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fear. She doesn’t know half about you that she wants to know.”
    He chuckled. “I could see how stressed you were in her presence,” he noted. “Your mother is a most formidable woman.” He chuckled again.
    “And always has been,” Lucianna told him. “Francesca drove her half mad with her determination to have her own way. She is much like our mother. My sister has now become the noble widow, guarding her son like a tigress and ruling Terreno Boscoso in his name. She will not take another husband, and her council is in firm agreement with her, which has our mother stymied, for she would see Francesca re-wed but cannot stand against the royal council of Terreno Boscoso.”
    “So she will now concentrate upon her other widowed daughter,” he said, smiling.
    “Yes, Santa Anna, help me,” Lucianna admitted with a small smile. “I wish there were a way I could escape her.”
    He said nothing about his conversation with her father. She wished to avoid Orianna’s machinations, but she had said nothing of leaving her beloved Florence. If the silk merchants of Florence could be persuaded to send a representative to London, and she was their chosen one, then her mother might protest, but she could not stop her daughter, for while he knew Lucianna would protest such an assignment, he also knew she would go.
    “Come,” she said to him. “We will walk along the river for a brief distance. The day is fair.”
    “May I interrogate you as your mother would have done to me?” he asked her.
    “I will not guarantee to answer all your questions, my lord,” she told him with a little smile.
    “You wed to please your family,” he said. It was not a query.
    “I did. The economy had made it impossible to have the sort of enormous dower that my two older sisters had. Both Bianca’s and Francesca’s behaviors had made many families wary of seeking my hand. Would I be like my sisters? Independent and determined to have my own way? Alfredo wanted a wife who would take care of him in his old age. He made no secret of it, and he decided a young pretty one would give him more pleasure than a cranky older woman.”
    She laughed. “It was so like him to be direct. He asked my parents for me. They were thoughtful enough to ask me. We met several times, and frankly, I liked him. He was quite forthright with me. He was too old to enjoy conjugal relations, and we would not have them. He wanted to know if I could accept it, and I agreed I could. So we were wed. He was kind to me and generous. I was not unhappy with him.”
    “You do not want passion with a man?” he asked her, curious.
    “I did not want it or believe it possible with a man past eighty,” she told him. “I have been sheltered by my family, as all respectable women are. I have never been in love, but if I were, I should want children with my husband,” she told him.
    “I am relieved to hear it,” he responded. She was a virgin, even as he had already suspected. Untouched. “You want love in your marriage? Most marriages are arranged for the best interests of the families involved, Lucianna.”
    “I know,” she admitted, “but Bianca loved her prince enough to give up her family. As for Francesca, she insulted every suitor who sought her hand, and when the heir to Terreno Boscoso chose her for his bride, she ran away, and had to be brought back. Of course, the little fool was quite happy with him, and then he was murdered by a servant. They say her wrath was ferocious. She now rules her duchy for her little son. She might remarry, but will not, and her council backs her, much to our mother’s irritation. With two such sisters, and a small dower, I was not eagerly sought after. I was happy to marry Alfredo. It took me away from my mother’s house, and my husband and I were good to each other. He often called me his angel, but I called him my knight for rescuing me.”
    The earl smiled. “Your late husband, God assoil his good soul, sounds like a fine