Chapter 6: The Lunch Where He Kissed Her

The Tull Foundation charity lunch had a hundred round tables, and Beatrice had put my name on one of them.

"Go," she said. "Let them see you eat."

So I went, in a green dress I had borrowed from the gallery's coat closet, with my chin up and my heart going.

Ethan was already at the main doors in his black jacket and earpiece.

He gave me one look as I passed, a flat, steady look that said: I'm here.

It was the only thing keeping my knees from folding.

My table was number nine, near the stage.

Six women in pastel suits sat around it, and I knew every one from my mother's circle.

I pulled out a chair.

"That seat is taken," said the woman in lilac.

"The card says Penhallow."

"It says Penhallow-Tull," said the woman in yellow. "Grayson's mother had the cards done last month. They haven't been corrected."

"They're not going to be," said the woman in lilac, and the whole table laughed.

I stood with my hand on the chair.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Who are you to tell me where I sit?"

"We're the women who keep this city running," said the woman in yellow. "You're the girl who married the doorman."

"A lunch for charity doesn't need a scandal. Do be sweet and take your plate elsewhere."

"Or we will ask the staff."

I felt the whole room turning.

At the next table someone had lifted a phone, and at the one beyond, a second.

Grayson's mother stood near the stage in a silver suit, watching me with her hands clasped.

She was smiling.

I looked at the chair.

I looked at the exit, forty yards away.

Then a hand closed on mine.

Ethan had crossed the hall without me seeing it, tall and black-jacketed among all that pastel.

"Miss Penhallow is my wife," he said.

The table went silent.

"Mr. Rudd," said the woman in lilac. "Please go back to your post."

"My post is wherever she is."

He turned me toward him by the hand, and for one second I saw his face up close, calm and certain.

He lowered his head.

He kissed me in front of three hundred women.

It was not a polite kiss.

His mouth was warm and hard, and his hand slid to the back of my neck and held me there.

I forgot the room.

I forgot the terms.

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