Chapter 19: The Gala

I wore the ivory dress to the Bexley gala.

It had been hemmed twice, and it was the only formal thing I owned that I had paid for myself.

Ford wore a black suit he had borrowed from a man at the yard.

The sleeve of his tattoos ended at his cuff.

Three hundred people sat at round tables in the Lakeside ballroom.

The wall behind the stage held a screen, and the screen held the Bexley Hotels logo.

A man in a headset was fiddling with a laptop at the side of the stage.

At half past eight, Gwendolyn rose from the head table in a pearl-gray gown with a gardenia pinned at her shoulder.

She did not look at me.

She took the microphone from its stand and held a single sheet of paper in her other hand.

"Friends," she said. "Family. I'm sorry to ask for your attention on a happy night."

The room went quiet.

"A matter has come to my attention concerning my brother-in-law's marriage."

A murmur went through the tables.

"It was done in haste, behind the family's back, within days of a young woman's heartbreak."

She turned to the room.

"I have asked my lawyers to file a petition to void it for fraud."

I felt Ford go rigid beside me.

"I will withdraw it," Gwendolyn said, in her sweet, steady voice.

"But only if my brother-in-law signs the vote of this company over to my husband."

"That is where his father meant it to be."

Three hundred heads turned toward our table.

"And if he does not, I will let the court ask this girl what she knew, and when."

I stood.

I did not hurry.

I walked up the aisle between the tables in my ivory dress.

I held out my hand to the man in the headset.