“In due time,” he said.
“She cannot have children. Does this not bother you?”
“We will have Isabella,” Jamie said. That time he did not look away. The truth of it grieved Jamie sharply. Nora would have Isabella. He would stop at nothing until he made sure she did. Jamie would have them both while he could.
“You will come to Turin,” the count pronounced.
“No. We will not,” Jamie told him flatly. “As her husband, I will forbid it.”
The count looked at him for a long while and then gave a sharp nod. “Come to see me tomorrow without Mrs. Haley. I have business to discuss,” he said.
Chapter Nineteen
The garden at Santo Spirito glistened green and gold in the sun as always, but Isabella’s face didn’t light up at the sight of Nora. She threw herself into her aunt’s arms and sobbed inconsolably. Nora looked up at the young nun who had escorted her to the garden for their daily visit and raised her brows in question.
The sister gestured helplessly and spoke in rapid Italian. Nora shook her head. She understood none of what the young woman said and only one word in Isabella’s incoherent tirade.
“Bambola?” she asked. “Doll?”
The sister pursed her lips, groping for the word. “Um, lost,” she managed.
“Sister Cecilia says it is nothing,” Isabella sobbed in English, her little body rigid with outrage. “She called ituna piccola cosa—a small thing.” Her face crumpled, and she threw herself back on Nora’s shoulder. “My Marietta!” she wailed.
Nora took the little face in her hands and wiped away the tears with her thumbs. “Tell me what happened. Tell me all of it.”
“I am allowed a doll. Mother Margarita said it,” the child sniffed. “She sleeps in my bed every night.”
“What happened today?” Nora urged.
Isabella’s face twisted up again. “Today I woke up, and Marietta was gone.”
“Did you look for her?” Nora asked.
“I looked everywhere!” The child sounded indignant. “Under the bed, in the place I keep my clothes.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Under Ursula’s bed, too. She wanted my Marietta from the first day.”
“Does Ursula have a doll of her own?” Nora asked.
“Yes, but it is cloth, and its face is painted on,” Isabella told her. Marietta apparently had “real eyes and hair.”
“Marietta is different from other girls’ dolls?”
“Some have none,” the little one said. “They say they are too old, but I think they want a doll. I look under all beds,” Isabella confided. “No Marietta. Sister Cecilia not let me look in the trunks where other girls keep their clothes. She tell me I am selfish.” Nora considered that was the longest speech in English Isabella had ever managed.
Isabella convulsed in sobs again. Nora looked up to see a look of sweet compassion on the face of the young nun.
“Not find,” the sister said sadly with a shrug. She patted Isabella on the back and left them alone.
Did one of the other girls take the doll?Nora could see where a finely dressed, very expensive doll would tempt a child who had none.
She hugged Isabella to her breast. “I want to go home,” the child wailed. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“You won’t have to stay much longer.” Nora hoped that was true.
“Uncle Jamie said we could be together,” Isabella accused. “Where is Uncle Jamie?” The child jerked upright as if she just noticed his absence.
“He has gone to visit your great uncle, the count,” Nora told her. Jamie had insisted he had no idea why the count commanded him to come. Ignorance did little to calm Nora’s fears.
Her anxiety over Castellimonte’s possible actions or motivations accomplished nothing. His words from the night before, however, echoed in her mind. “It will not do to move the child into the home of a single woman,” he had said.
