Chapter 10: The Agreement

The quartet had stopped playing.

I heard somebody's heels on the marble, and then nothing at all.

Two hundred faces had turned toward the end of the bar, and I felt every one of them.

"Paid for what?" I said.

Margot lifted her glass and sipped.

"Oh, my dear. Surely we don't need to do this in front of the staff."

"We do. You started it."

"Nina." Elliot was still on one knee.

He had not looked at me since his mother spoke.

"Please. Not like this."

"Like what? You asked me here to say it in front of everyone." I kept my voice even.

"So say it, or she will."

He said nothing.

His hand was still on the footrest of my stool, and his knuckles were white.

Margot smiled around the room, the warm hostess smile.

"It's no secret to the family," she said.

"Three years ago a young woman's father was dying. She had no money and no prospects.

"My son was a lonely man who had fallen hard for her. I did what any mother does."

"What did you do?" Jace said.

"I paid for the surgery." She said it gently, as if it were a kindness.

"And a long rehabilitation. Four hundred twelve thousand dollars.

"In return she agreed to marry Elliot and to understand what the marriage was."

The silence changed.

I heard an old man behind me whisper, "My God."

A woman in green put her hand over her mouth.

"A convenient wife," Margot said. "A pretty one, from a decent family.

"That was the arrangement, and she accepted it with her eyes open."

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