006 The Woman Who Never Loses

Sebastian

I did not have an answer ready, which was rare enough that it sat in my chest like something foreign, something that didn't belong there.

Christabel was staring at me across the table with her jaw set and her eyes bright with something that wasn't quite tears, the kind of look I recognized because I'd worn it myself more times than I wanted to admit, grief trying very hard to pass itself off as anger because anger was easier to survive in public.

"I didn't know," I said, which was true, and sounded exactly as useless out loud as it had in my head.

"You didn't ask."

"I'll change it."

"Can you." Her voice had gone flat, careful, like she'd decided the safest thing to do with her feelings was set them down somewhere out of reach. "Because it sounds like Beatrix already booked it. And from what I've gathered in the last ten minutes, whatever Beatrix decides tends to happen, regardless of what anyone else wants."

I didn't have a good answer for that either, because it was true, and I hated that it was true, and I hated more that a woman I'd known for less than an hour had already clocked something about my family that had taken me thirty four years to fully accept.

"I'll fix it," I said again, because it was the only thing I had. "I promise you that much."

She looked at me for a long moment, like she was deciding whether promises from a Vettel meant anything at all, and then she nodded once, gathered her coat, and left without another word, which I found I respected more than if she'd argued.

I went straight to the penthouse.

Beatrix was in the sitting room when I got there, reading glasses low on her nose, a glass of wine at her elbow, looking every bit like a woman who had spent her evening exactly the way she'd planned to, which, knowing her, she probably had.

"You booked the cathedral," I said, no greeting, no patience left for one.

"I did."

"The same one we buried Gabriel in eleven days ago. The same one where Christabel was supposed to marry him."

"Yes." She turned a page like I'd told her the weather. "It was already reserved through the end of the month. Changing venues on short notice would have raised questions I'd rather not answer, and besides, it's the largest cathedral in the arrondissement. Anything else would look like we were hiding the wedding, and I won't have this family look like it's hiding anything."

"Did it occur to you what that would do to her? Walking down that same aisle again?"

"It occurred to me, yes." Beatrix finally looked up, and there was something almost gentle in her expression, which was somehow more unsettling than if she'd been cruel about it. "Grief doesn't care which building you put it in, Sebastian. She would carry that walk with her whether it happened in that cathedral or a courthouse or a field somewhere in the countryside. At least this way, it's over quickly, and efficiently, and she can start building something new instead of circling the wound forever."

"That's not your decision to make for her."

"No," Beatrix agreed. "It's yours, and you've made it, the moment you agreed to this arrangement instead of letting her father lose everything. I'm simply handling the logistics you don't have the stomach for."

I stood there in the doorway of a room I'd grown up hating, in a house that had never once felt like mine even though my name was on the deed, and I thought about how she always did this, always found the version of events where she came out reasonable, practical, even kind, while everyone around her ended up exactly where she wanted them.

"Change the date," I said. "Not the venue. The date. Give her more than eleven days."

"Absolutely not."

"Why."

"Because your daughter needs stability now, not in three months, and because a long engagement invites press speculation, and because," Beatrix set her glasses down, finally, and met my eyes directly, "the shop's creditors have already agreed to a payment schedule contingent on the wedding date I gave them. If we move it, we renegotiate everything, and I promise you, Sebastian, they will not be as generous a second time."

"You're using her father's business as leverage against a date change now too."

"I'm using every tool available to make sure this arrangement holds," she said, standing, smoothing her skirt in that small precise way she always did right before ending a conversation on her own terms. "You want to protect her from discomfort. I understand that instinct, truly, I do. But you didn't grow up in this family long enough to learn what I learned a very long time ago. Comfort is a luxury. Survival is not."

"And what exactly are you surviving, Beatrix. What is it you actually get out of any of this."

For the first time since I'd walked in, something shifted behind her eyes, quick, almost imperceptible, gone before I could name it.

"I get to watch this family hold together," she said, "instead of falling apart the way it nearly did the day we buried your brother. That's all I want, Sebastian. Whether you believe that is entirely up to you."

She left the room before I could push further, heels clicking down the hallway with the same unhurried rhythm she used for everything, like the world simply rearranged itself around her schedule instead of the other way around.

I stood alone in that sitting room for a long time after she'd gone, and I thought about Christabel's face when she realized what building she'd be walking into, and I thought about Jane upstairs, hopefully asleep, hopefully not dreaming the dream she wouldn't describe, and I thought, not for the first time since Beatrix walked into my office three days ago, that I had absolutely no idea what game she was actually playing.

I only knew, standing there, that I had just lost the first round of it without ever really having a chance to win.

My phone buzzed. Christabel's name, a text this time instead of a call, the first she'd sent me since walking out of that restaurant.

I looked into the cathedral booking myself. You didn't just fail to change the date, Sebastian. You never even tried to move the venue at all, did you.