Chapter 7: The Charity Gala

In the morning I dressed his wound with a face.

"Hold still," I said.

"Are you angry?" Jude asked.

"No."

"You are."

"I'm asking a question, and you'll answer it." I pressed the tape flat. "What happens on day ninety?"

His eyes stayed on the window.

"You're free."

"And you?"

"I carry on as always."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I have."

I stuffed the dirty gauze in the bin.

I'd heard him say a hard thing in the dark, and now I was hearing him say it in daylight, only gentler.

"Fine," I said. "Tonight is the museum gala. I'll hold your arm. I'll smile. I'll be exactly what the contract says."

"Sabine."

"And I'm sleeping in the guest room."

He didn't argue.

That was the worst part.

He just nodded once, very slowly.

The Cleveland Museum of Art had a marble atrium with a glass ceiling, and by eight o'clock it held three hundred people in black.

I wore the dress Ollie bought me.

Jude wore a black suit and a perfectly blank face.

He had a hand at my back all night, and I let him, because that was the job.

I counted his pulse through my fingers every five minutes.

It was ninety-eight, then a hundred and four, then a hundred and ten.

"Sit down," I said into his ear.

"I'm fine."

"You're lying."

"I'm working."

We worked.

Men in tuxedos shook his hand and didn't meet his eyes.

Women looked at me and then at each other.

At nine o'clock, Crowe's party arrived.

He came in with a woman on his arm, tall and tan, in an emerald dress with a neckline down to her navel.

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