Diva (29 page)

Beyond them sat Solomon and Lieutenant Skinner, both looking bored by the festivities. Sol was heinously underdressed in his tweed suit, but it was probably the finest outfit he owned. Clara just hoped he would be able to make it through the ceremony without sneaking out for a smoke.

On Clara’s left, Parker sat beside the
Manhattanite
’s top photographer, his pencil poised over the notepad in his lap. Some people could be happy being married to their careers.

Clara just wasn’t one of them.

The crowd turned as one to watch Deirdre, or
Anastasia
, walk down the aisle. She wasn’t wearing the same dress she’d worn that day at the bridal shop—Lorraine might have
ruined that one beyond repair. But really she’d done the con woman a favor.

This dress was a sleeveless ivory satin gown with a cluster of handmade cloth flowers at one hip. It had a V-neck, and the skirt was made of tiers of elegant lace. Deirdre’s light gray feathered headdress covered most of her bob. A veil lined with even more lace flowed from the headdress and draped onto the floor. She walked on the arm of Marcus’s father—she’d probably fed Marcus some sob story to account for her absent parents. Ugh, that girl made Clara sick.

The crowd filled with appreciative whispers as Deirdre walked down the aisle, everyone remarking how gorgeous the bride looked. Deirdre smiled widely at Marcus when she reached the platform.
Come on, Marcus; just back out on your own so I don’t have to do this to you.…

“Dearly beloved,” the minister said in a deep, booming voice, “we are gathered here today to join Marcus Edward Eastman and Anastasia Juliet Rjin in holy matrimony, which is commended to be honorable among all people, and therefore, is not to be entered into lightly, but solemnly and only after serious thought.”

“Amen,” Lorraine murmured.

“Into this holy partnership these two now come to be joined,” the minister continued. “If any person objects to this union, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”

Clara fiddled with her wedding program, twisting it until it tore. She took a few deep breaths but couldn’t help grimacing
at what she was about to do. She just had to hope that Marcus would understand. She waited, her heart rattling in her chest, for Melvin to make his move.

After a moment of silence, Clara nudged Melvin hard in the side.

“Oof!” Melvin sprang out of his chair, pointed at Deirdre, and bellowed, “Tarnation!” in the most absurd Southern accent Clara had ever heard.

Guests all around them looked at Melvin in surprise and began whispering to each other, filling the room with noise. “How’d he get in here?” a mustached man whispered to his date.

“He looks like he escaped from the carnival,” the brunette replied.

Melvin looked at Clara with desperation in his eyes. This was as far as his part was supposed to go.

Clara stood beside Melvin and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, I have something to say.” She patted Melvin’s arm. “Hold your horses for a moment.”

The whispers around them doubled in volume. At least half the people here knew who she was. Getting tangled up in scandals in New York and Chicago didn’t exactly make for anonymity.

But the only person whose reaction Clara cared about was Marcus. His blue eyes were enormous; his mouth gaped open.

The boy was dumbfounded.

“I object,” Clara said, causing more than one wedding guest
to gasp. A woman whipped out a feathered fan and began flapping it in front of her face as though she might faint. “Marcus, I don’t believe you can love that woman—Anastasia or Deirdre or whatever her name is.”

Clara nudged through the row so she could stand in the aisle. She’d been sitting in the eighth row of guests. Not a bad seat if all you wanted to do was watch a wedding—but Clara couldn’t have this kind of conversation with Marcus from a distance.

She rushed closer to the platform, careful not to trip over her dress. She couldn’t get the courage to climb up onto the platform. Plus she was a little scared of what Marcus’s fiancée might try to do to her if she did. So she stopped just in front of the platform. Clara ignored the stunned gazes of the wedding party, Deirdre’s affronted scowl, Gloria mouthing
What are you doing?
, and the weight of the hundreds of eyes on her back. Clara couldn’t look at or think of anyone but Marcus, not if she was really going to go through with this.

“If I let you marry that viper beside you,” Clara said to him, “not only will you be making the biggest mistake of your life, but so will I.”

“Why, you—” Deirdre began, her dainty hands clenching into fists.

Marcus held up a finger to shush Deirdre. “The minister said it himself: This is the part where people are allowed to speak. So what exactly
are
you saying, Clara?” he asked. Marcus’s eyes were bright again, and he looked like he was fighting a smile.

That gave Clara the courage to keep going. “I have made some big mistakes in my life. But my biggest mistake was letting you go. But it stops here: Marcus, I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, if you’ll have me.”

“ ’Ow dare you!” Deirdre screeched at Clara. She turned back to Marcus and grasped his wrists with her tiny hands. The minister took a step or two away from them and stroked his gray beard nervously. “You should ’ave zat woman arrested. She’s ze one ’oo attacked me at ze bridal shop!”

“Oh, shut your trap, sister!” Lorraine yelled before Marcus could react. She barreled through the row, stepping on feet left and right. “You get your hands off me—I’m not sitting in your lap on purpose!” she yelled at a leering, bearded man sitting by the aisle after she tripped and nearly fell.

Lorraine pulled up her dress enough to expose part of her lacy white slip and ran down the aisle. She stopped beside Clara and heaved a few deep breaths.

“Lor
raine
?” Gloria asked, holding her hand to her chest. Gloria looked between her old friend, Marcus, and Clara. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

“All in good time! Love your dress, by the way. You’re like some kind of classy penguin,” Lorraine said.

“Thank you?” Gloria said, blinking.

Lorraine pointed at Deirdre. “And
you
, drop the fake French accent. The closest
you’ve
ever been to Paris was when you looked at a map … of Paris!”

The crowd gasped, and now guests didn’t even bother to whisper their suspicions.

“Could it be true?”

“But she’s so beautiful!”

“They did get engaged quickly.…”

“Never trust the French—that’s what I always say.”

“Our buddy, Benji,” Lorraine went on, beckoning to Melvin, “he knows what we’re talking about. You two used to date, isn’t that right?”

Clara could see a glimmer of fear in Deirdre’s copper-flecked eyes. “I do not know what you are talkeeng about.”

“Oh yes you do,” Clara said. “Just like you know you’re wanted in three states for armed robbery. You were nearly arrested outside a restaurant in New Orleans for destruction of property and, oh, right, attempting to stab the owner with a steak knife.”

“That was you?” a middle-aged woman with her black hair piled on top of her head asked from the second row. She rose from her chair. “My sister lives in New Orleans—she told me all about it. The town was scared half to death when they couldn’t catch that madwoman.”

The crowd gasped again, and the word
madwoman
echoed around the room. “Yes, thank you, ma’am!” Clara called to the woman. She looked back at Deirdre with more confidence. “Then you changed your game. You fell off the radar, went through about a dozen aliases, and focused on trying
to get rich the old-fashioned way—by marrying the money rather than stealing it.”

Deirde turned to Marcus. “
Sacre bleu!
She eez lying!”

“One of your schemes almost worked, Deirdre,” Clara said. “Once you figured out that a boy fresh from a recent heartbreak would be less likely to question you. But the lies and deceit end now. So how about you drop the act and get away from the man I love, before Benji here starts telling some stories of his own.”

Marcus stared at Deirdre now, withdrawing his wrists from her grip. “Is this true? Do you know that man with the strange mustache?”

“Of course not!” Deirdre exclaimed. “Obviously your ex-girlfriend eez just jealous of me.” She pointed at Clara, scowling. “And she has mistaken me for zis Deirdre person! She must be very good-lookeeng. But I never—”

A look of dawning realization spread across Marcus’s face. He put up a hand to stop her. “You know what? It doesn’t matter.”

Deirdre stopped cold. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t care whether you’re this Deirdre person or Anastasia or the Yellow Kid,” Marcus replied. He glanced at Clara and gave her a smile that made her heart lighter than it had been in months. “What Clara’s saying is true: I don’t love you. I love her. And I’ve just been using you to get over my broken heart. For that I really am sorry.”

Clara had no time to relish the fact that Marcus still loved her: Deirdre let out a high-pitched shriek. She raised her
skirt, jumped off the platform, and turned her fierce glare on Clara. “You can’t do this to me!” she exclaimed without a trace of a French accent. Her voice had also dropped about an octave. “I—I’ll sue!”

Lorraine burst into laughter. “Oh, please. You’ve duped so many men, I’m sure one or the other of them will press charges once they learn where you’ve ended up. Clara’s got more than a few names in that file of hers.”

Clara nodded. “You’re right, Raine, I do.”

Deirdre’s eyes widened in white-hot fury and she lunged at Clara, who moved out of the way, knocking into an elderly man with a monocle seated on the edge of the aisle. A few women in the row raced from their chairs and left the room, not wanting to get caught up in the commotion. Meanwhile, two little boys a few rows behind rose up on their knees in their chairs and shook their fists, chanting, “Fight, fight, fight!”

Gloria rushed from the platform to help Lorraine and Clara, while Marcus approached his parents in the front row. Mr. Eastman was standing in the front row with a sobbing Mrs. Eastman on his arm.

“Marcus, explain this!” Mr. Eastman yelled.

“Sorry, Dad, I really don’t think I can …,” Marcus replied.

The rest of the wedding party remained on the platform, rooted to their places with shock.

Gloria caught Lorraine’s arm just as she was about to punch Deirdre in the face. Deirdre moved to attack Lorraine and Gloria yanked her out of the way. Deirdre dove straight
onto the linen cloth that covered the aisle, while Parker’s photographer called, “Smile!”

Clara laughed as Deirdre pulled herself to her feet. “Thanks for that, Deirdre,” Clara said. “You can look for that photo in next week’s issue of the
Manhattanite
.”

“I won’t be in this country by next week,” Deirdre growled.

She chucked the bouquet of calla lilies she’d been holding right at Clara’s head—Clara ducked, and Lorraine caught the bouquet easily. “I’ve always wanted to do that!” she exclaimed, holding the bouquet in the air as a trophy and yelling out into the crowd. “Guess all those years of softball at Laurelton Prep really paid off!”

Deirdre raised her skirt and went running straight down the aisle.

“Stop her!” Mr. Eastman yelled. “Someone stop that woman! ”

Mrs. Eastman had stopped crying, and now her arm was around Marcus. She wiped the last of the tears from under her eyes. Her expression was pure venom. “No one hurts my Marcus and gets away with it!”

Clara reminded herself to step lightly around Marcus’s mother in the future.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, she won’t!” Solomon’s police companion called to the Eastmans. “Not if I have anything to say about it!”

Lieutenant Skinner rose from his seat and took off after
the con woman. Clara didn’t doubt the copper would catch Deirdre and have her in cuffs before she reached the lobby.

The murmuring crowd had been shocked into complete silence. Clara breathed deeply in and out, her heart hammering. She jerked when she felt a hand on her arm. “Clara, why didn’t you tell me you were looking into Marcus’s fiancée?” Gloria asked. She moved her hand back and forth—maybe she’d hurt her wrist in the fight. “With … Lorraine?” Lorraine looked up hopefully at Gloria’s mention of her.

“You and Marcus are so close—I was afraid you’d tell me to stop,” Clara said. “Plus I know you’ve been busy.”

Her cousin pulled Clara into a hug. “No, I’m so glad. You two belong together. And I have been busy.” When she pulled away her face was distracted. “Actually, that reminds me, I need to go check on something.”

“Secret bureau stuff?” Clara asked.

“Exactly.”

Gloria turned and began to walk down the aisle to the exit.

“Gloria!” Lorraine called, and Gloria turned. “Thanks for saving me from that roundheel!”

Gloria smiled brightly at Lorraine. “Thanks for helping Clara save Marcus from
her
!”

Then she rushed away, leaving Lorraine glowing.

The members of the orchestra, as well as several guests, rose from their chairs and followed Gloria out. Clearly there wasn’t going to be a wedding now.

The rest of the guests were still quiet after the others left, watching Clara and her friends with amused disdain. The only sound Clara could hear was slow clapping, and that came from Marcus. He still stood with his parents with a band of stupefied groomsmen on the platform behind them. His mother still had her arm around Marcus, to comfort him, but he just grinned at her.

He walked down the aisle toward Clara and Lorraine. When he reached them, his eyes flicked toward Lorraine while she sniffed at the bouquet in her hands.

“Oh, Raine,” he said, “how I’ve missed you.”

Lorraine immediately got misty-eyed. “Really? Because I—”

He patted her hand. “I’ll find you at the reception, okay? We’ll catch up.”

Lorraine took the hint. She linked her arm with Melvin’s and led him back to their seats.

Which left Marcus and Clara alone. Or at least, as alone as they could be in front of a crowd of people. Clara looked out at the women clutching at their pearls, the men leaning forward to get a better view. She should’ve felt utterly embarrassed to have caused such a scene. But looking into Marcus’s beautiful blue eyes, she couldn’t feel anything but pure elation.