Chapter 2

Still grinning, the man in the front pew set down his glass and came up to the altar. He caught the rooster under its wings. For a second I thought he meant to help me get the cord off.

Instead, he lifted the rooster until its beak was inches from my mouth.

“Come on,” he said. “Give your husband a kiss.”

I jerked my head back. He pushed the rooster closer, and his cuff link caught me in the mouth.

“Put it down.” I looked past him at Hester. “If you go through with this, Scott won’t be able to protect you from what comes next.”

Hester set down the microphone and walked over to the table where my parents’ wedding gifts had been laid out. She looked back to make sure I was watching. Then she swept her arm across it.

Two porcelain vases hit the marble first. One left a scatter of pale green shards at the priest’s feet. A carved jade bowl struck the floor a second later and split apart.

I caught Hester by the wrist before she could reach the rest.

“Stop.”

My mother had wrapped the jade herself. I’d recognized the way she tucked the loose end of the ribbon under the bow when I opened it that morning. My parents had sent pieces from their own collection so I’d have something of theirs with me even if they couldn’t be there.

Hester looked down at my grip, then up at my face.

She twisted free and shoved the rest off the table. A glass decanter shattered, the lid of an inlaid box split down the middle, and a white jade bracelet snapped in two. One of the guests lifted his shoes to let the fragments slide under his pew.

“All this fuss over a table full of junk.” Hester brushed a sliver of wood off her sleeve. “No money, no friends in this room, and you’re threatening me?”

She turned to the men in the front row. “If she won’t finish the ceremony, help her.”

The man put the rooster back on the floor and held his wineglass low enough for it to dip its beak. A guest laughed. Then the man lifted the same glass toward my mouth while another caught me by the elbow.

I wrenched my arm free and knocked the glass aside. Wine splashed down the front of my gown.

I’d grown up on a guarded estate, away from the men who came to see my parents on business. I’d been taught how to keep my temper when someone wanted me to lose it. I’d had plenty of practice. I’d never needed this much.

I looked at the pieces of jade on the floor and raised my hand.

“Touch her and see what happens.”

I knew Scott’s voice before I turned. My fingers closed into a fist, and I lowered it.

He came up the aisle in the tuxedo he’d worn to our last fitting, his bow tie still loose around his collar. He looked at me long enough to make sure I’d heard him. Then he walked past me.

Hester was holding her wrist against her chest.

“Let me see,” he said, taking her hand in both of his. His voice was so gentle that for a second I thought of all the times I’d heard him use it with me.

Her eyes filled. “She grabbed me, Mr. Delgado. She was about to hit me when you came in.”

Scott ran his thumb over the faint marks on her wrist. He hadn’t looked at the broken gifts or the wine running down my dress. He didn’t ask why there was a rooster tethered to my arm.

“Elise,” he said, “who the hell told you you could put your hands on her?”

I worked a fingernail into the knot and pulled until it gave. I slipped my wrist free, and the rooster ran under the nearest pew with the red cord trailing behind it.

“Look at the floor, Scott. She broke everything my parents sent. Then she had two of your guests try to force a drink down my throat.” My voice was shaking, and I was past caring who heard it. “You’re my fiancé. She’s your secretary. You could at least ask me what happened before you take her side.”

“Your fiancé,” he repeated. He glanced at the priest, who’d finally shut his book. “You really thought I’d go through with it? There’s no wedding. You can put that book away.”

I’d watched Scott sit across from men who wanted his father’s shipping contracts and let them talk until they gave away what they’d come for. With Hester, he hadn’t even asked a question.

“My father promised you a wedding because your family did mine a favor years ago,” Scott said. “You heard about it and figured it was your way in. Did it ever occur to you that I might have a say?”

“Scott runs the docks,” a man behind me said. “He could marry anyone in Riverton. She ought to look in a mirror.”

“People spend their whole lives trying to get a seat at his father’s table,” someone answered. “This one thought she could just put on a dress and walk right up.”

I opened my mouth. Scott reached into his jacket and took out a velvet ring box.

I recognized it. I’d seen it on his dresser the week before and assumed he was saving it for the ceremony.

He dropped to one knee in front of Hester.

The chapel erupted. Hester covered her mouth with both hands. Scott opened the box and waited for her to lower them.

“I’m sorry I put you through this,” he said. “My father wanted this wedding. I went along with it because I thought I owed him that much.”

He kept her hand in his.

“You’re the one I love, Hester. You always have been. Marry me. Whatever you want, it’s yours. And nobody’s going to make you go through anything like this again.”

Hester looked at me before she answered. She let me see the smile she’d been hiding behind her hands.

“Yes.” She held out her left hand. Scott slid the diamond onto her finger, and she turned it toward the light. “You’re so good to me, Scott.”

I stood beside the wreckage of my parents’ gifts while the guests applauded. I didn’t realize how hard I’d clenched my hands until my nails broke the skin.