A Ruler in Disguise novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Delivery Entrance
At the Harlow wedding gala the family humiliates the florist and her hired delivery boy, and then a pearl necklace turns up in her van and deputies cuff her.
The Harlows ordered four hundred white peonies, and by six o'clock I had delivered every one.
I stood on the lawn of Magnolia Hall with a clipboard and a thirty-eight thousand dollar invoice.
The wedding week of Weston Harlow started tonight with a gala for six hundred guests.
My shop had spent three months on this order.
The man I had hired that morning to carry crates was setting down the last one beside the fountain.
He called himself Dev, and he had said maybe ten words all day.
He was tall, with a ball cap pulled low and a Broadnax and Dina delivery vest that was too small across his shoulders.
He worked like a man who did not need to be told twice.
"That's the last of it," he said.
"Good," I said. "Now we get paid and go home."
Marguerite Harlow came down the terrace steps in a cream suit and pearls.
She was sixty-one, she chaired Harlow Holdings, and she had never once looked at me while speaking.
She looked at the flowers instead.
She picked up a peony and held it between two fingers.
"These are bruised," she said.
"They are not bruised, Mrs. Harlow," I said. "They're from a farm in Tifton, cut yesterday."
"Are you arguing with me in front of my guests?"
A few guests had drifted over with their champagne.
Marguerite dropped the peony on the grass and ground it under her heel.
"Pick them all up," she said. "Every petal. I won't have my son's wedding start with litter."
Dev went very still next to me.
I felt it more than I saw it.
"Ma'am," I said, "my invoice is due on delivery."
"Your invoice," Marguerite said, "is due when I say the work is acceptable."
Weston Harlow strolled up then with a drink in his hand and his bride's father at his elbow.
He was thirty, blond, and pleased with himself in a way that made you want to check his pockets.
"Mother, is something wrong with the help?"
"The help is arguing about money."
Weston looked me up and down, and then he looked at Dev.
"You," he said. "The delivery boy. Go move that truck, it's blocking the valet."
Dev did not move.
Weston dug into his jacket and pulled out a twenty and held it out between two fingers.
"Here. For your trouble. Go on, boy."
Somebody in the crowd laughed.
Dev looked at the twenty for a long moment.
Then he took it, folded it once, and put it in his vest pocket.
"Thank you, sir," he said, in a voice so quiet it made the back of my neck prickle.
I had hired a man to carry flowers.
I did not know why my skin prickled, but I felt it.
"Mr. Harlow," I said, "I'd like to be paid and to leave."
"Then pick up the petals," Weston said, grinning at his friends.
So I got down on my knees on that wet lawn in my good black pants.
I started gathering petals in my apron.
I told myself it was thirty-eight thousand dollars.
I told myself the shop's rent was due Friday.
Dev crouched beside me without a word and began picking up petals with his big scarred hands.
When I glanced at him, his jaw was tight, and his eyes were on Marguerite's back as she walked away.
They were grey, and they were not the eyes of a delivery boy.
I was about to say something when a girl in a bridesmaid dress screamed from the terrace.
"The necklace! Imogen's pearls are gone!"
The whole lawn went quiet.
Weston's face changed, and I will remember how fast it changed.
"The florist was in the house this afternoon," he said loudly. "She and her boy carried boxes through the bridal suite."
"We carried boxes through the service hall," I said, standing up. "Not the suite."
"Search the van," Marguerite said from the terrace.
Two deputies in uniform were already walking across the grass.
I had not noticed that they were there.
I should have wondered why a gala needed sheriff's deputies standing at the gate.
They opened the sliding door of my van, and one of them came out holding a string of pearls.
The pearls hung from his hand in the light of the lanterns.
They had been wrapped in one of my own ribbon scraps.
"No," I said. "That's not mine. I've never seen that."
"Turn around, ma'am," the deputy said.
Cold metal closed around my wrists.
Weston smiled at me over his champagne.
And beside me, with his hands still full of petals, Dev said very softly, "He put it there."
I turned and stared at him.
"I watched him do it," Dev said. "Through the van window, an hour ago."
The deputy pushed me toward the car.
Weston's smile slipped for one half second.
Then Marguerite said, "Take the boy too. He's an accomplice."
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