MY HUSBAND'S TRAP

The Anniversary

The champagne flute was trembling in the hands of Lottie Rice, but her smile was not.

Ten years of experience had taught her that.

“More wine, Mother Smith?” she asked, and her hand was already taking the bottle before Mother Smith could click her fingers.

Mother Smith did not even look at her; instead, she stretched out the crystal glass, just like a hand would stretch to a dog that should serve her and receive nothing in return. The diamond rings glinted in the chandelier’s light like little cold knives.

“You poured it too quickly last time,” Eleanor said in her voice as brittle as shattered glass. “There was foam on the tablecloth. Pour it properly, or don’t pour it at all. I am not going to spoil my anniversary celebration with clumsy pouring.”

“Yes, Mother Smith.”

Lottie held the bottle in such meticulous fashion that it appeared she understood the price that could come from making a small mistake. The gold liquid dripped in slow progress from the bottle. No drop was lost. The bottle sat back down, and Lottie backed away, hands clasped together as if awaiting further orders.

On the other side of the table, the sister of Geoffrey, Priscilla, laughed into her napkin, a sound sharp and cruel. “Be careful there, Lottie. Ruin that dress with a spill, and it will be the most expensive thing you have ruined yet tonight. Although I suppose that is nothing new for everything you touch seems to end up ashes.”

The dress had cost more than what Lottie earned in her monthly allowance, which, despite having been Geoffrey's monthly allowance to her once, back then when they were younger, was something Geoffrey would give her as a gift now, out of his generosity and benevolence. The fabric of the dress touched her skin in the most luxurious way possible, but all she could feel was that it was a disguise.

A disguise to a performance she had been performing for a decade now – the silent, grateful wife.

She said nothing. She never did.

Ten years ago, she walked down an aisle believing that she was the luckiest woman in the world. She was stared at by the handsome Geoffrey Smith who had promised her a lifetime of love, his eyes full of admiration and reverence. I'll make sure you never have any doubts about how real this was. You are the only thing that matters to me. Everything else is noise.

She believed him.

She still wanted to believe in him, even now, even when his mother was humiliating her at her own anniversary dinner, even as Geoffrey sat at the head of the table doing nothing but staring blankly at his phone, ignoring everything except the messages there.

He is exhausted; she had said to herself a thousand times. He is overworked and under too much stress at work. This is not him. This is not the real him.

She had been saying this to herself for ten years.

She had discovered many years ago that love is supposed to sting a little. Love is supposed to take everything from you and give back only that which will make you stand. She had found this in some book that talked about how love is supposed to sting like coral and taste of devotion and salt.

But she did not expect to be bleeding for ten years.

"Lottie."

At last, Geoffrey's voice reached her through the din at the table. Her heart thumped in her chest as she looked at him and realized that he had called her by her name. He saw her. He knew she was there.

"Yes?"

"Dead cell phone. Get charger from the car."

Mellow laughter echoed across the table as Priscilla’s eyes glittered and Eleanor’s lips curved into something almost but not quite a smile.

Blushing lightly, Lottie nonetheless rose, patting down the front of her dress calmly. “Yes.”

It didn’t register to her the look that Geoffrey gave her as she left, a look that was anything but gentle and loving – it was calculating. Like a craftsman testing the edge of his tool before use.

But she did not see it because she never searched for it.

Not yet.

Not until it was too late.

The car was cool.

Lottie stayed in the driver’s seat longer than necessary, simply existing there alone. This was the only quiet time she got in thirty seconds in a parked car, acting like someone else. Someone whose name meant something. She did not shrink when the door slammed loudly.

Her mobile rang on her thigh.

UNKNOWN NUMBER:

Good wife now, Lottie? He is making fun of you. Ask him what he knows about Vivienne Cole.

It was like a free fall for her stomach that made her feel faint.

She did not know who it came from. She told herself repeatedly that it was not the truth. It was just the jealousy of someone trying to ruin their marriage from the outside. She told herself lots of things. That Geoffrey still loved her. That this was just a phase. And that all she had to endure a little more and her starlight would be restored to her.

She erased the message and trembled in her hands while taking the charger from the console. Once she returned to the dining room, she was not even thanked by Geoffrey; he simply took the charger from her without even looking at her.

Priscilla looked at her with a bright gleam in her eye; the look of someone with secrets and knowledge that they were going to use those secrets.

"Lottie," Priscilla said, spinning the wine glass in the light, "I have always wondered why Geoffrey has ever married you. With no name, no family, no fortune but...," she gestured vaguely to Lottie, "you."

"Eleanor," the other woman warned softly, but it was more of amusement than censure as the older woman lounged in her chair and looked Lottie up and down with the disapproving eyes of someone trying to get rid of a stain on their carpet.

"I’m just saying," Priscilla added, "ten years, and we still haven’t the faintest idea where you come from. An orphan perhaps? Foster home? Or simply a poor boy who one day felt pity for you and decided to take you off the streets?"

Lottie’s throat went dry. The automatic defense rolled off her lips without thought. It doesn’t matter where I come from. Only that I love him.

She had said it so many times, she almost believed it herself.

But beneath the linen cloth her hands were clenched into fists, and there was a moment where the ghost of something long ago stirred within her heart—a name she hadn’t uttered in years, of a mansion built with marble floors and a grandfather who once called her “little empress,” of a life she left behind because she simply wanted, once, to be loved for who she was and not what she was going to inherit.

She wanted Geoffrey to pick her.

Not the Rice fortune.

Not the empire she traded away when she changed her name and slipped away into his world as Lottie alone with no last name or anything from her old life worth examining.

She had traded her empire for a marriage which made her serve wine to her own husband at their own anniversary dinner as a servant.

“Because I love him,” she whispered. “It’s all that matters.”

Priscilla looked pleased like a satisfied cat.

“Sure,” she said. “Sure it is.”

Eleanor set her glass down with a soft, deliberate click. “Love is a pretty word, Lottie. But words don’t pay for this house. Words don’t keep the company running. Words don’t erase the fact that you arrived with nothing and have remained nothing. Geoffrey has been patient. We have all been patient. But patience has limits.”