Chapter 20: Nothing Asked

Marcello's POV

At midnight on the ninth of January I walked into the chapel by myself.

The snow had stopped at dusk, and the lodge was full of sleeping families.

Eleven households had come up the mountain that afternoon, with their wives and their drivers and their guns locked in my gun room.

My men were on every stair.

Gwen's father's men were not due until morning.

The chapel was dark, but for the red light on the control box and a thin line of moon from the high windows.

Someone had left the screen above the altar on, a pale blank rectangle.

Roxanne's page had been loaded that evening by my driver, from a link Gwen carried up in her sleeve.

I did not know whether it would work.

I did not know whether Roxanne would live to press it.

I walked down the aisle slowly.

On the candle table by the altar sat a white rose that had dried to paper, and a silver dish.

In the dish lay the emerald ring.

My mother had left it there since the twenty-fourth. She said it was not hers to move.

I picked it up.

It was small, and cold, and square-cut, and I had spent four hours choosing it.

I put it back down between the dead roses, where June had set it.

She would pick it up, or she wouldn't.

I had no right to do it for her.

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