lifted her veil and drank her coffee. He had to curb the rise of his temper.
“Forgive me, Nobildonna, but she is the daughter of a good family in Venice, and the granddaughter of my foster mother. She cannot be completely unsuitable.”
She touched her mouth with a black-bordered handkerchief. “I shall speak to you frankly,” she said simply. “Her father, Felipe Russo, was the steward of my late husband Signor Fiori. A well-known thief. He stole from the prince’s antiquities collection.”
Matthew gaped in horror. “No!”
“He had access to all the house—” She raised the handkerchief to her eyes. “I was a young widow. The very night that my first husband, the prince, died… Felipe Russo ravished me.”
She had knocked the breath out of him like a blow. He glanced around, terrified that someone would hear of her shame. “He forced you?”
“I could do nothing. I struggled in vain… He overpowered me.”
“Lady Mother! Mother!”
She nodded, her face half-hidden by the handkerchief. “I never wanted you to know. But now I see that I must sacrifice my pride for your safety. You cannot marry Felipe Russo’s daughter, either one of his daughters, because he is a rapist, and she may be your half sister.”
Matthew felt sick; he reached for the cup of coffee and downed it in one gulp. At once it surged back up into his mouth and he coughed and fought the need to spit. “Forgive me,” he said, making himselfswallow, choking on rage and horror at what he was hearing. “It cannot be so!”
“You think Sarah, his wife, might have played him false?” his mother considered. “She was a very forward young woman, and Alys, her mother, gave her no guidance. But there’s no way of knowing. Safer by far to assume the girls are your half sisters.”
“No!” he yelped. “I don’t suggest for a moment… I only meant… this is unbelievable!”
She put her silk-gloved hand over his. “I know. We will never speak of this again. Only a mother’s love would force me to admit my shame.”
“Why did you not denounce him?”
She shook her head. “Who would believe me? A young widow and her husband’s handsome young steward? The Fiori family would have accused me of stealing the antiquities myself, and seducing the thief.”
“But how could you bear to meet Gabrielle or Mia? Why didn’t you tell Ma Alys as soon as you came to London? She’d never have let her daughter, Sarah, marry a man like…”
She shrugged and tucked her handkerchief in her black sable muff. “How could I speak without destroying you? How could I name you—an innocent baby—as the bastard of my royal husband’s steward? And again—who would have believed my word against Felipe Russo? Sarah Stoney was besotted with him, together they had released Rob Reekie from imprisonment. They came to England in triumph, as heroes! How could I stand against that noisy joy and say—no! no!—he is the wickedest of criminals?”
“You met him afterwards?” he asked in horror. “You saw him, when they came home? Uncle Rob was in prison?”
“On my wedding day to Sir James,” her voice trembled. “Can you imagine? He came to interrupt my wedding and to ruin my happiness. But he did not dare to confess what he had done. And what could I say before Sir James and them all? What could I possibly say that would not have led to dreadful violence, terrible grief? It was a tragedy in the making.”
Matthew felt it was a tragedy fully made. “I am dishonored,” he said. “A child of a rape.”
She nodded, her dark eyes filled with tears, fixed on his young face.
“Nobody can ever know,” he said slowly, realizing that he would never be able to share this burden, not even with the young woman he loved. “I can’t tell anyone, least of all Mia or Gabrielle.”
“No one,” she said. “You cannot tell the girls that their father is a vile rapist. It would destroy them. You should never tell the world that you do not know your own father. And you can never tell a soul of the stain on my honor. The shocking stain of violence on my pure honor.”
“I should punish him?” He searched for a sense of outrage as preferable to his sick sense of shock. “I should go to Venice and challenge him?”
She pressed his hand. “That would only expose and shame us all. You and me—the innocent victims, and the other innocents: his poor sons; his poor daughters, dear Mia and Gabrielle; his innocent wife, Sarah, even his mother-in-law—your foster mother, poor Alys! I have held this secret to my heart for years, to protect all of them and you. Now I share the burden. And you will keep it with me.”
