Chapter 9: Not Charity

"Six rings," I said.

Lucan stopped at the top of the terrace steps.

"Good morning," he said.

"There were six rings in your drawer, and an empty slot."

"I know. I put them there."

"Why do you keep them?"

"Because the families returned them." He took off his gloves one finger at a time. "Somebody should."

I opened my mouth and shut it.

I had been ready for a lie.

I had a whole speech about lies, with sections.

"The seventh slot stays empty," I said. "I don't want a ring on the ledger."

"I did not offer one."

"Good."

"Not yet," he said, and walked past me into the house.

I stood there with my pad and wrote, in very small letters: NOT YET (?).

By noon Dottie and Frankie had decided they were going to cross-examine my husband.

They did it in the library.

It was a beautiful room, two stories of books and a rolling ladder, and it had six armchairs set in a neat half circle around the fireplace.

The chairs were so new that the leather still creaked.

Nobody had ever sat in them.

"Why six?" Dottie said.

"One for each of them," Lucan said. He was standing by the window with his hands behind his back.

"For what?"

"I built it for the third. She wanted a place to read." He looked at the chairs. "The chairs were an addition."

Dottie did not say anything for a moment, which is rare for her.

Frankie cleared his throat and raised a sheet of paper.

"Mr. Thackeray," he said. "Under section fourteen of the Moonstone code, a marriage is voidable if one party was deceived about the other's history."

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