presents...
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When her mother is watching. Anna's rebellions, in truth, are small. She likes to sing the jaunty songs she sometimes hears echoing over the garden walls. She likes the fabulous nonesense stories her brother Salvador tells her when he is home. She especially likes it when he talks to her, and asks her how she is, and actually wants to hear her answers. Sometimes they even play at cards. Recently, Anna was engaged to Don Tigran Mondavi. Her brothers uniformly oppose the match and suspect Tigran only agreed to it to hurt Salvador, who had insulted him. For her part, Anna seems rather taken with the darkly handsome and powerful man... at least, until she learned more about his evil reputation. Upset that her potential husband was possibly a sadistic murderer, she started to become angry as most of her family showed themselves more concerned with Angela's ghost than Anna's problems; Anna had always lived in the shadow of her dead sister and long resented it. She was so upset that she only pretended to give her oldest brother Tomasso a Swords blessing when he asked her for one; when only his body came back to the house that night, Anna was horrified. Tigran offered Anna much attention and certain consolations after Tomasso's death and Teodora's near-death, which she gladly took. Then he left, but that was expected - he was, after all, traveling the mainland as an emissary of his cousin the prince and couldn't linger too long in Monfalcone. And he said he'd be back. He had been so nice (attentive, actually) to her that Anna once again convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with Tigran. Then the letter came from Mondavi Island that said Angelo and Salvador had "saved" her from that marriage! All so that Angela's daughter Pietra could marry the prince's son! Anna was quietly livid, but felt helpless to do anything. And her mother wasn't well enough to even think about touching the strands. Then Angelo and Gianina came back; the horrible news of Francesca and Marco's deaths tabled any debate or discussion on the Tigran issue. And then, the next day, her mother and protector was dead and gone, torn by Fate Lashes, and Pietra lay similarly marked at the foot of her mother's bed.
Teodora's death has removed that Rods strand from Anna's life. She's much more focused now with a Swords to Pietra, the girl who caused the end of her engagement, killed her mother, and is dominating everyone's attention just like Angela used to do.
Photo Credit:"La femme � la perle," Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, c. 1868-70
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