The Mistress And The Merchant. Juliet Landon
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was a conversation she preferred not to have. Ignoring her parents’ advice to wait, she had come to Sandrock alone to take advantage of the seclusion where the only decisions to be taken concerned the running of the household and gardens and the direction Ben would have wanted her to take in recording his plant collection. Relatives she had aplenty. Relationships she did not want. Especially not from the same quarter as the previous one and its disastrous consequence. And after their short and decisive meeting yesterday, why had this man returned to offer help when she had already made it clear what she felt about that?
Yet look how efficiently he had dealt with the problem of Master Pearce. How comforting it had been to have the Italian merchant there to speak with a man’s authority and without the condescending argument that would surely have followed if she had tackled the man on her own. She knew about merchants. Her cousin Etta was married to one. Hard-dealing, worldly, tough and knowledgeable, and difficult to shake off when they saw something they wanted. So what did the man want? Her trust in men had fallen to rock-bottom since Leon’s departure and his inexplicable change of heart. Now, the appearance of his elder brother, capable, handsome and more mature than he, threatened to disturb the cocoon of pain she had built around herself. With that in place, she could keep everyone out and fuel her reasons not to trust, not to make herself accessible, not to welcome any man’s company for whatever reason. Now it looked as if she was being manoeuvred into accepting him as an assistant, which she knew she needed, right here where they would be obliged to meet on most days. What madness was that?
She sighed, thinking of the effort she would have to make.
‘Madonna,’ he said, gently.
‘What?’ Her head was turned away, trying to avoid seeing him.
‘I understand your problem.’
‘How can you possibly understand?’ she replied. Pushing herself away from the table, she walked to the window to the medley of greens seen through panes of rippling glass. ‘I wanted to be here on my own and now look what’s happened after only a couple of weeks. Anyone would think I’d had no experience of handling estate matters when in fact I’ve assisted my mother for years while Father was away in London. I was sure Sandrock would be the same, that there’d be nothing here I’d not know how to deal with, and now all this nonsense of my neighbour wanting my mill, a dishonest steward and probably much more, for all I know.’
‘Your steward is dishonest?’
‘Oh...’ She shrugged. ‘He’s hiding the accounts from me. I’m assuming...’
‘I’d soon deal with that problem, mistress.’
‘Needing help was never part of my plan. You were not part of my plan either, signor. You are the brother of the man whose deception has cast a blight on my life.’ Aphra was not usually given to dramatics, but now she turned from the window to face him with her arms thrown out wide as if to demonstrate the enormity of her folly.
‘Then try looking at it another way, mistress, if you will.’
‘I don’t want to look at it another way. There isn’t another way.’
‘There is,’ he said, struggling to hide his smile. ‘You simply think of me as your assistant instead of...’
‘You see?’ she yelped. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. Try to forget you are his brother. That’s what you were about to say, isn’t it? As if I could. As if I have not tried and tried to put him out of my thoughts. He was here, in this room, and Ben, too. I see them walking through the doors, in the gardens, the library, the church. They are everywhere and I thought that my being here would help me to lose them at my own pace. Slowly. It was the suddenness,’ she whispered, ‘that was so unfair.’
He nodded in sympathy. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but, you know, in my experience it sometimes happens that what one thinks of at first as a hindrance...’
‘Like you.’
‘...like me, can become quite the opposite if you give it a chance. This situation was not planned by either of us. I thought you’d be living with your parents, not managing this great place on your own. You didn’t know I’d be sent to England to offer some help to the woman my brother loves, but what a folly it would be to refuse that help rather than to make use of it.’
Aphra didn’t move, didn’t want to be persuaded by words that made complete sense. ‘There is something in what you say, signor, except for your brother’s love. That was false, wasn’t it?’
‘No, it was not false,’ he said. ‘Leon has not stopped loving you.’
‘How can you know that?’
‘Because he’s told me so.’
She stared at him, only half-believing, then came back to sit facing him at the table. ‘Let me understand this,’ she said. ‘Yesterday when my father was here, you implied that he was already married when he was here in England.’
‘I said he was not free. He was in fact betrothed when he spoke of marriage to you, mistress, which he had no right to do. A betrothal is binding, as you know.’
‘Then why could he not have said this in his letter? It was garbled. It gave me no indication...’ she spread her hands, helplessly ‘...no facts at all.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘You know? How do you know?’
‘I helped him to write it. He was terribly upset. He asked me to help him.’
‘So it was a family decision, was it? I see.’
‘No, you do not see,’ he said, countering her rising anger with his voice. ‘But there is nothing positive to be gained by delving further into the matter. He is now married at my father’s insistence. Leon’s problem is loving too easily.’
‘Well, thank you for that!’ she said coldly, getting to her feet with a very noisy scraping of the stool on the floor. Her eyes blazed at him, the colour of gunmetal. ‘He loved too easily. How inconvenient for the Datini family. And how many other gullible, love-starved women did he speak of marriage to? Was this a habit of his, this loving too easily? How many other letters did you help him to write, to avoid the unpleasant truth?’ Her voice grew harsh as it rose in anger, her sarcasm wilder, hitting out in all directions.
Santo knew better than to attempt an answer to such questions, knowing that if he waited, she would hear the echo of her tirade and begin to calm down.
Simmering, she crossed her arms over her breast. ‘Loving too easily,’ she muttered. ‘Yes...well, that might be said about me, too. Perhaps we both mistook the signs. I certainly did, but then, what do I know about it? I thought love was like that. Straightforward. Uncomplicated. What a fool I was. Are you and your brother alike in this loving too easily, signor? You have a wife and family in Padua, I suppose?’
‘I am neither married nor betrothed, mistress. Not yet. But when I spoke of my brother loving too easily, I did not mean to imply that he was indiscriminate. I meant that, by nature, his passion for goodness and beauty is highly developed. He feels things deeply, in here.’ He laid a fist upon his chest. ‘And he appeared to believe that he might be released from his obligations if he explained matters to those concerned. But my father is a man to whom honour and loyalty is everything, and he refused to allow it. Leon has been obliged to keep his promises. It’s the law. Our family name carries considerable weight in Venice, you see.’
‘So, a prestigious marriage, then. Arranged, was it? Or a love match? No—’ she lifted a hand ‘—don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I wish her well of him, whoever she is. What a pity he lacks that prized honour and loyalty.’
‘As I said, mistress, he was distraught not to be able to follow his heart. He blames himself for what’s happened and begs you will forgive him.’
‘Then when you return, signor, just remind him of the love he has lost, will you? And tell him how I’m being courted by a wealthy old landowner who