Gianna dabbed at her tears, stealing a glance toward the armored sedan from the corner of her eye.
Nana Agata, the old nursemaid at her side, stepped forward. Her rosary beads clicked once against each other as her fingers tightened around them, and then she let them fall against her chest. "Mrs. Enzo Moretti, bearing children for your husband is a wife's most basic duty. You can't conceive yourself, haven't produced a single child in years, and now our mistress carries the heir's flesh and blood. You ought to be down on your knees in gratitude, welcoming her through those gates with full ceremony."
"She's delicate. The young master never lets anyone cause our mistress the slightest distress. You stand there ignoring her, leaving her to kneel on the pavement outside the compound. If something happens to the baby because of you, can you bear that responsibility?"
Whispers rippled through the gathered crowd along the iron gates. I signaled Rosa to draw back the tinted window, then fixed a cold stare on the beautiful woman kneeling on the asphalt below. "How far along are you?"
Gianna answered with a demure blush. "This humble woman was taken in by the heir nine months ago. The child in my womb is eight months along."
I looked at her with undisguised contempt. "So for nine months, the heir hasn't brought you inside the compound. Why is that? Is your background too shameful to speak of? Or is the child not his?"
"If he truly treasured you, why would he keep you hidden away as a secret mistress?"
The crowd murmured in agreement. It was a fair point. If a man truly cherished a woman, he would have brought her home to the Family and given her a proper place long ago. Why wait until she was nearly due?
Gianna's eyes brimmed over, and she wept aloud. "Only because Gianna had to observe three years of mourning for her late father and could not marry during that time. That is the only reason it has been delayed. Gianna's virtue is beyond reproach. I am not that kind of woman."
"Why must you humiliate me, my lady? Is it simply because I come from a poor family that I must be a woman of loose morals? What do you take ordinary women like us for?"
"She's right. This is too much."
"Just because she's the heir's wife, she thinks she can look down on everyone?"
"So high and mighty, and she can't even give him a son. The heir ought to dissolve the marriage and be done with it."
The crowd's mood shifted, fed by Gianna's words, turning hostile toward me. People always resented the powerful. Now that someone had made this about Family wealth versus the common street, they were all too eager to see the privileged brought low.
Gianna wiped her tears again and spoke. "Now that the three years of mourning are complete, Gianna finally dares to come before my lady and beg entry into the household. The heir's firstborn son cannot be born outside these walls. If he were, the child's legitimacy would forever be questioned. Surely that would only invite ridicule."
Heads nodded throughout the crowd.
Rosa looked ready to breathe fire. "What a shameless little fox! My lady, say the word and I'll drag her out of here. She can't even find the right house to grovel at, and here she is running her filthy mouth." Her right hand had already drifted to her hip, fingers pressing against the shape beneath her coat.
I motioned for Rosa to pull the window shade aside fully. My face, half-veiled behind gauze, appeared before the onlookers.
I stepped down from the sedan, slow and deliberate, and came to a stop before her on the compound's flagstone drive. Nana Agata took one look at the veil covering my face and let a sneer curl across her lips. "So that's why the lady of the house won't let our mistress through the door. Afraid that once a younger beauty moves in, she'll steal whatever affection the heir has left for you."
"You are a few years older than our mistress, after all. Men prefer a pretty young thing in their bed. That's just the way of the world. Every household has its share of wives and women on the side. Why cling so stubbornly to something you've already lost?"
Gianna shuffled forward on her knees until she was right at my feet. She tilted her face upward, lovely as carved jade, and gazed at me. "I beg my lady's mercy."
The moment the words left her lips, she tugged the hem of my skirt from an angle no one else could see, then threw herself backward. Her hands flew to her stomach and she screamed, "My lady, please, spare my child! Don't kick my stomach!"
Agony twisted her features. She crumpled to the ground, both hands pressed tight over her belly, tears streaming down her face.
Nana Agata shrieked. "Mistress! What happened to you?!" The rosary beads rattled against her collarbone as she lurched forward.
Then she whipped around and glared at me, eyes blazing. "Even if you are the heir's wife, that gives you no right to lay hands on a person! She's about to give birth! You strike now, and you'll be killing two lives. Is that what you want?!"
