Chapter 8: The Benefit

The Corwin Foundation dinner was held in a glass hall at the Art Institute, under a ceiling of lights.

Four hundred guests in black tie ate scallops and talked about money.

I wore a black dress Bram had left on the bed without a word.

It had a high neck in front and no back at all.

"Is it too much?" he had asked, standing in the bedroom doorway.

"It's perfect."

"You're lying."

"It has room for the knife."

He had looked at me for a long moment, and then he had gone to find a tie.

Now he stood at my elbow in the ballroom, one hand on my back, and every woman in the room watched his hand.

"Don't look," he murmured. "Duchess at two o'clock."

"Which one?"

"Emeralds like golf balls."

A woman sailed toward us in silver silk and a necklace that could have sunk a boat.

She was sixty, with the skin of someone who had never been told no.

"Bram, darling," she said, and kissed the air beside his cheek. "And this is the famous fiancée."

"Vesper," I said.

"Gary, Indiana." She said it as if it tasted odd.

"We give so much to those poor little towns, you know. The foundation does wonders."

"I'm sure it does."

"Do you remember your own scholarship, dear? The one the Corwins gave to girls from the steel belt?"

"I didn't need one."

"No?"

"I never finished school," I said.

Her eyebrows climbed.

"I left at seventeen to work, and I've done fine."

I lowered my voice, as if confiding something.

"I do wonder how you got your necklace past the customs form."

"The emerald in the middle is Colombian, isn't it?"

"And your late husband's firm imported it before the embargo."

She went the color of her silk.

"That's a family piece," she said, too loudly.

"I'm sure it's lovely. Is that why your lawyer called the Treasury last Tuesday?"

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