A Heart Most Worthy by Siri Mitchell Page A

counted it against her as one more instance of arrogance. Exchanging wary glances, they sat down to lunch, not as friends but as prospective enemies.

    Just before the hands of Julietta’s clever little pendant watch pointed out two o’clock, Luciana descended the back stairs. She did it with trepidation and no little reluctance. She didn’t want to assist Madame Fortier. She didn’t want to meet the woman’s customers. She only wanted to be left alone.
    But Madame had been good to her. Mostly. She had offered Luciana a job. She had provided clothing and money during a time when such things had been difficult to come by. If Madame required her assistance, then assist she would do. She’d just pray that nothing bad would come of it.
    Pray. As if God were listening!
    As she came toward the shop floor, she saw Madame escort a woman to a seat behind the screen. The very seat in which Luciana herself had collapsed two weeks before.
    The woman was tall. She carried herself with confidence, if rather a bit too much dignity. She ought to have been beautiful; she had every feature required for the task. Her hair glowed with soft highlights that might have reminded you of the best of summer’s butter. The kind Luciana hadn’t seen for months. And the curve of her lips brought to mind the bow of the moon; there lay upon her cheeks a healthy glow that had nothing to do with artifice.
    Yes, she ought to have been beautiful, but she wasn’t.
    It is an old and tired motto that would have us believe true beauty lies beneath the skin. You might have suspected, as have I, that it is only the truly gorgeous who must think so. But as Luciana looked on Madame’s client, she came to discover that no light, save that of intelligence, shone forth from that woman’s soul. No warmth emanated from within. Those beautiful features with which God had chosen to bless her responded not to need nor to fellow man, but to principles and honor and duty.
    At that moment, just as Luciana was appraising the strega, the woman looked over at her and did the same. Through narrowed eyes.

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    Luciana stepped back, for an instant, behind the protection of a doorframe and made the sign of the cross. She might have said a prayer for the woman, but she did not know, not at that point, what ailed her. And it was always a dangerous business to pray for a witch. But Luciana, from the depths of her own fear and unhappiness, had responded to a soul in pain in a way that Mrs. Quinn never had. Luciana had perceived; she had felt. She had sympathized.
    It was only when she stepped into the shop once more that she realized the woman had been accompanied. By a man. A man who was handsome in much the same way as the woman, though he exuded a vivacity of spirit that the strega didn’t seem to possess.
    He sent a smile in Luciana’s direction.
    She cast her gaze to the floor and stepped toward the screen, placing herself at its side where Madame could see her.
    Madame Fortier had asked the strega a question, and the woman was answering as she pulled off her gloves and folded them into her lap. “The same. The same as every other autumn. How many of these seasons have there been?”
    “Twenty-one.” And Madame could recount them all in painful detail. “And how is the congressman?”
    The woman turned her head away from Madame as if she couldn’t be bothered to answer. But then she sighed. Turned back. “Mr. Quinn? The same. The same as every other autumn. The same as every other year. He works all day.” She lifted a slim shoulder. Let it fall back down. “We entertain at night. I scarcely have time to think of him, let alone speak to him.”
    “He is an important man. He is doing great things. You must be very proud to be married to him.”
    Mrs. Quinn considered that statement.
    “I’m sure any woman would give her . . . how do you say it? Her right arm? . . . to be married to him.”
    At that, Mrs. Quinn scowled. She knew for a fact that was true. Knew for