“What, like clerk for my trial?” she sneered. “That’s kind of ironic, right?”
“Look, I didn’t mean to come off like that. Just, you know, if something comes up, something I can help you with.”
She looked at me disbelievingly. I couldn’t blame her; I didn’t quite believe the words coming out of my mouth either. But the firing, the frame-up, all seemed so distant now, and petty. I felt sorry for her, trapped in that calculating mind of hers, keeping such uneasy company with the pinprick of goodness trying to leak out through the murk. Maybe I could help her somehow. I’d been so wildly fortunate; I had Julian’s love, Julian’s child inside me. Surely I had to find a way to do some sort of good in the world, to balance out the cosmic scales somehow. Well, putting it that way, a lot of good. Redeeming Alicia’s soul should just about cover it.
“Yeah, whatever.” Her eyes rolled. “I’ll let you know.”
I opened my mouth to say good-bye, and a question flashed across my brain. “You know, Alicia. Something’s kind of bugged me about this whole thing. I don’t know why. What exactly did you have on that Southfield trader, to get him to go along with you? To go against Julian?”
“Oh, Warwick? He approached me. Called me up the week after that ChemoDerma meeting. Would you believe it?”
“Warwick? Geoff Warwick? I thought…”
“Oh, that poor schmuck trader that took the fall? No way. It was Geoff Warwick who was behind it all, chica. The one giving the orders. I’d watch my back, if I were you. He is one wily fox, and he”—she rose up from her chair and gathered her newspaper—“doesn’t like you one bit.” She giggled, as if something amusing had just occurred to her. “You know, for a nice girl from Wisconsin, you have a way of making enemies.” A wink. “Anywhoodles. See you around.”
I sat there with my mouth slack and my pulse thudding in my neck. Geoff Warwick? Geoff Warwick was behind this?
I knew he didn’t like me much, but ruin me? He’d actually sought out Alicia and plotted my downfall with her, nearly bringing down himself and Julian in the bargain, a risk he had to know he’d be taking.
Well, assuming she was telling the truth. But—and granted, I didn’t have the world’s most devious strategic brain here—I couldn’t think of a reason why she’d lie. Except troublemaking in the abstract, and Alicia, troublemaker though she was, still needed an angle. She wasn’t a total psychopath.
I looked down numbly at my watch. Nearly ten o’clock now, which meant I’d better head back to the house and get myself ready.
For my wedding.
I swallowed down the panic and got up, drinking the latte for comfort, and feeling Eric’s presence with a certain amount of gratitude.
WE PASSED QUICKLY over the few blocks back to Julian’s house. My brain spun in crazy circles, trying to put the pieces together. Geoff, calling up Alicia and planning the whole scam, after only a brief meeting at Christmastime. What had caused such an instant, visceral dislike? And Geoff, sending me Hollander’s book in May, after my relationship with Julian resumed. Why? Why did he hate me so much? Why didn’t he want us together?
My thoughts were so confused, so intense, that when I literally ran into Geoff Warwick on the steps of the townhouse, I thought for an instant I’d imagined him.
“Geoff! I’m sorry,” I said, stepping back. “I wasn’t watching.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, white-faced, looking as distracted as I was.
“You were meeting with Julian, I take it?” I shifted my latte cup to my other hand. I felt Eric withdraw discreetly behind me, a few paces away.
“Yes. I wanted to convey my congratulations.” The word fairly dripped with irony.
“Look,” I said, “can you at least try to be happy for us? We are in love. You’re supposed to be his friend.”
“And yet,” he said quietly, a trace of his native accent staining the words, “I’m reduced to having my wife point out the wedding news from the gossip columns.”
“We haven’t even told my parents yet, Geoff. It’s supposed to be a surprise. You know, fun.”
“There are reasons why I ought to have been informed.”
“Oh, stop it,” I said. “I know, Geoff. I know you planned that scheme with Alicia. I know you sent me the book. You’re probably the one who’s had me followed, had my things searched. You’ve had Julian in knots with worry, and why? Why do you dislike me so much? I’m a nice person, I really am. I’d do anything to make him happy. I could care less about his money; I wish it were at the bottom of the ocean, I really do.”
He looked at me a long time. “I don’t dislike who you are,” he said. “I dislike what you are.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “I’d forgotten you were a paid-up member of the Florence Hamilton worship society. Well, I’m sorry I’m not her. I’m just me, Kate Wilson from Wisconsin, and I love Julian, and for some insane reason he loves me too. And we make each other happy. So I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Geoff, but you’re just going to have to deal with it.”
His face might have been carved from granite, for all the impression my words made: even the crash of a taxi’s indignant horn a few yards away caused no more than a flinch of his right eye. After a brief cold moment, he turned to walk down the steps, passing Eric without a glance.
“Wait a second,” I called after him.
He paused, tilting his head in my direction, one polished shoe on the sidewalk.
“I really am sorry about everything. I’m sure she was a wonderful person. I wish… I wish I could thank her,” I said. “For giving him to me.”
His expression turned odd, quizzical. “Flora’s the least of it,” he said, shaking his head, and he turned and walked away.
Well, it had been worth a try. What was that old saying?
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
25.
Julian drove himself to the wedding in the Maserati, picking up Arthur Hamilton along the way; his driver took me down in the black sedan, with Eric in the front seat and Charlie in the back next to me.
“So what am I, your fucking bridesmaid?” he said, settling back in his seat. He was hugely enjoying his importance in our lives, and for the life of me I couldn’t quite figure out how he’d earned it.
“No swearing at my wedding, okay?”
“Why the fuck not? Kidding,” he said hastily, seeing my face. He sucked in his lips, evidently trying to think of something appropriate to say. “You look nice,” he offered at last.
“Thanks.” I looked down at my outfit, a bone-colored knee-length sheath, closely fitted, with a graceful ballet neckline: not quite white, but not quite beige. Very civil ceremony.
His face split into a grin. “So you must be knocked up, right? Hence the rush?”
“Jeez, Charlie,” I hissed, feeling my cheeks erupt.
His smile vanished. “Dude, for real? That was just a joke. Wow.” He looked warily at my midsection, like he expected a baby to explode from it at any second. “That is one fucking stud you’re marrying.”
“Um, Charlie? No swearing?”
“Sorry, dude.”
“And that’s a secret, okay? Seriously classified information.”
“Locked in the vault, dude. Thrown the key away.” He went quiet for a moment, and then: “So can I be the godfather?”
“No freaking way.”
Instead of driving to the Marriage Bureau, the building we’d visited yesterday, we pulled up alongside the dirty white walls of the City Hall building, right next to a side door on Broadway. The car had barely rocked to a halt before Eric swung open the door and bundled us inside. Someone was waiting there to escort us, an eager-looking suit who clearly wasn’t just an ordinary city clerk. He led us to the elevator bank and upstairs to a plush waiting area.
“Mr. Laurence is inside already,” he told me, nodding at the door; he walked us up to it and turned the knob.
A large high-ceilinged room opened around me, an office of some kind, con
taining a gleaming antique desk with a pair of chairs arranged before it, like supplicants at an altar. Julian stood near a tall triple-sash window, talking to Arthur Hamilton and a man who looked vaguely familiar. Where had I seen that profile before?
All three men turned when we entered the room, but Julian lured my attention, dressed impeccably in a sober well-tailored navy suit and white shirt, his hair collecting the light, his smile stinging my eyes with its radiance. He stepped forward and held out his hand; the fingers, when I clasped them, curled tightly around mine.
“Ah, there’s the blushing bride now,” said the other man, and recognition burst across my brain at the sound of his voice. “Shall we begin?”
The ceremony was short and simple, no soaring rhetorical flourishes. Just the plain familiar vows, read out by the mayor of New York City and repeated by the two of us with sincerity and conviction: I, Julian, take you, Kate and I, Kate, take you, Julian; and with this ring I thee wed; and by the power vested in me by the State of New York, and we were married.
He bent his head and kissed me on the lips, and then lifted my hand and kissed the plain platinum band that nestled there, atop the circle of diamonds he’d given me in May. I hadn’t even thought about rings, but one had appeared in my hand when I was supposed to do my part, and now it rested on the fourth finger of Julian’s left hand, gleaming gold. I looked at the ring, and then I looked up at the firm elegant lines of my husband’s face, at his green-blue eyes and the curve of his smile, and I realized this hadn’t been a superfluous formality at all.
“You’re mine.” I smiled. “My husband.”
“God help you,” he whispered back, with a little wink.
Then we turned to Charlie and Arthur and received their congratulations.
“Dude, that was awesome,” said Charlie, looking, in fact, awed. “No flowers and shi… stuff. Just the basics. Powerful, dude. Powerful.”
I turned to Arthur Hamilton. “Thank you. Thank you for coming here, for being a part of this.”
His eyes were wet. “The honor is all mine,” he said.
No flying rice, no crowd of adoring relatives waited for us outside. Just an ordinary bustling Manhattan sidewalk to cross, with Julian’s driver, holding open the rear door of the black Cadillac, on the other side of it. Eric swept us both inside, and the last thing I saw as we drove away, with Julian’s warm hand woven through my own, was Arthur Hamilton’s face, all the false joy washed out of it, leaving only an expression of profound elemental misery.
WHEN WE ARRIVED BACK at the townhouse, Julian, who had been subdued and reflective in the car, hoisted me into his arms.
“What?” I exclaimed, grabbing wildly for my right shoe, which nearly fell off with the force of the upward swing.
“Carrying you over the threshold, darling. It’s traditional.” He swept me up the front steps, past Eric, and into the entrance hall. “At last,” he murmured, kissing me, hard and fierce and short; then he set me down on the old marble tiles.
“At last?” I laughed. “You’ve known me since December.”
He kept me within the circle of his arms, studying me seriously, as though I were some sort of exotic animal he couldn’t quite decide what to do with.
“So, husband.” I eased my arms around his waist. “What’s on the agenda? How much time before our guests arrive?”
His fingers massaged my back. “Not much, I’m afraid.”
“Then I suppose I should go upstairs and change.”
“Hmm. And you’ll want to pack, of course.”
I frowned. “Pack?”
His lips moved toward my ear. “There’s an airplane waiting for us, after dinner. Have you forgotten our honeymoon?” Something about his voice made the word sound deeply dissolute.
“Honeymoon? Where are we going?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Now go upstairs.”
I drew back in his arms. “Aren’t you coming?”
“I’m already packed.”
“But…” I fingered his lapel and cast up what I hoped was a seductive look from beneath my eyelashes. “I might need help with my zipper.”
He smiled and leaned down to kiss me, his lips slow and suggestive. I felt his hands move along my back and draw down the zipper of my dress. “There,” he whispered.
“You’re outrageous.”
“Be patient, darling,” he said.
Something in his expression, in the tone of his voice, made me draw back again and peer closely at his face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s just as it should be. As it was meant to be.”
“But you look sad,” I said. “Oh, Julian. What’s wrong?”
He smiled again, but it was as though he pushed it out of his mouth by sheer force. “Kate,” he said, his voice tender, “my beautiful Kate. Katherine Ashford.” His hands glided up my sides to rest on my shoulders. “My wife. My bride. The mother of my precious child. Let me make something perfectly clear. I have never in my life felt so happy as the moment, a short while ago, when you walked into that room and married me.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t bear the beauty of his face, the strange severity in his eyes; my own cast down, studying the subtle pattern of his pale blue necktie.
“Listen to me, Kate,” he continued, taking my chin. “Please look at me. There isn’t a word to describe my happiness. I can only say this: whatever I am, wherever I am, I am your husband. Always, that truth lies between us. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
I thought he would kiss me then, but he didn’t. He only grazed my lip with his thumb once, twice.
“Now go upstairs and pack,” he said huskily. “Before our guests arrive.”
I nodded and stepped away to hurry up the stairs. When I reached the landing, I looked down to see him staring after me, his expression anything but joyful.
“OH,” I SAID, pausing at the archway into the living room half an hour later, “you must be Dr. Hollander!”
The gray-haired man on the sofa stood up and unfolded himself to a broad enormous height. “And you,” he said, holding out his hand, “must be Kate Ashford. Even more beautiful, I must say, than Julian described.”
I went over and reached for both his hands. “So he’s told you! I thought we were surprising everyone.” I leaned forward to kiss both his cheeks. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Dr. Hollander. I know it sounds like a cliché, but I really do feel as though I know you already. Please, please sit down. Can I offer you something?”
He gestured to the coffee table, on which a drink of some amber liquid—Scotch, probably—tumbled around the ice in a plain lowball glass. “Julian’s already seen to it, thanks. Of course he had to tell me; I don’t usually travel except for compelling reasons.”
I sank down on the sofa next to him. “I have dozens of questions to ask you, but I’ll spare you for now.” My reaction had surprised even me; the instant I saw him, I’d known who it must be, and delight poured through my body. Maybe it was his looks: not handsome, exactly, but friendly and open, with crinkling dark eyes and an air of genteel distraction. He must have been sixty or seventy years old, and six foot five at least. And he was the world’s leading expert on my new husband. I smiled at him. “Before anything else, I want to thank you for being such a good friend to Julian over the years. When I think of how hard it must have been for him, in those early years, without anyone at all to talk to, I just… Well, it must have been terrible. And then you came along. Thank goodness.”
He blinked at me. “Dear me. How kind of you. And all these years I’ve felt it to be the other way around, you see. To have the very subject of my study walk into my office one day. A historian’s impossible fantasy, come to life.”
“So where is he?” I glanced around the room with a frown. “He hasn’t abandoned you, has he?”
“Oh no. He had a phone call, just a moment ago.” He cocked his head toward the pocket doors to the library, which were close
d tight.
“Oh. Sorry about that. He does it to me all the time. Savior of Wall Street.” I rolled my eyes, just to show how unimpressed I was.
Hollander scowled. Ruddy old Marxist, Julian had said. “He should have let it all go to the dogs, as far as I’m concerned.”
“All right, now,” I said. “You’re talking to an investment banker here. Well, former investment banker. A total capitalist pig, anyway. I can’t wait until we’re close enough friends to have some knock-down drag-out arguments about it.”
He started laughing. “Ah, Mrs. Ashford, I’m beginning to see Julian’s point. One so rarely encounters a beautiful woman who also happens to be good company.”
I wagged my finger at him. “Oh wow. A smooth one. I’ll have to watch myself. But it’s Kate, please. Only Julian calls me Mrs. Ashford.”
He chuckled and took a drink of his whiskey.
Something else occurred to me. “We were so worried last summer, when you disappeared. I hope everything’s okay now?”
“Oh, perfectly fine, thank you,” he said, so brightly I knew he was lying. “Just a last-minute research project. A request from a particular… friend of mine.”
“Oh, really? What kind of project? Out in the field somewhere?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said, as the doorbell rang.
“Oh! If you’ll just excuse me a second. My whole family’s flying in. Oh wait—don’t forget, the wedding’s a surprise. And his last name is Laurence, as far as they know.”
“You haven’t told them?” he asked me in astonishment, as I rose from the sofa.
“Like they would even believe me!” I tossed over my shoulder.
WE DROVE TO THE RESTAURANT in two separate cars. Julian took Dr. Hollander in the Maserati, with Samantha and Michelle squashed sideways in what passed for the back seat. Julian’s driver, with Eric up front, chauffeured the rest of us in an Escalade.
We arrived a few minutes late. Geoff and Carla were already waiting at the bar with Arthur Hamilton. None of them looked happy, although Carla was at least making an effort at a grin. “Hello, Kate!” she exclaimed with a meaningful wink, as she leaned in for an air kiss.