They had gotten the tea cart ready, and he opened the door so it could be pushed into the hall.

“I’m going to marry her.” It was the easiest, truest thing he could think to say.

•   •   •

ANNA WALKED THE perimeter of the parlor, a large, square room with a Dutch oven tiled in blue and white in one corner, and what looked to be an embroidery frame beside it, the same dimensions as a baby’s cradle. Wainscoting ran all the way around the room, the ledge crowded with cabinet cards and small watercolor paintings, bits of very old lace and pressed flowers preserved behind glass, china birds with gilt-edged wings and a trio of dogs carved from yellowing ivory. On the low table in the middle of the room topped with a lace tablecloth was a huge earthenware crock that was bursting with flowers, exuberant and unconstrained by the current fashions.

At the center were a half-dozen white roses with the vaguest hint of pink along the edge of the petals. The sight of La Dame Dorée gave her a jolt, though she should have remembered that they would be grown here. At home she had a small spray of the same rose pressed between the pages of an anatomy text where no one was likely to come across it. Except she herself. Every few days she opened it, and the lingering scent brought those few minutes in the courtyard outside Alva Vanderbilt’s kitchen back in bright detail.

She forced herself to concentrate on her study of the parlor where nothing made of fabric—the draperies, the tablecloths, the bolsters and pillows and the deep armchair by the fire—had evaded the embroiderer’s needle. Margaret would be able to tell her about the stitching, but to Anna’s eye much of it looked like silk laid down, thread by thread, with precision.

She heard the sisters talking in the hall in a quick, vaguely agitated Italian, pausing to listen to Jack’s calm, slow answers only to interrupt with more questions, all of this undercut by the squeak of a tea cart’s wheels. Anna sat down abruptly on a horsehair sofa heaped with pillows, each embroidered with—she had to look twice to be sure—some kind of barn animal. She pulled a sheep with a stalk of lavender in its jaws into her lap. She had the sudden urge to march into the hall and announce that she could cook. Not that she had any interest in cooking, she might have to admit. But she had been trained because Aunt Quinlan was adamant: everyone, man and woman, should be able to feed themselves when necessary.

Celestina came through first with Bambina close behind and then Jack pushing the tea cart. There was a plate of cake and cups and saucers, sugar and cream and a coffee carafe.

“Brought from home,” Celestina told her when she saw Anna looking.

It was comforting to realize that they were as nervous as she was. She stood up to greet them again, and together they came to stand in front of Anna as if this were a complex dance they had been studying for years, waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate their graceful mastery of the footwork.

Celestina put her hands on Anna’s upper arms and then leaned forward to kiss her on one cheek and then the other. “You are going to be our sister. We are so pleased.”

•   •   •

JACK KNEW IT would be very bad form to laugh out loud, but he couldn’t help smiling. Anna looked in that moment like a girl. Her color was high and her eyes darted from Celestina to Bambina to Jack, where they stayed. He saw her draw in a deep breath and compose herself, draw all the dignity she could muster around herself like armor, and then she smiled at Celestina and Bambina in turn.

“Yes,” she said. “It seems that I am.”

•   •   •

ANNA CONTEMPLATED THE best way to kill Jack, or at least to make him sorry that he had called all this down on her head with no warning. While his sisters asked questions without pause and she answered the ones she could, she tried to convince herself that she had no grounds for anger. He knew how best to handle his own sisters. She hoped he did. The fact that he had never uttered the word marriage to her was irrelevant; it was marriage that they had been talking about, and it would be silly to claim otherwise.

The things she admitted to not knowing were many: they had no specific date in mind, they hadn’t discussed a ceremony, she doubted that they would want a large wedding but it was something still to be decided; she did not, in fact, have a chest of wedding linen.

This seemed to surprise and unsettle them more than anything else.

“Is that a custom in Italy?” Anna asked.

“It is a custom everywhere,” Bambina said. “We often embroider linen for young women even before they know if they will ever marry.”

Anna managed a small smile. “I haven’t had much experience with weddings, but my cousin will be getting married next month and it will be good practice for me, watching the preparations.”

Jack was giving her a doubtful look. He knew her too well to buy what she was selling; she would never take time away from her work to make wedding arrangements. Before he could challenge her—in front of his sisters, no less—she sidestepped his objection.

“I hope I can count on you,” she said to his sisters. “To guide me in this. I have so little experience, and I am very busy with my work.”

That she had work at all was another surprise to Bambina and Celestina, one that struck them so forcefully that even Bambina sat speechless for a moment when Anna had explained her work.

“A surgeon?” Celestina said finally. “How unusual.”

Jack stood up. “Bambina, do you want to show Anna your linen chest, since she’s unfamiliar with the custom?”

He was up to something, but Anna saw no option and so she let herself be shown upstairs. She cast Jack a baleful glance, and got nothing more than a grin and a shrug in return.

•   •   •

IT WAS ALMOST eight before Anna could convince Jack’s sisters that she had to get home. Celestina extracted a half-dozen promises before Anna reached the door. As soon as they were out of sight Anna stopped and turned to him.

“Don’t yell at me,” he said. “I had no idea they were on the way back.”

She tapped her foot and waited.

“I would have handled it better with more warning,” he went on. “Just how mad are you?”

“Not so much mad,” she admitted.

“Really?” He was studying her face.

Very odd, Anna thought. He looked almost guilty.

“Maybe I should be mad. You’re up to something,” she said. “You asked Bambina to show me her linen chest to get us all out of the parlor. Admit it.”

Instead of answering, he pulled her into one of the recessed doorways and produced a very large, old-fashioned key from his pocket.

She said, “Ah, that was why you needed to distract them. You stole the key to your own greenhouse.”

“It’s mine as much as theirs,” Jack said as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. “No thievery required.”

“Then why not just say—”

He took her wrist and pulled her after him, shut the door behind them, and locked it.

Then he smiled down at her. “You told my sisters you were going to marry me.”

Anna commanded herself not to blush. “As you heard.”

“I think that’s something we need to talk about.”

“Certainly. As soon as you get back from Chicago.”

She saw now that they were standing in a workroom in a narrow corridor that ran between long wooden tables all laid out with gardening tools, trays of terra-cotta pots, neatly labeled bins and barrels, and stacks of buckets.

“I can’t wait that long,” Jack said. He stepped over a coiled canvas hose and Anna followed him, let herself be drawn along through the dim workroom, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

He looked at her over his shoulder. “Something funny?”

Anna said, “Did you realize that the minute they got me upstairs they started undressing me—”

He jerked around to look at her.

“They wanted to look at the construction of my skirts. My split skirts? You did realize—”

Jack laughed. “I realized. I have given your skirts quite a lot of thought.”

They came to a sudden stop in front of another door, this one so low that Jack had to duck to get through it.

On the other side was a small room such as a groundskeeper would have for his own use. A standing desk in one corner, two chairs and a small table in the other, a bookcase filled with ledgers and manuals and catalogs, and under a single window where a white curtain rose and fell in the evening breeze a bed, neatly made. The pillowcases were edged with lace and embroidered; more of his sisters’ work.

“Whose room is this?”

“Nobody’s, now. My cousin Umberto lived here before he married.”

Anna crossed the room. “The house is right there. And why is this window open?”

“You would make a good detective,” Jack said dryly. “It was musty, so I opened it earlier today.”

“You had this planned.”

“I didn’t plan on my sisters. This room was in case you were uncomfortable in the house.”