A Heart Most Worthy by Siri Mitchell

like that? Why would any kind of person live like that?
    Justice, liberty, tolerance.
    Those were the topics that employed Mrs. Quinn’s abundant energy and considerable intelligence.
    If Mrs. Quinn had known the gown maker’s thoughts, however, she would not have been pleased. And she wouldn’t have used the word strega . She preferred to think of herself as clever. She had an uncanny nose for politics. She could sense a softening of resolve like a wolf sensed a change in the wind. She could ferret out a man’s hidden interests with nothing but a well-phrased question. And she could plot betrayal as if she herself held the knife. Most of her husband’s success in Boston and then in Washington was due to her instinctual mastery of the world of politics and her ability to call on just the right people, to do just the right thing, at just the right time.

    At lunch, Julietta pulled a package from her sack, along with a length of bread and a wedge of cheese. “Here.” She slid the package across the table in Luciana’s direction.
    Luciana opened it and held up the contents, exclaiming with something quite near delight. Her gowns! Several of them, in any case. New gowns had been in such generous supply at the estate in Roma, even in spite of the war, that their presence had never come close to eliciting that lift of delight in her spirit that these did.
    She pushed aside her lunch and rose to her feet, holding one of the gowns up to her shoulders.
    Julietta tried to look at it with an appraiser’s objective eye. She’d worked harder than she’d meant to on it. On all of them. Dedicated more time on Saturday and Sunday nights than she had intended. But the results had been quite astonishing. Gone were the awkward, overwrought, over-decorated silhouettes. They’d been replaced by svelte, clean lines. No dowdiness, no stuffiness remained within their folds. The gown Luciana held in particular exuded charm, and grace. And the fresh, carefree joie de vivre of summers gone by.
    Before the war.
    And before the anarchists.
    Annamaria smiled as she watched Luciana. “Try it on.”
    Oh, how she wanted to! But . . . “Now?”
    “Sì. Now.” Julietta had gone to help Luciana from her old gown. “Please! To spare us both another look at that old rag you’ve been wearing.”
    Rag? That was hardly fair to the handiwork of the preeminent Parisian modiste Luciana had patronized before . . . everything . . . but she didn’t quibble; she was too grateful. And she didn’t even pause to consider what had happened to the pink and white messaline she’d given over to Julietta that past Friday. Or the lavaliere that had accompanied it. Though she hadn’t minded the absence of the one, she truly missed the other. More than she thought she would. Its rubies and diamonds had been formed in the shape of her family’s crest.
    If Julietta noticed the fine weave of Luciana’s corset cover or the quality of the detailing on its yoke, she didn’t say so. She simply held up the gown as Luciana stepped inside it and then stood off to the side as the girl fastened it in the front. But her pride of workmanship was unmistakable, and she looked quite like Madame did whenever the shop owner had accomplished a particularly fine piece of work or an especially difficult draping. She quietly picked up Luciana’s old gown from the floor and dropped it into the wastebasket.
    Annamaria was watching the transformation with undisguised good cheer. She had never been the beneficiary of any of Madame’s castoffs, had never expected to be, but that didn’t keep her from sharing in the happiness of the girl she was starting to consider a friend. “ Che bella! ” How beautiful. How beautiful Luciana was.
    There was a moment when Luciana wondered if she ought to thank Julietta. And another moment when Julietta wondered if she ought to be bothered by Luciana’s failure to offer up gratitude. But Luciana couldn’t settle on the correct words, so Julietta