Vows Written In Poison

Vincent

Vincent Whitmore had come to that luncheon for exactly one reason, and it was not the woman.

He had come because his grandmother had summoned him for the first time in eleven years, and a man who wanted to know what his enemies were planning did not turn down a chance to sit across the table from them.

He had not expected Claire.

Or rather, he had expected her the way a man expects a piece of furniture in a house he does not visit often. He knew Raymond had married her. He knew she was quiet, and beautiful in the boring way rich men liked their wives to be beautiful, and that she had a sister in a hospital which was, according to the family gossip, "the leash." He had never bothered to look at her twice, because Raymond's things were never worth looking at twice.

Then he had walked into the great hall and heard her, sweet as sugar, ask her aunt-in-law whether the candidate for Raymond's replacement wife was currently ten weeks along.

And he had thought, very clearly, "Oh. So she has finally opened her eyes."

Now she was walking beside him toward the far end of the table, her hand still resting lightly in his, and every single Whitmore at the table was pretending not to stare.

"Sit here," he said, pulling out the chair next to his own. "You will have a better view."

"A better view of what?"

"Of whichever member of my family faints first."

She almost laughed. He heard the small startled sound she made, cut off before it could escape. Interesting.

"Vincent," Grandmother Patricia said from the other end of the table, "I did not know you were bringing a companion."

"I am not," he said mildly. "I am simply moving one that was already here."

Patricia's mouth thinned.

Raymond, standing halfway between the two ends of the table like a man who had forgotten which side of a war he was on, cleared his throat. "Vincent. That is my wife."

"Yes."

"So sit her back beside me."

"No."

The one word landed like a small stone in a still pond. Everyone felt the ripple.

"Vincent, please," Patricia said. Her voice, for once, had softened. "This is not the time."

"When would be the time, Grandmother? Perhaps at the funeral of the child your grandson conceived with a woman who is not his wife? Would that be the time?"

The table went so quiet that Vincent could hear the ticking of the tall clock in the corner.

Raymond's face turned white. "How did you..."

"How did I what, cousin? How did I know about your pregnant secretary? How did I know she has been on our family's payroll for two years, first under my uncle, then under you? Or how did I know she had lunch at this house eight days ago, with our grandmother, to discuss what your wife's replacement would look like?"

Judith made a small sound like a kicked cat.

Beside him, Vincent felt Claire go very still.

He looked down at her.

Her face was white, but her hands, resting on the table, were perfectly steady. She was not going to cry. She was not going to shout. She was, he realized, filing every word he had just said the way a scientist files a data point.

Good.

"Grandmother," he said, without breaking his gaze from Claire, "I withdraw from your lunch. I find I have lost my appetite. Mrs. Whitmore, may I offer you a ride back into the city?"

"Absolutely not," Raymond snapped. "Claire came with me. She leaves with me."

Vincent finally turned to look at his cousin.

"Raymond," he said, quietly. "Say one more word to her in that voice, and I will make sure that by Monday morning your hotel group has no line of credit at any bank in New England. Do you understand me?"

Raymond understood him.

Claire stood.

"Thank you for lunch, Grandmother Patricia," she said. "It was educational."

She followed Vincent out.

In the car, she was silent for the first six miles. He didn't push her. He'd been a boy in this family too, and he knew what it felt like to walk out of that great hall for the first time. The sky always looked a little too bright.

Finally she said, "Why did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Speak for me. Choose me. In front of them."

"I did not choose you," Vincent said. "I chose against them. There is a difference."

"Fair."

"There is also," he added, glancing at her, "the small matter that you have been quietly moving the billing account for your sister's hospital, hiring a private security detail for her room, and signing a contract at Halden Biotech, all within the last seventy-two hours. Which means you were already planning to walk. I only opened the door a little earlier."

Her head snapped up. "How do you know that?"

"I own a small stake in Halden."

"How small?"

"Sixty-one percent."

She stared at him.

"Anthony Mercer works for you."

"Anthony Mercer works for himself," Vincent said. "But yes. I signed his salary."

"Was the job a trap?"

"No." He met her eyes in the rearview mirror. "Anthony chose you for the seat two years ago. He waited for you. I only agreed because he told me you were the best mind he had ever taught, and I don't argue with Anthony Mercer about science."

She turned her face to the window and did not answer for a long time.

"Vincent," she said at last.

"Yes."

"Casandra called me two days ago. She said if I file for divorce, my sister will not leave the hospital alive."

The car changed lanes very smoothly. That was the only sign, in his entire body, that he had heard her.

"Say that again, Mrs. Whitmore."

"She said..."

"I heard you the first time," he said. "I only wanted to hear it again, so I would remember exactly how it sounded when I ruined her."

Something in Claire's face broke, and then knit back together, harder than before.

"You don't even know me," she said.

"No."

"Then why."

"Because," Vincent said, "I have spent eleven years waiting for my cousin to make a mistake big enough that I could end him for it. And you, Mrs. Whitmore, are the biggest mistake he has ever made."

They arrived at her apartment. She had not told him her new address. He already knew it.

Before she got out, he said, "Claire."

"Yes."

"May I ask you one question."

"Yes."

"Do you want him back?"

She looked at him for a long moment.

"No," she said. "I want him buried."

"Then we agree on the shape of the future," he said. "Sleep. Tomorrow at nine, my lawyer will meet you at Halden. His name is Simon. He is the best divorce attorney in the state. He is already on retainer for you."

"I did not hire him."

"I did."

She got out of the car. She stood on the sidewalk in the pale grey dress and looked at him through the open door for one more second.

"Vincent."

"Yes, Claire."

"Are you a good man?"

He considered the question honestly.

"No," he said. "But I am on your side. Those are not always the same thing."

He drove away.

At his own building he took the private elevator to the top floor, dropped his coat on a chair, and told his assistant, "Get me everything on Casandra Vale. And find out which member of my family sent her to threaten Grace Robert. I don't care what it costs."

His assistant nodded and left the room.

Vincent walked to the window. Boston lay below him, small and lit and unaware. Somewhere in that spread of lights, his cousin was probably drinking a very good whiskey and telling himself that everything could still be fixed.

Vincent smiled, once, without kindness.

"No," he said aloud, to no one. "It cannot."

And behind him, on his desk, a photograph he had never quite been able to throw away, a photo of himself at nineteen, standing outside the Whitmore estate with a suitcase and a busted lip, watched him do it.