Nun (9781609459109) by Simonetta Agnello Hornby Read Free Book Online

gentle autumn breeze. The tall lighthouse loomed up over the deep blue waters. Messina stretched out at their feet, with Reggio facing it, directly across the strait. The fishermen had suspended their swordfish hunt to allow ships to pass back and forth through the strait. The vessels that shuttled back and forth between the two cities left foamy wakes on the dark blue sea, an evanescent spider web linking island and mainland. All it took was two sailing ships flying French colors plying the waters of the Strait of Messina to disturb that illusion of fine, taut threads, making it clear just how distinctly separate the two shores really were.
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    That afternoon, Agata welcomed her parents with a dazzling smile. She’d persuaded herself that, after
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, Giacomo must have gone to his grandfather’s villa, there to discuss the best way to win over his parents and that he had succeeded in having his way—that that very morning the Lepres had come calling on her parents; which must be why at the last minute she had been told to ride out to Amalia’s house in the first carriage, instead of riding in the carriage with her parents. The more she thought about it, the more sure Agata felt that this was exactly what had happened. She expected her father to give her the good news immediately after lunch. At the table, she kept her eyes glued on her parents’ faces, in hope of detecting a look, a signal of some kind, but they were busy talking with their hosts and no one gave her so much as a glance.
    She had guessed right—but only in part. That morning, Senator Lepre had, in fact, asked to meet with the field marshal. He’d climbed the stairs alone, leaving Giacomo nervously waiting in the carriage, eager to be summoned inside once the details had been thrashed out. As soon as he was ushered into the apartment, he was informed that Don Peppino was indisposed and that the Marescialla alone would receive him. Caught off-balance, Senator Lepre decided it would be a good idea to reveal to her what he intended to tell her husband: he had come to ask Agata’s hand in marriage for his grandson, having chosen to stand in for his own son, as a gesture of respect toward the field marshal, an old friend and contemporary. But then, under a relentless hail of questions from Donna Gesuela, he’d been forced to confess that his daughter-in-law remained implacably determined when it came to the matter of the dowry and that he, moved by the purity of the two young people’s feelings, had decided to take action on his own, confident that his son and daughter-in-law would come to accept the fait accompli. Moreover, he would make a sizable gift to Giacomo on his wedding day.
    â€œAnd if the field marshal bestows our daughter on you, what kind of treatment can I expect my baby to receive from this mother-in-law who doesn’t want her?” asked the Marescialla, in a sugary sweet voice.
    The kind old man’s answer—that he fervently hoped, indeed, he had no doubt whatsoever, that once his daughter-in-law glimpsed Agata’s qualities, she would change her mind—only landed him in the trap Donna Gesuela had laid for him. She asked him to reassure her by recounting in detail all the other occasions in which his daughter-in-law had revised her opinion of someone after acknowledging that she’d misjudged them. Senator Lepre was forced to admit that he couldn’t recall a single instance and he foolishly confided that, precisely because of his daughter-in-law’s prickly personality, once he’d become a widower he had chosen to give his eldest son the main, aristocratic floor of the family palazzo and had himself gone, in open violation of tradition, to live in the apartment of his bachelor sons. He even added that he rarely visited his son’s house, so disagreeable did he find his daughter-in-law.
    â€œI’ve heard enough,” Donna Gesuela broke in. “Your family