REJECTED BRIDE

CHAPTER 8

Chapter 8

The staff member pushing my chair has apologized four times in ninety seconds.

His name is Tomas, and he apologizes the way some people knit. It's almost soothing.

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry. Security will walk you out. They just need a moment."

"It's fine, Tomas."

"I'm sorry."

"Also fine."

We're in a service corridor behind the ballroom. Fluorescent lights, stacked chairs, a trolley of dirty champagne flutes. It's the exact opposite of the room I just left, and honestly, I've never felt more at home. Through the wall I can hear the party trying to restart itself. Somebody has turned the music back up. That's what rich people do in a crisis. They add a string quartet.

And I replay it. Adrien, looking back over his mother's shoulder. His mouth forming a word.

One syllable. I'm almost sure of that.

It could have been stay. It could have been sorry. It could have been stop, as in stop, Maman, or as in stop, Margot. I've spent four years reading faces for a living, and right now I couldn't tell you which one it was.

Wonderful. The one night I need my eyes to work.

The door at the end of the corridor bangs open, and Pascal comes in, glasses on top of his head, looking like a bear who's been asked to tiptoe.

"Tomas, my friend," he says warmly. "I'll take it from here. Mademoiselle Vasseur is my guest, and my guests are not escorted anywhere by men with earpieces."

"Sir, the family asked..."

"And I'm asking you to go and find me a very small glass of water."

Tomas goes. He apologizes on the way out.

Pascal crouches down to my level, which takes a while, and lowers his voice. "They took the photographer's camera," he says. "They did not take his other camera."

"His other camera?"

"A very small one. He keeps it in his sock." He pauses. "I want to be clear that I did not ask where the sock had been."

I laugh. It comes out cracked, and a little wet, and it surprises us both.

"Élise already has the files," he says. "She's in a car outside, and she says, and I quote, 'Tell her to leave the building before she does something dignified again.'"

I let him wheel me out through the kitchen. It's my third kitchen exit in two months. I'm starting to think it's a theme.

By three in the morning, Isabelle Rousseau is trending.

I know because Odile is sitting on the edge of my sofa in her bathrobe, phone in both hands, reading me the internet in an outraged voice. She should be asleep. She's been up since six. She refuses to admit she is enjoying this.

"'Who is this woman and where can I sign up?'" she reads. "That one has four thousand likes. And this one. 'Somebody get the mother a glass of water.'"

I have the photo open on my own phone. I can't stop looking at it.

There I am in the doorway of that ballroom. Green dress. Chin up. Chair. Behind me, a hundred faces turned like sunflowers. And in the center of everything, Isabelle Rousseau, champagne glass raised, toast unfinished, mouth open around a word she'll never get to say.

It's the best photograph anyone has ever taken of me. I'd like that on the record. I've been shot by people who charge four figures an hour, and none of them ever caught the light like that.

"This one is my favorite," Odile says, and clears her throat. "'She's the one who saved him. I read about it. And HE LET HIS MOTHER DO THIS?' In capital letters, Madame."

"That's a lot of capital letters."

"It's deserved."

My phone rings. Élise.

"Are you sitting down?"

"I'm always sitting down. It's my whole situation."

"Good. Then you'll hear this properly. Three magazines have asked for a statement. Two of them want an interview. And Isabelle's lawyers have already called the brand to ask whether you 'breached confidentiality.'"

My stomach drops. "The NDA."

"Margot." I can hear her smiling. "You didn't say one word about that family's household tonight. You said you were done being discussed. That's not a breach. That's a mood."

I'm laughing again, and this time I can't seem to stop.

Adrien's message arrives at 3:41.

I know the time because I stare at it for a very long while before I read it.

I said "wait." When I looked back at you. I meant it. Please don't decide anything yet. I'm going to fix this. I promise.

Wait.

That was the word. One syllable. It's almost funny.

The man has had three months and one very public catastrophe, and his big move is to ask me for more time. In a single syllable. In a ballroom. In front of two hundred witnesses.

I start to laugh, and it turns into something else halfway through. Odile puts her phone down without a word and takes my hand. Neither of us says anything.

When I'm done, I feel emptied out, and strangely lighter. Like I've finally set down a bag I've been carrying for so long I forgot it wasn't part of my arm.

I don't answer him.

Not out of anger. It's just that I finally understand something. The answer to wait is not another sentence. It's a life. And I've already started living mine.

I sleep for two hours.

At 7:40, my phone buzzes on the nightstand. Not my cell. The building's front desk line, which rings through to the apartment. Odile picks it up in the kitchen. I hear her go quiet.

She appears in my bedroom doorway, still in her robe, holding the receiver against her chest like it might go off.

"Madame," she says, very carefully. "There's a man in the lobby. He says his name is Marcus Boucher."

Every part of me goes cold.

"He says you never answered his email." She swallows. "And he says to tell you he's the one who saw you outside the restaurant that night."

I don't move.

On my nightstand, my phone is still open to a message from an unknown number, weeks old. I saw you outside the restaurant tonight. Why didn't you come in? I built a whole theory around that text. Isabelle's spy. Isabelle's trap. I was so sure.

And now the trap is standing in my lobby, asking for me by name.

"Madame?" Odile says. "What should I tell him?"