CHAPTER 7: Pretend It Never Happened

Nobody breathed.

A hundred cameras hung on the silence like hooks. The only sound in the courtyard was the faint electric hum of a satellite van, and then Julian laughed, a short, cracked sound with nothing behind it.

"She doesn't know what she's saying."

He crossed the gravel in four strides and caught Vivian's wrist. His fingers were cold and damp.

"What are you saying, Viv? Have you completely lost your mind?"

"Let go."

"You're in shock. Look at you, you're in someone else's clothes."

He turned his face to the lenses, and the tears came back as if on a switch.

"She hasn't slept. She doesn't know what she's saying."

Vincent's hand moved at his side. Vivian saw it from the corner of her eye, and she spoke before he could use it.

"Julian. Let go. There are a hundred cameras, and I would hate for them to see you hurt me."

His fingers opened. He had never been afraid of her before, and she watched him learn how.

"Miss Hale."

The woman in the green coat had pushed to the foot of the steps, her microphone held out like a lantern. Her badge read Tessa Boyd, Channel 9.

"That's a serious accusation. Do you have any proof?"

"I have a text message."

She took her phone from her pocket with a hand that was almost steady. The screen was cracked across one corner from yesterday's run. She scrolled, found it, and held it up so the nearest lens could read it.

Go to the church at four, baby. I'll join you. Wear the blue dress.

"That's from Julian,"

She said.

"He sent it so I'd be in that office when Magnus Dray's men arrived. He wanted me there. He needed me to walk in and be handed over, and he needed me early enough that no one could argue I'd been forced."

"That proves nothing,"

Julian said.

"It's a message between fiancés."

"You told me to wear the blue dress, Julian. Why the blue dress?"

She turned to the reporters.

"Because I'd worn it to Magnus Dray's birthday dinner two months ago. You said you wanted me to look nice for a business friend of your father's. I thought it was kind."

A low sound went through the crowd. Tessa Boyd lowered her microphone half an inch and said, almost to herself,

"He pointed her out."

"This is slander,"

Gerald snapped.

"We'll sue every one of you."

"Please do,"

Said Vivian.

"Under oath."

"Celeste, do something,"

Gerald muttered.

"She's sick."

Celeste Marsh pressed the handkerchief to her mouth and swept toward the nearest reporter.

"Please, she's not herself. Her father's death broke something in her, we've been so worried. For the sake of decency, turn off the cameras."

"Cut the feeds,"

Gerald said, louder, with his arms spread like a man herding geese.

"Everyone. This is a family matter. A girl is unwell."

A few cameramen lowered their equipment. Most didn't.

"Why would we?"

It was the woman in the green coat, the one who had asked the first question. She did not lower her microphone.

"Miss Hale just made an accusation against you, Mr. Marsh. She said you held her father's company in trust for two years. Is that true?"

"That's confidential."

"Is it true that Hale Logistics shares were pledged against Marsh Industrial's loans?"

"I won't be questioned on my own doorstep..."

"It's not your doorstep,"

Said a man behind her, and a ripple of dry laughter went through the crowd.

Julian saw it slipping. Vivian watched him see it. He stepped forward and took a microphone from the nearest hand, and when he spoke it was in the voice he had used at her father's funeral, the soft, wounded one.

"I want to be honest with you all. I didn't want to say this in public. Vivian has been struggling since her father died. She's had episodes. Fainting, confusion, she forgets entire days."

He looked at her with a tenderness so perfect she felt sick.

"I've been patient. I love her. But I think a doctor should see her. Today."

"Name the doctor,"

Vivian said.

"I'm sorry?"

"You said I've had episodes. Name the doctor who treated me. The date. The clinic."

She held his gaze.

"I've been to a dentist twice in three years. You came with me to one of them and complained about the parking."

Someone in the crowd laughed out loud. Julian's smile slipped, and he glanced at his father.

"This is cruel,"

Celeste said.

"You're being cruel to a boy who loves you."

"He loved me enough to sell me."

"Nobody sold you!"

"Then why did Magnus Dray call me the bride by name, Celeste? Why did he say my investment was sound?"

Celeste's mouth opened and shut. Behind her husband's shoulder, Vivian saw the first real fear cross Gerald's face, the look of a man who had just realized how far the water had risen.

Gerald's face was the color of putty. Vivian watched him look at Celeste, then at Julian, at the long line of lenses, and she saw the exact second he understood that he could not bully his way out of this. Cameras did not respond to bullying. They only recorded it.

"Vincent."

Gerald's voice dropped into a pleasant, confiding register.

"A word. Privately. Between old friends."

"I'm listening."

"Not here."

"Here,"

Vincent said.

Gerald swallowed, then came up the steps with Celeste at his shoulder, and they stopped on the second stair below Vincent as if approaching a shrine. Vivian stood at his side with her hand still in his. She could smell Celeste's perfume, jasmine and something sour under it, and she remembered the Sunday lunches, the soft kisses on her cheek, the hand that had patted hers and promised, You're family now.

"Vincent,"

Celeste whispered, in a voice that carried,

"You can't. He's your godson. She's his fiancée. You know what people will say."

"I know what they're saying now."

"Then let's end it quietly."

Gerald lowered his own voice until it was barely a breath, and Vivian had to lean to catch it.

"Send her upstairs. We'll tell them it was nerves. A little hysteria after the stress of the week. We'll all go home, and tomorrow no one will remember. We'll pretend none of it ever happened."

Vivian felt her throat close.

Pretend. As if the church had not happened. As if Magnus had not stood in a doorway and said take her. As if a three-year engagement could be wiped clean by simply telling the right lie in the right voice.

She looked up at Vincent.

He did not look at her. He was looking at Gerald, and his expression had not changed at all, which was somehow worse than if it had. It was the look he had given the stairwell in the church, the look of a man counting.

"Pretend,"

Vincent said.

"Just for a day,"

Celeste urged.

"Just until the cameras are gone."

"Say it again, Gerald."

Gerald blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Say it again."

Vincent's voice was perfectly pleasant. He turned his head toward the crowd, and a boom microphone drifted closer without anyone having asked it to.

"Louder. I'd like the people at the back to hear it."