If the Shoe Fits (33 page)

“Thanks a lot. Now I feel really carefree about the whole outcome of this ill-conceived night of torture. Why didn’t I just call him? Tell me again?”

Sarah couldn’t help staring at him while her grandmother responded. He looked tired around the eyes, his pants were loose, his hair was a little longer than usual. If anyone had seen her critical stare, they would have thought she was trying to scan him with her x-ray vision.

“Because you have to start over… I’m sure you had some magical first moment, sparks flew, chemistry, et cetera, et cetera, but the reality is that people your age totally misunderstand the beauty and purpose of doing things in a particular
order
. Since you have managed to awaken the tender feelings of Lord Heyworth—it is delightful that he is a lord, isn’t it? How wonderful to think of you being Lady Devon Heyworth; it has such a nice ring to it—”

“Stay on topic, Letitia,” Sarah interrupted. “Order of events and all that.”

“Oh, yes. In any case, it is as if you started at the end, with your Devon, and now you have to end at the beginning. Just act as if this is the first time you are meeting. And be a proper girl. Not some brazen hussy.”

Sarah contained the water in her mouth with effort. She paused long enough to compose herself, then swallowed with a gulp. Letitia had been speaking in a low voice to begin with, but that last coda was even lower, more of a throaty Bostonian growl.

“I will do my best, Letitia. Only you could question my very interest in men one day, then accuse me of harlotry the next. Thanks for clarifying. So I should not, say, walk over and ask him to take me home now?”

Letitia turned her head quickly back to meet Sarah’s gaze, then smiled wickedly. “As tempting as that might be, no, you may not walk over and ask him to take you home. First of all, you have no home here, so you would have to go to
your
hotel or to
his
home, neither of which you would ever do, of course.”

“Of course.” Sarah took another sip of the cool water to conceal her sheepish grin.

“Second of all, you must stop worrying. Let him lead, in this at least. Then, later, you can do what you will in the bedroom.”

Water did go into the back of her nostrils that time.

Eliot came over and stood before the two women.

“Perfect,” Letitia chimed. “Help me up, Eliot, and you sit here and speak to Sarah.”

“Well, that’s what I came over here to do, but if it makes you feel better to
orchestrate
, then I am happy to oblige. It seems to run in the family.”

Letitia left the chair and walked over to Sylvia. She joined her on the couch where the two of them—dressed in black—looked like a pair of crows on a winter branch.

Devon turned his head over his shoulder for a few seconds, taking in the new seating arrangements. Sarah looked down into her lap.

“So, I know I am supposed to be one of the players on this absurd stage again, but I have to briefly thank you in person.” Eliot went on to congratulate Sarah on successfully flushing out Carrie Schmidt and her Danieli-Fauchard accomplice, a junior marketing director with whom she had been romantically involved for years. The two had amassed a considerable fortune from their careful skimming, but had become greedy with the sales of the CAD files to the Chinese.

Sarah nodded absently.

“You are not hearing a word I’m saying, are you?” he asked.

“The occasional syllable penetrates.” Sarah lifted her gaze from her lap and smiled wistfully at Eliot. “I know I’ve said it before, but it really would have been so much simpler if I had met you first. You’re so easy.”

“I don’t think I’ll analyze the double-standard, backhanded insult that resides in the midst of that veiled compliment.”

She put the palm of her hand on his cheek and gave him a friendly pat-pat.

Marsden rang a miniature, handheld gong in the hall, and the dowager duchess stood up and asked everyone to come into the dining room across the foyer. Eliot escorted Sarah to the table.

Devon winced as he watched the decent man’s hand guide her lower back, then threw back the rest of his scotch.

“Take it easy, Dev,” Abby said as she put her arm around his waist with a squeeze of moral support.

The hostess had been merciful: the seating plan afforded Sarah a good distance from Devon. She could ignore him for the duration of a single meal and then never see him again. He was obviously disinterested, bordering on annoyed, by her presence. His face was an unrevealing shell. He was at the opposite end of the table, next to his mother, with Sarah down at the far end next to Max.

“I will just talk and you can pretend to listen,” Max said.

Sarah nodded at her place without paying attention, then caught herself and turned to Max with a look of real gratitude. He gave her a quick wink and launched into a meaningless, detailed recitation about the history of prime numbers and the search for the latest, greatest prime, frequently alluding to the Sieve of Eratosthenes and other arcana.

By the time the six-course meal finally ground to a halt, Sarah thought her face might fall off. She had never expended so much effort just to remain seated and retain the appearance of interest. She was exhausted. Luckily, Bronte was equally spent. She was only four months into motherhood and nine o’clock was bedtime. Ten o’clock was practically a wild night on the town. Max stood and gave his thanks to his mother. He walked to where Bronte was sitting next to Devon, pulled out her chair with a gallant flourish, and helped his tired wife to a standing position. She smiled her good-bye to Sarah, then leaned into Max as he led her from the room.

Everyone else started to rise from the table. Jacques and Letitia bid their farewells and said many thanks again to Sylvia. Eliot had made his way around the table and was leaning over the chair next to Abby, saying something that made her laugh out loud, then she pulled her hand over her mouth and looked up at him with an impish gleam in her eye. Eliot patted her on the back and walked over to the dowager duchess, kissing the back of her hand formally and saying a few words of thanks before making his exit. Abby and Sylvia moved back into the drawing room, chatting on the way.

The sudden silence consumed her. Sarah almost knocked her chair over when she leapt to her feet after belatedly realizing she was the only person still sitting at the table, where she had been staring blankly at the empty chair next to her.

Devon was right behind her and caught the chair before it flipped completely onto the floor, then he righted it and held it firmly for her. Whether he intended for her to sit back down or to step away from the table, Sarah wasn’t sure. Abby and her mother’s cheerful, light voices trailed faintly from the drawing room.

“If we accomplish nothing else in life, at least we have helped foster a new chapter of happy mother-daughter relations between Sylvia and Abby.” Devon’s solid voice was a tonic against her ears. She closed her eyes to feel it… feel them… the actual sound waves… touching her.

Then his voice was deeper. And close.

“I have to touch you, Sarah. I can’t
not
touch you.”

His finger trailed like a feather along her collarbone and she filled her lungs for the first time in hours. Her knees started to buckle and she realized she was still standing, then immediately half-sat, half-fell back onto the dining room chair that had served to imprison her for the past two and a half hours.

Devon followed and sat in the chair to her left, his right hand still gripping the arched-back frame of her chair, his breathing coming hard and choppy near her neck.

Sarah kept her eyes closed, still craving the feel of his voice, the touch of his fingers, his tongue. “My grandmother specifically told me not to be a brazen hussy,” she whispered, hoarse.

“That’s fine. I can be brazen for both of us.” His tongue trailed up the column of her neck and she groaned in a wave of relief.

“I want to marry you, Devon.”

Some things just came out like that.

He gripped her head in his firm hands and turned her to face him. “Open your eyes.”

Her neck felt useless and she was grateful to have him holding her head up. Her eyelids felt momentously heavy; she opened them with a concentrated effort, then smiled when his beautiful face filled her entire field of vision.

Then he spoke, the vibration of his voice strumming through her.

“I love you in the most irrational, improbable way imaginable.” He shook her head with contained force on the last word, almost roughly, to ensure the words penetrated. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes. You love me.” Her smile was a dream of surrender. She kissed him lightly on his lower lip. “And I love you. So there’s that.”

“And I want you all the time.”

“All the time. Yes.” She tried to kiss him again, her eyelids dropping again, her arms resting feebly in her lap, but he held her a few inches away from his face. “Please?” she added uncertainly.

He kissed her with a passion and force that electrified every nerve in her body. Her arms flew up to his neck; she gripped the muscles at his nape then pushed her trembling fingers into the thick welcome of his hair.

“Take me home,” she whispered before diving back into his mouth.

“Where is home, Sarah?” he whispered after another punch-drunk kiss.

She was trying to figure out a way to crawl into his lap, into his dinner jacket, into him. “Wherever you are, Devon.” She tried to kiss him again, but he had gone rigid.

“What did you just say?”

She let her Veronica Lake hair swing over one shoulder and licked her lips, trying to remember what she had said.

Yes. That was it. She remembered. “Wherever
you
are is my home, Devon,” she said, each word round and distinct, like a drunk overcompensating.

He kept staring at her, memorizing her, she thought.

“Now back to the kissing, please,” she said as she leaned in again and he shook her awake.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, a throaty command.

“Okay,” she laughed, trailing behind him as he made quick work of lacing his fingers through hers and pulling her across the foyer and into the drawing room.

Abby and Sylvia looked up from the game of gin rummy they had just started, a glass of scotch on each of the small drink tables next to the card table.

“Sarah and I are off to the Caribbean to elope. We’ll see you in a few weeks or so. Thanks for dinner.”

“Very well, dear,” the duchess said without a hint of irony, glancing briefly over one shoulder with a slight wave—a dismissal really—then returned her attention to her hand of cards.

Abby raised her glass of scotch in a silent toast of congratulations, lifting it once to Devon and once to Sarah. “Have fun.”

They were out the back door and into Devon’s car before Sarah could process what Devon had just said. By the time she regained her powers of speech, she was buckled into the front seat of the Aston Martin as it snarled out of Upper Brook Street and had turned south onto Park Lane.

“Wait!”

He downshifted and turned the car into the first available street, pulling off to the side and letting the big engine idle. “What?”

“Did you just say we are going somewhere and getting married?”

“Yes. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Okay. I just needed to clarify that. Kiss me, please.”

Ten minutes later, the car was still idling and Sarah had somehow managed to hitch up her dress enough to straddle across Devon’s lap, wedging herself between his firm chest and the steering wheel.

“Maybe we should spend a couple of nights in my room at the Connaught, for now, you know, just to seal the deal. I’m happy to get married—thrilled—even though you never really asked me, technically speaking, and a girl is supposed to care about that sort of thing, but I don’t—” She smiled and started kissing him again. Another eight minutes went by. “But I don’t think I can tolerate a long plane ride to some tropical paradise right now. Can’t we just send bike messengers ’round to the magistrate’s office for a marriage license and spend all
our
time in bed?” She wriggled farther up against his lap in an effort to keep the steering wheel from digging into her back, and Devon was finally forced to push her off and back onto her seat.

“Put your seat belt on. I will apologize in advance since I cannot be held responsible for my use of the clutch.”

The gears squealed, commiserating. And then they were in front of the Connaught in less than three minutes.

Devon practically threw the keys into poor Gavin’s face. The helpful doorman was momentarily paralyzed, wondering whether to congratulate Miss James or serve as bouncer. He opted for a professional expression that conveyed nothing, not that either Sarah or Devon were even aware of his presence. The doorman shook his head as he watched the young couple scramble up the stairs and into the welcoming glow of the hotel lobby.

***

After a few days (and nights), Sarah was able to convince Devon that—even though a girl might not stand on ceremony when it came to bended-knee marriage proposals (or their lack)—an actual wedding with a dress and family members and a photographer, and lots of champagne and music and dancing was worth something after all. Sarah called in some favors and before long, everything was in place for a New Year’s Eve wedding in the Caribbean.

Devon was true to his word and the renovation of the Sarah James boutique was finished on schedule. London Fashion Week came and went in a blur, followed by the biggest orders for her spring/summer line that she’d ever received in the short history of the company.

Both of them agreed that it made sense to live on the top floor of the Bruton Place building. Sarah asked Devon to design the space, and he created a magical world that managed to balance both the spare, clean lines that he craved, punctuated with the warmth and beauty of the French antiques Sarah loved. Her only demand had been doors. And her own dressing room.

They celebrated Christmas in London. After an enormous Christmas Eve feast at Northrop House with the entire extended family, the two of them strolled home in the snapping winter wind that blew through Grosvenor Square around midnight. After the exhilaration of walking the few short blocks to their place, the two of them sat cross-legged on the floor in front of their fireplace to exchange their gifts. Devon was in his rumpled dress shirt, having tossed his tie and velvet jacket onto the sofa, and Sarah was in her rumpled green party dress, which she’d worn for old times’ sake.