She Kept the Trash, I Kept the Crown novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Smear

A columnist calls Leonie the orphan who grabbed the ring; she answers in front of the lunch room and Daphne walks in with the Wheelocks.

The article was up before breakfast.

Felix slid his phone across the table and put a piece of toast on top of it, to keep it from moving.

The headline read: "The Orphan Who Grabbed the Slade Ring."

I read it standing up.

It said that a close relative of the new Trowbridge daughter had described her as hungry, patient and good at getting herself chosen.

It said I had begged for the engagement.

It said my sister, who had given up a fortune out of sheer decency, had been too polite to say so.

"I didn't beg," I said.

"I know," said Felix. "You barely said anything at the microphone, and none of it was please."

Mrs. Trowbridge had gone white.

Her thoughts were running ahead of her. The lunch is at noon. Two hundred donors. They'll all have read it.

"We can cancel," she said.

"No," I said. "I'll go."

"Leonie, you don't have to."

"I do. If I stay home, it's true."

She looked at me for a long moment, and her thoughts went still.

Then she pushed her chair back and went to find her good pearls.

The Trowbridge Foundation lunch was held in the atrium of the new hospital wing, under a glass roof, at twenty round tables.

Everybody turned when we walked in.

My head started to ache at the doorway.

There were too many minds in one room, all talking, and every one of them had read the article.

Poor thing. I always thought she looked sly. Did the sister really pay for that dress? Slade will never stay with her.

I kept my chin up and my feet moving.

A woman in a green suit stopped me at the third table with a phone in her hand.

She was the columnist, and I knew her before she spoke, because her thoughts were rehearsed.

"Miss Hartwell," she said. "Would you like to comment on your sister's remarks?"

"I would."

The tables near us went quiet.

"I'd like to know why you ran it before the lunch," I said. "Before anyone could ask me."

"It was a matter of timing."

Her thoughts said otherwise. The piece had to be out before the lunch, she had been told why, and she had been paid on top of her fee.

"Your source gave you a deadline," I said. "Did your source also give you a seat?"

Her face did something small.

"I don't understand."

"The table behind mine is booked in a name that isn't on the foundation's list. That's the table your source is paying for."

I had not known that until I heard her think it.

Behind her, a man stood up, and a few seats along a woman nudged her husband.

"I'm twenty-one," I said, "and I'm not good at getting chosen. I'm good at standing in front of two hundred strangers and saying what I want. I wanted the Trowbridges. That's the whole story."

The columnist opened her mouth.

I felt a hand land on the small of my back.

Warm, and certain.

I turned my head.

Kellan Slade had come in through the side door in his charcoal suit, and he had taken one look at the room.

"Miss Hartwell is my fiancée," he said.

He said it to the columnist, but he said it loudly enough for the tables.

"I met both sisters at the interview weekend. I'm glad the one I'm marrying is the honest one. If you'd like to print something, print that."

The woman in the green suit lowered her phone.

Somebody at the back began to clap, and it spread.

It was not for me, I knew.

It was because a man who owned eleven hospitals had said a plain thing in a plain voice.

I stood still under his hand.

The terms said we touched when someone was watching, and the whole atrium was watching.

I had not said anything about what it would feel like.

My skin remembered his palm for a full minute after he took it away.

I heard his thoughts, and they were not what I expected. That went better than I planned. Her shoulders are shaking. I want to put her in a chair.

He did not put me in a chair.

He walked me to the Trowbridges' table, pulled out my seat, and sat down beside me.

"Thank you," I said, low.

"It's in the terms," he said.

"I didn't write the terms to include shouting at a columnist."

"I didn't shout."

Mrs. Trowbridge was crying, and she was laughing as well, and Mr. Trowbridge kept patting his napkin.

I took a sip of water.

Then I caught the columnist's last thought, as she walked away across the atrium, thin and sour.

Daphne Hartwell said she'd be here.

I looked at the table behind mine.

The glass doors at the end of the atrium opened.

My sister walked in with a grey man in a chalky cardigan on one arm and his wife on the other, and she smiled when she saw me.

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