“Come on,” I say.
She blinks, the spell breaking, and looks back at me before continuing walking.
I lead her down a narrow side corridor, past iron sconces and stained glass, until I find a room I remember vaguely from the walkthrough I did with George two months ago. It’s small, windowless, quiet enough that we can talk and not too large to hear the echoing of whatever bad decision we’re about to make.
She follows me in, her heels clacking until she stops, the door clicking shut behind us. I turn to face her.
And then she breaks.
Not loudly, not dramatically, not sobbing — but her hands wrap around her waist, curling into fists. Her body trembles like she’s freezing, her eyes turn glassy, her breathingbroken, and I am very suddenly staring at a woman I do not recognize.
I’ve seen her a handful of times in my life. Once or twice when Ralph and I set this up for her and George when they were teenagers — a powerful marriage between old money and new money, securing their business within my own. A few times in her early twenties when she’d hosted events at one of Highcourt Hotels' locations, commanding a room like it was easy for her.
But never,never, have I seen her look fragile enough to break in the wind.
“Please,” she says, her voice too small, too broken. “Please, Harry. I meant it. Marry me.”
I stare at her, trying to control the frantic thumping in my chest.
This is a mistake.
But she’s standing in front of me in that goddamn dress that hugs her hips and pushes up over her chest, making her look like the most tragic kind of beautiful that people paint and hang in art galleries.
Her eyes are wide, not just with tears that she wouldn’t dare let fall, butfear.
And I know in my bones that she’s not asking for this because she wants it.
She’d just rather marry me than see her sister crushed beneath the same weight.
Jesus Christ.
“You don’t know what you’re asking me for,” I say carefully, taking a step toward her.
“I do.”
“What’s your plan with this? Call it a patch job until George grows a conscience and comes home?”
She swallows hard, her gaze drifting around the room. “He left the country. If he wanted to be here, he would. I’m not expecting it.”
I drag a hand down my face, sighing into it. “What happens when he comes back, then? I know my son, Elena. He’s not going to run forever.”
She shrugs, but the motion is too tight, like she feels like she has to come up with an answer or risk being thrown out. “We get divorced, I guess. I marry him later. Or I don’t. It doesn’tmatter. I can’t—I can’t think about that, I have to think about today, and today, I need this to happen.”
The suggestion is so flippant, but it’s logical from her standpoint. I get that, I do, but it’s causing a spiral that is ending up with neither of us happy. There’s a part of me that knows she won’t exactly be happy with George either, but at least he’s not eighteen years older than her and doesn’t come with baggage heavy enough to weigh down an airplane.
“We could postpone the wedding,” I offer. “I know your parents are pushing for it to happen today, but we could just wait until I find him?—”
“We can’t postpone.”
Her voice cracks, just once, but violently. It’s like hearing something porcelain shatter.
“If we postpone, they’ll see that as a failure on my part,” she says, and I canseea tear beading on her lashes, can see the way her chest shakes as she takes a deep breath. “They’ll say I wasn’t good enough, that I’m defective, that he left because of me, which, to be fair, he probably did, and — they’ll put this on her. Sarah.”
The tear falls.
She wipes it before it can get any lower than her cheek.
“You heard him,” she adds. “He’s already decided.”
