Chương 3
Helena looked at him. “I dismissed you.”
“You instructed me to leave the dining room, ma’am.”
“I am instructing you to leave the property.”
Samuel inclined his head. “I’ll pack my things.”
Adrian spoke without turning. “Stay.”
Helena’s eyes moved to her son.
Adrian’s voice was quiet. “Until I understand what happened, he stays.”
“You do not employ him.”
“I own forty-eight percent of the company that owns this house.”
“This is not a board meeting.”
“No,” Celeste said. “At a board meeting, people take notes.”
Weller cleared his throat. “Miss Reed, you obtained employment under false pretenses and introduced confidential documents into a private gathering. Before this proceeds further, I advise you to surrender any copies, recordings, photographs, or materials taken from the property.”
“I didn’t take the certificate from the property.”
“Answer the rest.”
“I’m not answering anything else without my own lawyer.”
Helena’s mouth tightened. “You cannot afford the kind of lawyer required for what you have done.”
Clara felt the insult strike where it was intended. Her bank account held eleven hundred and six dollars. Her mother had stopped answering her calls two days earlier. Her apartment lease in Baltimore had ended when she moved into the mansion’s staff quarters. Everything she owned was currently being searched upstairs.
She looked at Helena.
“I couldn’t afford to let my sister watch him do this again.”
Adrian turned from the fireplace. “I didn’t know.”
“You knew enough.”
His face changed.
Clara had expected denial. She had expected him to insist that Helena had deceived him completely. Instead, he looked at the floor.
“Yes,” he said.
Helena stepped around the desk. “Adrian, do not accept responsibility for circumstances you did not control.”
“I knew enough to ask more questions.”
“You were ill.”
“I was drinking.”
“You were grieving.”
“So was Julia.”
The quiet after that sentence was different from the dining-room silence. This one belonged only to the people who had caused it.
Celeste looked at him. “Did you love her?”
Helena answered, “That is irrelevant.”
Celeste did not take her eyes from Adrian. “Did you?”
He leaned one shoulder against the mantel. The pose might have looked relaxed if his hand had not been closed into a fist.
“Yes.”
Celeste gave a small nod. “Thank you.”
The words were polite, almost automatic. That made them worse.
Weller opened a leather folder. “There are urgent legal questions, but they can be addressed without further injury. Miss Reed, the family is willing to provide independent counsel for you and your sister, subject to a temporary confidentiality agreement while the marriage records are reviewed.”
“No.”
“You have not heard the terms.”
“I heard the word confidentiality.”
“A brief period of discretion would protect everyone.”
“It would protect this house.”
“It would also protect your sister’s medical history.”
Clara looked at Helena. There it was: the threat wrapped in concern.
Adrian heard it too.
“Martin,” he said.
Weller closed the folder halfway. “I am explaining the practical risks.”
“No one releases anything about Julia.”
“I did not suggest—”
“You did.”
Helena’s emerald earrings moved when she turned toward her son. “You are not in a condition to make decisions.”
“I’m not drunk.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know.”
Celeste stood. She smoothed the front of her gown, though there was nothing to smooth.
“I’m leaving.”
Adrian took one step toward her.
She raised her hand. “Don’t.”
He stopped.
Celeste looked at Clara. “Do you have somewhere to go tonight?”
The question embarrassed her more than the lawyer’s threat.
“I’ll manage.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Clara hesitated. “No.”
Helena said, “She cannot remain here.”
“I understand that,” Celeste replied.
She removed a small evening bag from the chair. “My driver will take you wherever you choose. Not my parents’ house. Not the Monroe residence. Somewhere neutral.”
Weller began to object. Celeste looked at him, and he stopped.
Clara gathered her suitcase twenty minutes later. Her clothes had been refolded badly. The photograph she kept inside the inner pocket had been removed and returned upside down.
It showed Julia on a windy beach six years earlier, squinting into the sun while Clara held a paper cup behind her back. They had spent forty minutes trying to take one acceptable photograph and had failed. Julia’s hair covered half her face. Clara’s eyes were closed. Their father had loved it.
Clara turned the photograph over and slipped it into her coat.
Beatrice waited at the service entrance with a brown paper bag.
“Sandwich,” she said. “Turkey. Unless you’ve become vegetarian since lunch.”
“I haven’t.”
“There’s an apple too. It’s not a good one.”
Clara took the bag.
Beatrice glanced toward the hallway, then lowered her voice by a degree. “Mrs. Vale had people in the old records room last week.”
“What people?”
“Outside people. They carried two document cases out.”
“Did you see where they went?”
“No. I’m a maid, not a spy.”
Clara almost smiled.
Beatrice gave her a hard look. “You should have told me.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You could have. You didn’t.”
Clara accepted the correction.
Outside, Celeste’s driver placed the suitcase in the trunk. Clara had expected Celeste to be gone, but she sat in the rear seat, wrapped in a black coat over her evening gown.
Clara stopped beside the open door. “You don’t have to come.”
“I’m not ready to go home.”
They rode to a hotel near Dupont Circle without speaking. Washington moved past the windows in wet reflections and red brake lights. Clara held the paper bag on her lap. Celeste stared at her bare left hand.
At the hotel entrance, the driver asked which name to use for the reservation.
Celeste looked at Clara.
May you like
“Reed,” Clara said.
The lobby smelled of lilies and carpet cleaner. Celeste booked two rooms and paid with a card that the clerk recognized. He tried not to show it. Clara noticed him glance toward Celeste’s hand, perhaps looking for the ring announced in business columns before it had ever reached her finger.
