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“It’s as if she were upstairs,” he said. “Even now, months after her going, I never feel her absence, I always feel as if she’s just in the next room.”
Gabrielle smiled. “She would say that she was,” she said. “Through a doorway that we can’t see.”
Hester was excitedly greeting her cousins and showing them the gifts that were being unloaded from the trunk of the Reekie carriage.
“Hester!” Julia said quietly. “My head!”
At once the girl fell silent, and Alys invited Julia into the parlor for hot chocolate. Rob and Captain Shore went to the library for a glass of wine, and the girls and Matthew were left before the hall fire.
Mia unwound the scarf from her neck and tossed her muff on a chair. “So nice to be here,” she said, smiling at Matthew.
The maid who had been serving in the parlor came and dropped a curtsey to Hester. “Your ma says you’re to take her reticule.”
“Oh! I’ll come at once.” Hester hurried to the parlor, limping slightly on her raised shoe.
“That woman!” Mia said. “Christmas Eve, but anyway she orders Hester around like—”
“I wanted to talk to you both,” Matthew said. He leaned on the mantelpiece and looked down into the fire. “I have to say something.”
“What is it?” Gabrielle asked him. “Is it the Nobildonna?”
“No!” He said it so quickly that she knew at once that his mother was interfering in his life. Mia waited hopefully, her dark eyes on his face.
“I have grown very fond of you both,” he said.
The dawning of Mia’s smile showed that she thought this was to be a proposal of marriage. She rose from her chair and stood beside him, readying herself to respond. Gabrielle remained seated, watching the two of them.
“I had hoped to ask you, Mia, to be my wife.” Quickly, he glanced at her and then looked away again.
“Yes?” Mia said, encouraging him to ask.
Gabrielle found she was holding her hands tightly in her lap, knowing that something was very wrong. “But you are not proposing?”
Mia threw an angry glance at her.
“He’s not,” Gabrielle told her gently.
“I cannot do so,” Matthew said. “It has come to my notice, I understand that… I may not. I cannot.”
“What?” Mia demanded.
He turned from the fire, scowling. “I love you,” he declared to her. “But I will have to love you—both—as sisters.” His glance took in Gabrielle. “I hope that we will always be true friends.”
“Why?” Mia demanded. “What’s happened? Is it my grandmother? Has she said something? Because I can tell her—”
Gabrielle rose to her feet and put her arm around her sister’s waist. “It’s the Nobildonna,” she told Mia. Gravely, she regarded Matthew. “Matthew, what has your mother said?”
He flushed that she knew it was his mother who had stopped him. “She has an objection to your father’s family. I cannot say what it is. From long ago, from Venice. She said that neither he nor she would accept a connection.”
“Like a feud?” Gabrielle asked.
He was grateful to her for quick understanding. “Just like a feud.”
“But this is ridiculous!” Mia exclaimed. “We don’t have to be bound by their quarrels. Their old quarrels!”
Matthew wrenched himself away from the fireplace and headed to the stairs. “I am afraid that we do,” he said, pausing at the foot of the stair. “It is a question of honor. I have no choice. If there was any way that I could, in honor, propose, I would do so. But there was a grave injury, an unforgivable injury, an unforgettable injury—and there can be no reparation.” His hand gripped the newel post, and he spoke to Gabrielle, who was watching him intently, and not to Mia, who stared at him, completely blank. “There can be no explanation either. The injury was private. I am very, very sorry,” he said to Gabrielle. “You know that.”
“I know it,” Gabrielle said quietly.
