Rhys POV
Dinner was ten tables of twelve, old crystal and older money, a string quartet playing something that cost more per hour than most people earned in a week. I sat at the head table between Lord Hartwell and Ford, with my wife across from me and slightly to the left, which meant I spent the first two courses watching Ford watch her.
He was good at it. Anyone else at that table would not have noticed — his attention appeared general, social, moving easily around the table the way attention is supposed to move at dinner. But I had spent eleven years watching Ford Calloway in professional settings and I knew what his actual attention looked like, and tonight it kept returning to her with an interest that was not social and not casual and was dressed up very carefully as both.
She kn
