She felt a sob welling in her chest.
She told herself not to be a sentimental idiot. She told herself his caring was only his pride. She told herself not to imagine he cared deeply about her. Even if that was true for the moment, it wouldn’t last. He was a handsome, wealthy, powerful man. Every woman wanted him, and he knew it. To expect him to give his heart to one woman only was ludicrous.
She told herself she understood this about him and she could live with it, must live with it. But she cared and would never stop caring—he had lived in her heart all the time she’d been away—and she wanted him to feel the same.
She kept the tears back while she moved to the fire, where her morning chocolate awaited on a tray, alongside the newspaper.
She must have done too good a job of hiding her feelings, because Priscilla, apparently thinking her insufficiently impressed, said, “You don’t understand, do you? Marchmontneverdoes that. His secretary always buys gifts. For everyone. Royals and relatives and mistresses alike.”
“If one of his concubines has a diamond from him like that,” Zoe said, “I shall have to accidentally break her finger. And his head will accidentally collide with a chamber pot.”
“No onehas a diamond like that,” said Priscilla. “Oh, Zoe, may I see it again?”
Jarvis was told to fetch the ring. She brought it in its little box to Priscilla, who only opened the box and looked at the ring but didn’t touch it. “Put it on,” she said.
Zoe did so. The morning light caught in the facets and flashed rainbows.
“Osgood has excellent taste,” Priscilla said. “And he can indulge his taste because Marchmont never cares what anything costs and refuses to be bothered with choosing gifts. He refuses to be bothered with anything that looks like a decision or a responsibility. All the world is agog that he chose your ring himself.”
Zoe had simply assumed he’d chosen it. She hadn’t realized how significant this was. Oh, this made it worse. He was making her feel special. She’d never be able to steel her heart against him, and he’d break it.
“There’s no making him out, to be sure,” said Priscilla, “but I’m very glad for you, indeed.”
She left minutes later.
When the door had closed and her sister’s footsteps had faded away, Zoe looked down at the diamond on her finger, the immense center stone surrounded by smaller ones, like a queen surrounded by her attendants.
She told herself not to be an idiot. She told herself not to be a sentimental fool. But how could she help it? He’d taken care about her ring, and he’d truly wanted her to like it—and that was too sweet of him, more sweetness than she could bear.
Her chest heaved and a sob escaped her. Then another. And another.
She put her face in her hands and wept.
The night before the wedding, Zoe held a little party in her bedroom.
The guests were her sisters.
“A party in your bedroom?” had been the first reaction. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”
She had waved her great diamond ring in their faces, and the fussing subsided.
They had all married well. They all owned heaps of fine jewelry. Zoe’s engagement ring, however, had a magical effect upon all of her sisters, not only Priscilla, the least insane of them all.
Zoe had ordered little sandwiches and delicate pastries and tea and lemonade and champagne.
When they’d supped and drunk and gossiped and offered the usual marital advice, she had Jarvis bring out the treasures Karim had showered upon his second so-called wife and favorite toy.
Rubies and garnets, sapphires and emeralds, diamonds and pearls and topaz of every color. Necklaces and bracelets and rings.
She gave them all away to her sisters, all but a few pieces she’d reserved for Jarvis.
They were shocked into silence.
Then, finally, Priscilla spoke up. “You said you’d share, I remember, Zoe, but all of it? Are you quite, quite sure?”
“That was my old life,” Zoe said. “I won’t take it with me into my new life.”
In the end, in spite of what Zoe’s sisters had claimed about hole-in-corner affairs, the wedding turned out to be large and complicated.
