Chapter 24: Doors Open

At ten past four on Saturday, the doors to the Wentworth terrace stood open, and I was standing behind them.

Nobody held my arm.

The white carpet ran out in front of me, down the same aisle and under the same blue sky.

There was no arch this time.

Brice had asked for the city instead, the whole gray-and-gold skyline of it, with nothing between us and the view.

The string quartet began.

I took a breath, and I tucked the cream card in the ribbon of my bouquet, down among the stems where nobody could see it.

I had not answered it.

I hadn't thrown it away either.

I stepped into the light.

Five hundred people turned around, and I knew every one of them.

The housekeepers sat in the second row in hats they had bought for it, and the night shift in the third.

The doorman wore a tie.

The lead director was wiping his eyes with a folded handkerchief, and the director who had taught me chess on a napkin was openly crying.

Nobody was smiling to be polite.

They were grinning at me.

I walked down the white carpet alone, with my head up and my father's pen in my fist beside the flowers.

The dress had an open back, low and plain, because forty-two buttons had been enough for one lifetime.

At the end of the aisle, Brice stood in a black suit with his hands clasped in front of him.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Groom Tried to Steal My Family Empire Through Marriage from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.