The Phoenix's Rebirth for Revenge novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Wrong Sister

Ambrose Wainright heard every word, and on the garden steps Coralie offers him a contract engagement, just before her father toasts Sabine and Ambrose and Ambrose says, "Wrong sister."

Gran pointed her cane at him.

"Who let you upstairs?"

"Nobody, Mrs. Haverhill. I was looking for a bathroom that didn't have a line." He tipped his glass toward the hall. "Yours is the only one in the house without a fight going on in it."

"You're the Wainright boy."

"I'm thirty-one."

"You're the Wainright boy," Gran said again. "Your grandfather cheated at cards."

"He did," the man agreed. "Badly."

Gran snorted.

I put the vial in my pocket and kept my hand over it.

"How much did you hear?"

He looked at me with the flat patience of someone reading a contract.

"Enough to know I'm not drinking anything in this house tonight." He set his glass on Gran's dresser. "That's from your father's bar. You can have it tested too."

"Are you going to tell my parents?"

"Your parents," he said, "are about to tell me something."

He jerked his head toward the stairs.

"Come outside. I need air, and you need a witness who isn't eighty."

"I heard that," said Gran.

"You were meant to."

The back garden was narrow and brick-walled, strung with little lights for the party.

Music and laughter came up through the kitchen windows.

He sat on the stone steps and loosened his tie the rest of the way.

I stayed standing.

"Ambrose Wainright," he said.

"I know who you are."

I did, barely.

Last time, I'd been crying in the upstairs bathroom when my father made his toast.

I'd only heard about it afterward.

Sabine and Ambrose Wainright, engaged, the merger of two old Boston boatbuilders, everyone so happy.

Six months later he'd called it off in front of half the yacht club and never said why.

"Your father thinks I'm marrying your sister," he said.

"Are you?"

"I've met her four times. She was lovely to me every time." He picked a rose petal off the step. "She was vicious to the waiters every time too."

I sat down two steps above him.

"Then why are you here?"

"Your grandmother owns forty percent of Haverhill Marine and won't sell a bolt to a Wainright. Your father thinks a wedding will soften her." He shrugged. "I wanted to see if he was right."

"He's not."

"No. She just called my grandfather a cheat."

"He was."

His mouth almost moved.

I looked at the lit kitchen windows.

Through the glass I could see my mother laughing, one hand on Sabine's back.

I thought about the cellar.

I thought about ten years of nobody standing next to me.

"Marry me instead," I said.

He turned his head slowly.

"Not really," I said. "A contract. An engagement. Six months."

"Go on."

"You want Gran's vote. Gran listens to me now, after tonight. I'll get you a real meeting, and she'll actually hear you out."

"And you?"

"I need somewhere to sleep that isn't this house. I need a lawyer who isn't my father's lawyer." I swallowed. "And I need Sabine to lose the one thing she wanted tonight, in front of everyone."

"Me."

"Your name. Your money. Your table at the yacht club."

"Romantic."

"You asked."

He studied me for so long the lights in the garden started to feel very bright.

"You'd be living in my house," he said.

"In a guest room."

"Engaged couples kiss in public."

"I know how engagements work."

"When I want to."

My face went hot. "That's your condition?"

"That's one of them." He stood and looked down at me. "The other one is that you don't lie to me. Everyone else in that house is lying to someone. I'd like one person who isn't."

"Fine."

"Fine to which?"

"Both," I said.

He held out his hand to help me up.

His palm was warm and rough, a man who still worked on his own boats.

He didn't let go when I was standing.

Inside, someone tapped a glass with a fork.

My father's voice boomed through the open kitchen door.

"Everyone! Into the dining room, please! Lenora and I have a little announcement!"

Ambrose looked at the door, then at me.

"Last chance to change your mind," he said.

"Are you changing yours?"

"I don't usually."

We walked in together, still holding hands, and nobody noticed at first.

Everyone was looking at my father at the head of the table, glass raised.

Sabine was standing at his side in white silk, glowing, her hand already pressed to her heart.

My mother was dabbing her eyes.

Gran was in her chair again, arms folded.

"Tonight we celebrate my mother," my father said. "And we celebrate the future. The Haverhills and the Wainrights have built boats on this harbor for a hundred years."

People clapped.

"So it's my great joy to tell you that our Sabine and Ambrose Wainright are going to be married."

Sabine turned toward the door with her arms already lifting.

Every head turned with her.

Every eye landed on Ambrose, and then on my hand in his.

The room went dead quiet.

Ambrose lifted our joined hands, just a little.

"Wrong sister," he said.

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