If the Shoe Fits (32 page)

“How
abrupt
will she be if I decline?” Devon asked with a wicked grin.

Marsden looked at the ground, then back up at Devon’s unshaven face and hollow eyes with supplication. “For me, if for no one else, your acceptance would be greatly appreciated.”

“That bad, eh?”

“Yes. That bad.”

“I accept. Please tell her I shall arrive promptly at seven.” Marsden looked askance at Devon’s general appearance. Devon looked down at his disheveled self, then smiled. “Not to worry, I’ll clean up nicely. And thank you, Marsden.”

Marsden gave a small smile and the hint of a bow, then turned and let himself out. Devon caught the door before it flew shut, watching as the man made his way toward the elevator, his mood obviously improving with each step.

That Saturday night, the gas lamps at either side of the front door flickered in the waning light of the warm summer evening. Northrop House exuded a mellow glow: the two windows on either side of the front door were brightly lit from within. Inviting. The shiny black front door gleamed at the top of four limestone steps that had been worn from years of use, beneath a modest portico that held a small wrought-iron black balcony.

Some member of the Heyworth family had lived at Number 9 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair since the home was built in 1783. It was a classic example of Georgian architecture: organized, balanced, and deceptively modest. As grand ducal mansions went, it was unassuming. Nothing like the Palladian monstrosities of Devonshire and Burlington down on Piccadilly. “And look where all that flash had got them?” the Heyworths were wont to joke. Demolished.

Just inside the right-hand front window, Sarah sat trembling.

She was trying to hold her glass of champagne steady and finally put it down on a highly polished mahogany side table. She worried momentarily that she was going to leave a ring on the priceless wood, but she was more worried that she was going to stain the carpet if she dropped it altogether. The table was the lesser of two evils, especially when the miraculous Marsden very tactfully placed a linen coaster under the delicate crystal flute while no one was looking.

The sound of Devon’s Aston Martin roared down the street, then slowed to a thrumming growl as he turned the powerful car into the adjacent mews. Sarah could hear the electronic gate swing into the narrow passage and was grateful her back was to the window facing out to the street. It was bad enough anticipating Devon’s arrival in the abstract, but if she had caught an actual glimpse of him driving into the alley, she might have run from the room.

All of a sudden, but certainly not for the first time in the past few weeks, this entire plan—plot, really—seemed to promise nothing but disaster. Morbid embarrassment was the appetizer, abject misery a probable dessert.

What had Sarah been thinking to let these two conniving women orchestrate her demise?

Bronte had quite literally dropped the phone on Friday morning when Sarah told her that her grandmother and the Dowager Duchess of Northrop had been stealthily devising a plan for weeks to repair the broken pieces of her botched affair with Devon.

Bronte had scrambled to pick up the cordless phone off her bedroom floor in Fulham. “Sorry, I couldn’t balance the baby and the phone and my shock all at the same time. Are you nuts?”

“I sort of am, Bron. I wanted to call you, but he’s your brother-in-law and Max is so—”

“She is his
mother
! You have lost your mind. She is a witch! She will do everything in her
considerable
power to thwart your every desire. She will—”

“She likes me.”

“Impossible.”

“She does, Bron. I told her she had to stop bad-mouthing you in front of me and she has. Other than her feelings toward you—jealousy probably—I kind of like her prickly, bitchy ways. She’s honest. She kind of reminds me of yo—”

“Don’t you dare! She is a cruel, heartless husk of a woman. I adore my husband—”

“She adored her husband—”

“I adore my child—”

“She adores… some of her children…”

“I can’t believe this. I’m… I’m…” Bronte dropped the phone again and swore a string of seething epithets about evil women and their copulating illegitimate progeny. “Now you’ve gone and made me swear in front of Wolf.”

“He doesn’t know the difference, Bron.”

“But I do. I am trying to be a better person.” She sighed, at herself as much as anyone. “Let me put him down and give you my full attention. I’m apoplectic.” Sarah heard Bronte call down to the nanny, Carolyn, transfer Wolf into the other woman’s arms, shut the door to her bedroom, and then return to the phone. “All right, I’m sitting down. This is more traumatic than labor. You and Devon are a couple!
Hello!
magazine says so and I believe them! You were practically fornicating in the VIP tent at the polo match last weekend when I saw you together—”

“Was that you?!”

“I tried to be quick about it, but I couldn’t figure out how to get to the drinks tent without passing by. All I’m saying is, I thought you’d be posting banns by now. What is it with you two? On, off, on, off,
really
on,
really
off. It’s becoming tedious.”

“I know. I mean,
I
know!
He was an ass. Trust me, you would agree that he was an ass. But I don’t want to think of him as an ass anymore, so I don’t want to go into details. Just trust me. He deserved to suffer. A little. And then I was feeling all adrift, and I didn’t feel like I could call you because, let’s face it, he’s your brother-in-law… and then my grandmother came to London to mollify me, or so I thought, and within moments of descending upon her suite of rooms at Claridge’s, she had whipped off a letter to the dowager duchess and they’ve been fast friends ever since… coconspirators, more like…”

“Oh, Sarah. I forget that you are twenty-five—”

“Twenty-six—”

“What
ever
! You are—oh damn it!—now I’m all exercised and my milk is starting to let down. This is outrageous!”

“Bronte, please listen. It’s all going to be fine… one way or the other. The main reason I’m calling is I really,
really
hope you’ll come to dinner tomorrow night at Northrop House. I know you and Sylvia can barely eat at the same table, but I would really love it if you were there. For me.”

“I just got her rude, demanding little note half an hour ago. Was that an invitation to dinner? I thought perhaps I was due in traffic court or that I was being
deposed
. I’m still trying to process all of this. Let me deal with one thing at a time.”

Sarah smiled to herself and was quiet for a few seconds to let Bronte mull things over. “Bron—”

“Shhh! If you are going to whip everything up into a froth, just give the rest of us a moment or two to catch up, would you?” Then, “Who else is coming to dinner?”

“Abby and Eliot.”

“Are they getting married too? Am I the last to know?”

“Bron, no,” she laughed. “I honestly think Letitia and Sylvia are trying to help. Eliot knows my grandmother already, and Abby is in town. It sounds ridiculous, but I just cannot bring myself to call Devon… it was just too… broken… he owes me a million apologies… not that that is what this is about—I don’t care about an apology, but suffice it to say I cannot make the first move—”

“What you are doing is like a
thousand
first moves—”

“I’m pathetic.”

“No! Sarah, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant all this scheming is far more exhausting than simply calling him up.”

“Like you just called up Max all those months after he left Chicago?”

“I guess I deserved that.”

“The main thing, Bron, is that I need to meet with him on common ground, preferably common ground that does not have a bed—”

“Or a VIP tent?”

“Touché,” Sarah said with a hint of sadness. She was starting to think that Bronte
was
right and that she was about to make a colossal fool of herself, popping up from a concealed wingback chair in his mother’s drawing room like a Vegas showgirl from a cake:
Surprise,
Devon!

“I’m sorry,” Bronte said, sounding genuinely contrite. “You are obviously desperate—”

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean, you are willing to do whatever it takes to make things work with Devon, so I won’t judge. I just… I mean… I guess Max and I went through our own trials by fire to prove marital compatibility.”

Sarah laughed and then quieted again. “Thanks, Bron.”

“Oh, don’t thank me yet. I think Devon is going to go ballistic when he realizes that a bunch of nosy Parkers have spent the better part of a month luring him into a room with you. He is maniacally private, Sarah. Don’t you think he’ll be pissed?”

“I was hoping he might be happy to see me.” Her voice was tiny.

“Oh, Sarah, honey. I am the Worst. Friend. Ever. Okay, I get it now. Count me in. Operation Reunion, it is!” Her voice changed from genuine, if atypical, sympathy to quintessential pragmatism: “More importantly, what are you going to wear?”

Thirty-six hours later, Sarah sat (shaking) in a stunning jade-green, vintage Christian Dior silk faille cocktail dress. The ruched fabric cut a spectacular
V
down her chest, pinched her waist to a size even her stepmother would have approved of, then flared to a flattering skirt. The hem hit her legs at exactly the right spot, making her calves look like Rita Hayworth’s as they slid into a deadly pair of her own black patent-leather platform pumps. The entire outfit might as well have been one of the burlap sacks that Lucy and Ethel wore in Paris with the cardboard ice bucket hats, for all the glamorous, female power it provided in these moments before Devon’s arrival.

None.

She was terrified. She heard the echo of Devon’s happy, strong voice as he joked with someone in the servants’ entrance that came in from where he parked his car. She listened with heightened senses as his long strides covered the distance from the back of the house, across the white-and-black marble floor of the main foyer, toward the drawing room where they all sat.

Rationally, she knew she had nothing to be afraid of: he was the one who had broken every possible social contract.

But irrationally? She was toast.

Everyone seemed to be behaving quite normally: Max was talking to Abby (advising her), Eliot was talking to the dowager duchess (charming her), Bronte was laughing with Jacques (enchanting him), and Letitia was apparently talking to Sarah herself.

Sarah closed her eyes in a moment of cowardice when she felt the wave of Devon’s presence blow into the far end of the room. He was like a gale. She was glad she had dispensed with the weight of her champagne flute because she was fairly certain she would have dropped it when he caught sight of her.

“Just try to breathe, darling. You look like Veronica Lake on her best day. Gorgeous. Now just relax.” Her grandmother’s left hand was holding Sarah’s right. Letitia was rubbing her very old, knobby thumb across the ridge of Sarah’s knuckles in a comforting gesture.

Sarah tried to do as she was told. Breathing was always advantageous. She gave it a try.

She became acutely aware of the rigid, antiquated material pulling across her chest and shoulders. The stiff, decades-old silk was starchy and brittle; she thought she could actually hear it rub against her skin, the slightest whisper of crisp, papery silk against soft, burning flesh.

Devon was greeting everyone with a strangely robotic affect: he looked askance at Eliot for a split second, then grabbed his hand with genuine affection; he kissed his mother on both cheeks and whispered something brisk that made her widen her eyes and blink once (a whisper that probably would have caused a mere mortal to expire). But the dowager duchess was nothing if not adept at navigating convoluted social situations. She introduced Devon to Jacques Fournier easily, as if they were at an embassy ball, then walked Devon over to Letitia, who remained seated as Sylvia made the formal introduction and Devon bent down to kiss the back of her hand.

“It is my pleasure to meet you, Madame Fournier. I have heard many wonderful things about you.”

The dowager duchess slipped away to rejoin Eliot.

“You will have to elaborate over dinner,” Letitia volleyed. “I always welcome the opportunity to hear wonderful things about me.”

“Then I can only hope that Mother has seated us next to each other, as we will have no lack of mutually enjoyable topics to engage us.”

“Oh, isn’t he charming, Sarah?” her grandmother said, her eyes still resting on Devon.

He turned from Letitia to look at Sarah, as if to say,
Well, am I charming?

The air hung between them. Sarah was sure her pounding, erratic heartbeat was clearly visible over the décolletage of her dress. Maybe there was some way she could will herself to simply perish from heart failure now, rather than have to endure the upcoming hours of not being able to talk to Devon about anything of any real importance, while simultaneously wanting him to tear the confining clothes off her body.

Her grandmother was still holding Sarah’s right hand and gave it a solid squeeze. “Sarah?”

“Yes?” She turned slowly to Letitia as if she’d just realized they were in the same room.

Everything was moving in slow motion and the entire room tilted. She heard a snippet of Bronte’s laugh, saw the Dowager Duchess of Northrop’s finger trail down the stem of her champagne glass—isolated, incongruous fragments floated by, and then Sarah started to feel genuinely faint. “I think I might need a glass of water.”

“Allow me,” Devon interjected a bit too quickly and walked a few rapid steps toward the door to ask Marsden for a glass of water (for Miss James) and a large scotch (for himself). He hesitated in the doorway when he turned back toward the room, unsure about whether to return to Sarah’s general vicinity or to avoid the pain of having to stand so near her without touching her. He opted for painless—or at least
less
pain—and headed toward Abby and Max.

Sarah had no idea what she had expected: the two of them running toward one another across a meadow, arms spread wide, a Vivaldi harpsichord sonata trilling in the background? She thought she might shatter into pieces.
It’s not the end of the world
, she thought idly; she just felt like she was disintegrating.

“You are fine, dear.” Letitia’s low, sure voice was a welcome break from the psychotic babbling in her own head.

“Thank you for the vote of confidence, but—not to be overly dramatic—I am not certain my legs will carry me to the dining room.” Sarah’s voice was equally subdued.

Marsden arrived with the glass of water (and another linen coaster to put beneath it if need be).

“Drink your water. You young people are so
theatrical
. Honestly. He is just a man, Sarah.” Letitia returned her gaze to Devon, standing with one hand in his pocket and one hand holding a generous pour of amber liquid on the rocks. “He is just a… particularly handsome, more or less spectacularly riveting… man,” Letitia said, patting Sarah’s thigh and giving her a devious smile.