Margaret straightened. “I’m ensuring the tone is appropriate. I’m sure you’d agree that standards matter.”
“Standards, yes. But so does happiness.” Elaine looked towards her son, then back to Margaret. “If you’d spent the lastthirty years watching people work themselves sick trying to meet other people’s standards, you’d know the difference.”
The silence that followed was delicate, like the moment before a glass tips off a table.
Caroline was clearly torn between gratitude and mortification. “Maybe weshouldjust elope,” she muttered.
James gave her a faint smile. “Bit late for that now.”
Graham, bless him, cleared his throat and attempted to steer them back to neutral ground. “Well,” he said, with a brightness that sounded only slightly forced, “why don’t we start with the vows and see what tone emerges naturally?”
Margaret pressed her lips together but said nothing.
Elaine leaned towards Caroline, her voice loud enough that everyone could hear. “It’s your day, love. Don’t let anyone make you forget that.”
From my corner, I made another observation, this time not about flowers or timings, but about Elaine.
She might have seemed gentle, but she had the kind of backbone that could hold up a cathedral.
The rest of the meeting passed in polite smiles stretched over hidden tension. It had gone as well as could be expected, which was to say, no one had thrown anything.
Margaret had retreated to make “minor notes” on the ceremony script (which would likely result in a complete rewrite), Caroline was pretending not to care, and James seemed like a man weighing the pros and cons of moving to Mexico.
Everyone retreated to their rooms for the afternoon, as if we’d collectively agreed not to deal with anything for a few hours.
By the time the sun began to dip, the estate had relaxed again, dinner sounds drifting out from the dining room.
I wandered out to the veranda, leaving my well-trained staff to take over while I waited to meet Noah for a debrief. Betweenthe family theatrics and a steadily growing list of odd details, we needed to make sense of what we’d each noticed.
Out here, the night air was cooler, scented with jasmine and the faint tang of wine.
Noah came out to meet me, a bottle of red in one hand, two glasses in the other. I turned as he approached.
“You survived the summit,” he said.
“Barely,” I replied. “It’s a miracle no one left in tears. Or handcuffs.”
He smiled. “That bad?”
“Let’s just say Margaret has strong opinions about eternal vows. Preferably delivered by a priest she personally vetted in 1989.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Sounds about right. I had a feeling today might require alcohol.”
He poured me a glass, and I took it gratefully.
“So,” he said, sitting next to me, “you said you’d found something?”
“Not found,” I said, setting down my folder. “More like… observed.”
He raised a brow. “That sounds ominous.”
I took a breath. “Well, Caroline’s been jumpy since the welcome party. Today, during the dress fittings, Sophie nearly burst into tears over a hemline. And Lucas…”
“What about him?”
“He’s acting strange.” I said. “I feel like he’s hiding something beneath all those one-liners and Calvin Klein sunglasses.”
Noah’s mouth twitched. “I did peg him as someone with absolutely no sense of boundaries.”
