They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: Turn the Collar Over

The Queen's Tea was held in the Monteleone's Queen Anne salon, under two chandeliers and sixty pairs of eyes.

I walked in on Gaspard Ravenel's arm at ten past two.

He wore a charcoal suit that fit him across the shoulders as if a tailor had been afraid of him.

Every head turned, and a hum went through the room.

"Breathe," he murmured.

"I am."

"Through your nose."

"You're not helping."

"I'm helping the way a tug helps. I'm just here."

I almost laughed again, and that was exactly what I needed.

The Queen's table stood at the far end on a low dais, set for twelve with white roses and the krewe's gold crest.

Hortense sat at the Captain's lady's seat with her cane hooked on the chair.

Maurice stood behind her, big and red-faced and charming, shaking a judge's hand.

At the head of the table, in the chair with the little brass plate that said Mrs. A. Villere, sat Blythe.

She wore a pale blue dress with a high neck.

Around the neck was the collar.

It lay across her collarbones in scallops and rosettes, as white as the day my grandmother finished it.

"Introduce her, Hortense," a woman at the next table called. "We're all dying."

Hortense rose with the cane and tapped a spoon on her teacup.

"Ladies, friends of Thalassa," she said.

"I am delighted to present the newest member of our family."

"Miss Blythe Hebert, who comes from a Louisiana family older than our own, and who carries the Villere heir."

There was applause.

It was polite, but it was applause.

Blythe lowered her eyes, and her fingers rose to the lace.

"She wears the Villere collar," Hortense said, "which has been worn by the women of our house for generations."

Gaspard's arm went still under my hand.

I let go of it.

"Go," he said very quietly. "I'm right here."

I walked up the three steps of the dais, and the conversation near the front stopped.

A waiter stepped forward to hold a chair for me.

It was at the foot of the table, beside the door to the service hall.

I looked at it.

Then I looked at the oldest queen, who sat at the right of the head chair in a lavender suit, ninety-one years old, with her ebony cane across her knees.

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