Tell Me Not to Love You novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Gavel
At ten minutes to ten on Saturday, October thirty-first, the front lawn held four hundred people.
A brass band nobody had hired was warming up beside the hedge.
Folding chairs stood in rows on the grass.
A young man in a tailored suit stood at a podium at the foot of the steps.
There was a gavel on the podium and a numbered paddle on every chair.
I watched it all through the glass of the hall window, with my hand on the oak door.
Behind me stood my mother, in her good navy dress.
The cook, the gardener, the driver and both maids waited in a line, in their best clothes.
They had been told to leave an hour ago, and nobody had.
Amos leaned on his cane at the end of the line, filming the carpet.
Garrick stood beside me, in the charcoal suit and no tie.
"They've come to see it," he said quietly. "Half of them want to watch Rosalind lose."
"The other half want to watch you."
"That's worse."
"Garrick."
I took his hand.
"Out the front," I said. "Together, all of us. I want to do this one."
He turned his head.
"It's a statement," I said. "I know. I'm choosing it. It's for me this time."
His mouth shook.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Tell Me Not to Love You are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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