“You wish to be a burden upon our household until your dotage?” asked her aunt.
No, Jane wanted to scream. What she wanted was to be accepted by her family for who she was—what she was. To be loved. But she no longer hoped for such things. Experience had taught her not to expect them. Even her own dear mother had found her too abnormal to love. Her father had ignored her because she wasn’t a son. Now she sought only freedom for herself and Emma.
“I sensed no attraction between us,” Jane murmured almost to herself.
Her aunt’s brows slammed together. “I thought you didn’t know him.”
A vision of the man from the tent—naked, engaging in carnal activity with an unknown woman—crept into her mind and was instantly banished.
“Only the barest facts. He’s a libertine, isn’t he?” Jane hazarded.
Izabel shrugged. “Should he prove so, as his wife you will be perfectly situated to influence him into curbing his ways.”
“He doesn’t strike me as a man easily influenced.”
“Again, you show the lie in your claim to be unacquainted with him,” said her aunt.
Her father frowned, appearing to suddenly awaken from a trance. “Is there some reason Satyr presses for this marriage?”
“Presses?” Jane echoed.
“He asks for a wedding within days,” her aunt informed her.
“Have you been meeting him on the sly?” her father barked. His eyes fell to Jane’s slim waist, and his hand fisted around his table knife upon which was speared a piece of venison.
Jane leaped to her feet and threw her napkin to the table. “No! I simply cannot accept him, and certainly not so soon.”
Her aunt rose more slowly. “You most certainly shall accept him, or it will go ill for you.”
“Now, Izzy,” her father chimed in, belatedly attempting to calm the waters. He flapped his hands, birdlike, in an up-and-down motion indicating they should be seated. Izabel sank to her chair, and Jane followed suit.
“What’s your objection to Satyr?” he asked Jane.
“I know nothing about him!” she very nearly shouted. “What are his habits, his conversation, his reason for wanting to wed me? Too many things to enumerate.”
Her aunt’s palm slammed the table, making the silver rattle. “Goose. What does it matter? As his wife, you will join one of the wealthiest families in Italy.” Her tone altered. “But I won’t force you. If you prefer to take Signore Nesta to husband, then so be it.”
“N—Nesta?” Instantly Jane saw new merit in Lord Satyr’s proposal.
“Are you a magpie? You must know he wants you,” said her aunt. “Don’t you desire a home of your own? A family of your own?”
Jane recalled that Lord Satyr had brothers who lived in proximity to him. Did they have families? Would the extended Satyr clan provide Emma and her with the welcome and acceptance their current situation lacked? He was wealthy, her aunt had said. Emma would have fine clothes, schooling. Safety.
Her heart clenched. She would do anything to keep her sister from harm. Anything. Even this.
“All right,” Jane said quietly. “If I must marry, I’ll have Lord Satyr. If he is serious. But—”
“There’s nothing more to discuss on the matter,” said Izabel.
Jane rushed on. “But I will only agree to wed him if you and father will allow Emma to come and live with me in his home.”
Without consulting Jane’s father, Izabel gave a curt nod. It was painfully obvious who now made the decisions concerning the girls’ futures. “We will inform Lord Satyr of your consent.”
7
A few days later, Jane sat hunched over her aunt’s delicate French writing desk, attempting to read the document before her. Strong emotions blasted in her direction from every side.
From the upholstered sofa came Izabel’s determined anxiety and her father’s belligerent suspicion. From the chaise opposite the desk, the attorney’s speculation. And from the man sitting with his back to the window, a hum of something indefinable.
Jane glanced toward the mauve shadows of her aunt’s study where her would-be husband lounged, observing them all with those shocking blue eyes.
Why didn’t he speak?
“Maybe he has mistaken you for someone else,” Emma had suggested when Jane had told her the news of his offer. “Imagine his embarrassment if he comes calling and discovers his fiancée isn’t the correct one!”
But Lord Satyr had made no such demur upon seeing her when he’d arrived that morning.
Her eyes dropped to the sheaf of papers that had earlier been thrust under her nose by his attorney. It was impossible to comprehend the words on them while everyone in the room scrutinized her with such rapt attention.
The attorney inched the papers closer to her hand in an unsubtle attempt to coax her into signing.
“Will you explain this to me?” she asked him, tapping a particular codicil with her pen nib. Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet room.
“It’s your marriage contract. You are to sign here,” he replied, indicating a blank area on the final page.
Did he think her witless?
“May I take a private moment to study it?” she asked.
Her aunt tittered nervously. “Don’t be absurd, Jane. That could take all morning. And Lord Satyr might mistake it to mean you distrust him. Sign your name and be done with it.”
Jane sensed a restive movement in the shadows. A man rose from the chair. The man from the tent. The one who wished to marry her. Lord Nicholas Satyr.
“Don’t concern yourself, my lord, she will sign,” Izabel cooed prettily. But when she turned to her niece, her eyes were frosted slits. “Won’t you, Jane?”
“I would speak to Signorina Cova in private,” said Lord Satyr. The low rumble of his velvet voice caressed Jane’s nerve endings, causing the pen in her hand to tremble.
“Certainly, signore,” said Izabel, leaping to her feet. She tugged Jane’s father toward the door.
The attorney tossed her an encouraging wink as he ushered himself out, hard on their heels, folding the double doors shut behind them.
Jane stared after the trio, appalled. Her aunt knew the impropriety of leaving an unmarried female in the sole company of a gentleman. What was she thinking?
She turned to find Lord Satyr inspecting her.
“No pipe?” he asked, his lips curving slightly.
It took her a second to comprehend his meaning. The corncob pipe from her gypsy fortune-teller costume, he meant. So he had seen through her disguise.
She shrugged. “The occasion didn’t seem to call for it.”
His smile broadened.
He was extremely handsome, even more so than she remembered, if that were possible. Emma would think him a knight in, well, a dark waistcoat. Now that she studied the coat at close range, Jane saw that it bore a black-on-black design depicting bizarre beasts with tails and wings intertwined with vines and flourishes. On another man it might have looked outlandish, but somehow the peculiar coat served only to accentuate his masculinity.
Nick noted and accepted her interest in his form as useful. Some thought him vain, he knew. But one couldn’t live to nearly thirty years of