The Whole Valley Called Her the Plain Fiancee, So She Let the Banquet Read the Deed novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: The Deed Aloud
Signe's POV
The Wheelwright Group's shareholder dinner was held in the Marcus Whitman ballroom on the thirteenth of December, at the same round tables, under the same chandeliers.
This time I walked in through the front doors in my canvas jacket.
I wore my work boots and my mother's glasses and the old wool trousers I weigh trucks in.
My father walked in beside me in his best flannel with his seed cap in his hand.
The woman at the door with the clipboard looked at the jacket and then at the list.
"Miss Aldahl," she said.
"Mrs. Wheelwright has seated you at the head table."
"I know," I said.
"I'll stand."
The room was full.
There were two hundred and sixty people, with the board at the long table on the dais, the growers' association at a row of tables to the left, and a table of shareholders from Seattle and Portland to the right in dark suits.
At the very center of the head table sat Helene, in black silk and her pearls.
On her right were two strangers.
One was the heavy man with the shaved head and the good watch, and the other was the slim woman in black with the silver rings.
They had come from Denver for the closing.
Rhys sat at the far end, on the other side of the old woman.
He wore his black suit and a white shirt, and a gray tie I had never seen.
He looked at me across the room as I came in.
He did not smile.
He lifted one hand a few inches from his side, palm open, as he had done on the hotel steps in September, and then he let it fall.
I touched my glasses.
It was our own small code, and nobody else in the ballroom knew it.
I did not sit at the head table.
I walked down the side of the room along the wall, where the kitchen doors swing.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Whole Valley Called Her the Plain Fiancee, So She Let the Banquet Read the Deed are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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