Chapter 13: The Second Trade

The breakfast was at a members' club on Broad Street, and I walked in carrying the black binder.

Camille walked beside me in her camel coat.

Everett stopped at the door, as he had promised he would.

"I'm a guest," he said. "I'll stand wherever you tell me."

"Stand there."

He stood there.

Twenty bankers sat along a white tablecloth, and Damon sat at the head of it with Camille's father on his right.

Her father was a silver-haired man in a gray suit, and he looked like he had slept on the plane.

Damon saw us and did not pause.

"Camille, darling. And Adeline, who got my invitation after all." He lifted his coffee cup to me. "Sit. We were about to toast."

"Father," Camille said.

Her voice shook, and she kept going.

"I came to tell you I won't marry him."

Twenty bankers stopped eating.

"Camille," her father said gently. "This isn't the place."

"She's been unwell," Damon told the table. "Travel, and nerves."

"I haven't been unwell." Camille turned to face the bankers. "I've been lied to, and I've found out how."

Damon's smile stayed where it was.

"Adeline," he said. "Take her home."

"No," I said.

I put the binder on the white cloth and opened it to the yellow tab.

"Sir, may I show you page forty-one?"

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