Chapter 2: I Will Wear It Again

Alistair held out the velvet box as though nothing in the room had changed.

“You look as if you've seen a ghost,” he said.

Mira's fingers tightened around the brass key beneath her robe. The chain had left a red groove in her palm.

“I slept badly.”

“On a day like today?” He came nearer, his expression softening with such practiced concern that her stomach turned. “Then I should have waited until you were awake.”

He had not waited in the corridor. He had looked at the blood spreading through her dress and measured what she still knew.

Alistair opened the box.

The ring lay inside on black velvet: an oval diamond framed by two narrow emeralds. She knew the tiny nick on the left setting where it caught on knit gloves. She knew the cool weight of it on her hand during the eighteen months that followed. At the end, it had shone between them while he held her wrist and told her she had made things difficult.

“Mira?”

She looked up. His smile had begun to strain at the corners.

The old instinct was to slam the door and call someone she trusted. But Celeste had helped lead her downstairs, and the man with the Vane ring had known where her key was hidden.

So Mira lifted her left hand.

“You always make an entrance,” she said.

Relief crossed his face too quickly to be romantic. He slid the ring onto her finger. It settled against her skin with the intimate certainty of a shackle.

“Tonight,” he said, brushing his thumb over her knuckles, “we make it official.”

We had already done that once, Mira thought. It had not saved me.

She gave him the smile she had learned at Foundation dinners, mild enough to invite confidence and empty enough to reveal nothing. “Tonight.”

He kissed her forehead. His mouth was warm. Mira kept still until the door clicked shut behind him.

Celeste arrived forty minutes later carrying two coffee cups and a garment bag covered in transparent plastic. She kicked the door closed with one heel and looked Mira over with theatrical dismay.

“No. Absolutely not. You have the face of someone attending a tax hearing.”

The scent of bergamot followed Celeste in. Mira remembered it faintly on Alistair's cuff in the service corridor.

She accepted the coffee without drinking it. “I thought you said you were bringing help.”

“The stylists are parking. I brought the essential help.” Celeste pointed at the ring. “Let me see.”

Mira held out her hand.

Celeste took it and turned it beneath the window. Her nails were painted a blue so dark it was nearly black. “He finally chose the emeralds. I told him diamonds alone would make you look like every other Ashford bride.”

The words were careless. Perhaps they were meant to be.

“You advised him?”

Celeste glanced up, then laughed. “He asked what colour you wear when you want to look severe. I said green.”

The explanation came too fast. Mira tucked it away beside the message that had drawn her downstairs in the first life.

“Severe,” Mira repeated.

“Beautifully severe.” Celeste squeezed her fingers. “Don't start making that face. He adores you.”

The lie wore a friend's voice and stood in Mira's bedroom with coffee in its hand.

By late afternoon, stylists had pinned Mira's dark hair into a low twist and fastened her into a silver gown. In the mirror, she looked like the woman who had believed a proposal could be a beginning.

The key rested against her breastbone. No one had asked after it this morning. That did not mean no one would.

Before leaving, Mira wrote three lines on restoration paper in the small, even hand Victor had taught her.

Alistair knows about the key.

Celeste helped him.

Do not go downstairs alone.

She slid it beneath the false bottom of her mother's hairpin tray. It was not evidence, only something solid for the day Alistair's kindness made her doubt herself.

Ashford House rose above the river behind black iron gates. Donors moved through the entrance, talking about restoration grants and election dinners.

Alistair offered Mira his arm at the foot of the stairs.

She placed her fingertips there. Every camera turned toward them.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

No, she thought. But she had been less ready on the floor of his corridor.

“Of course.”

Inside, a quartet played near the marble staircase. A waiter passed with champagne, and Mira chose a glass from the tray herself. Alistair noticed.

“Careful tonight?”

“I want to remember it.”

His eyes held hers for one beat too long. “You will.”

The ballroom had looked larger in memory. Its chandeliers were still too bright, the ceiling frescoes still crowded with pale gods. Mira greeted trustees, listened to an elderly donor praise the Foundation's new catalogue room, and let Alistair introduce her as if she were already an ornament in the Ashford collection.

When he moved away to speak with a cabinet minister, she found a place beside a marble column with a clear view of the doors.

Celeste appeared across the room, laughing at something a young curator had said. Her gaze travelled to Alistair before it came back to Mira. Only a flicker. Barely a pause.

Mira lifted her champagne in greeting. Celeste lifted hers in return.

Later, when the orchestra lowered into a waltz, Alistair returned and guided Mira toward the small dais beneath the Ashford Foundation crest. The room quieted in soft waves. His hand settled at the base of her spine.

“You've gone very pale,” he murmured.

“Too much coffee.”

“You should have told me.” His voice was gentle, for the guests who might be close enough to listen. “I would have taken care of you.”

Mira faced the crowd. The microphones waited. She could walk away now and make a scene no one would understand. She could give him eighteen months of warning, then spend those months running from a trap whose shape she barely knew.

Instead, she laced her fingers through his.

The applause began when he dropped to one knee. Cameras flashed. Alistair asked the question exactly as he had before, pausing in the same place after her name, as if the whole night had been rehearsed for a single perfect photograph.

Mira let the silence stretch just long enough for him to notice.

Then she said, “Yes.”

The ballroom broke open around them.

Alistair rose and kissed her while people cheered. His hand closed over hers, pinning the emeralds between their palms. For an instant, his smile did not reach his eyes.

“Don't do that again,” he whispered against her cheek.

“Do what?”

“Make me wonder whether you're going to embarrass me.” His grip sharpened, still invisible to the guests. Then his expression smoothed. “You made this difficult.”

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