10. Knox #2
Until recently, we were the faces of the biggest scandal the circle had seen in years. From the way the tables lean toward each other now, you can watch them all decide, one by one, that this is a far better story than the one they’d settled on.
Across the room sits the target of the evening.
William has a table near the front and the bearing of a man who’s told everyone in earshot that tonight belongs to him. Blythe is beside him in a dress that announces the pregnancy before she does, one hand resting on it for the benefit of anyone watching.
For a moment his eyes find mine, then slide to Adriana on my arm, and I let mine find his right back.
Neither of us nods or looks away at first. It’s the smile I give him that does the work and I feel Adriana lift her chin a fraction beside me, the two of us holding his gaze just long enough to make a point of how little he matters.
Then we turn away, together, as though he isn’t worth the rest of the look.
Which, really, he isn’t.
William leans back in his chair and holds court. His voice climbing, loud enough that the bragging carries two tables over to where we’ve been seated, aimed as an arrow at our backs.
“…the Lavelle piece,” William is saying, to a couple too polite to escape him. “The emerald. I’ve already told Blythe it’s hers. A man takes care of what’s his.”
Beside me, Adriana goes very still, and then she picks up her water glass with a serenity that should frighten people more than it does.
“He’s buying her the emerald,” she says quietly.
“So he says.”
“He told the whole room he’s buying her the emerald.” She sets the glass down. Her eyes find mine, and there’s a light in them I’m becoming dangerously fond of. “It would be a shame if that plan fell through.”
I look at her, this woman who walked into a room full of her own ruin and decided to enjoy herself, and I think, not for the first time tonight, that William Langford is the single stupidest man I have ever met.
“Adriana.” I lift my own glass to her. “Are you asking me to ruin a man’s night over a necklace?”
“I’m asking you to buy me a present.” She smiles. “The ruin is a bonus.”
The auction starts, and I let the early lots go.
A weekend somewhere, a case of wine, and a sculpture only a tax accountant could love.
I sit through all of it with my hand resting on the back of Adriana’s chair, close enough to look devoted, and I watch William work the room with his eyes, collecting the attention he’s mistaken his whole life for respect.
Then the auctioneer lifts the emerald to the light, and the entire room makes a sound. William straightens in his seat the way a man does before taking a stage.
He opens the bidding himself.
“Fifty thousand.” William says it loud, performative. A number meant to end the thing, to let the room watch him be generous, the wronged husband lavishing his pregnant love with a prize the rest of them couldn’t touch.
I let him have one moment of believing it.
Then I lift two fingers off my glass. “One hundred.”
The auctioneer’s head turns to me, and a ripple goes through the tables, because everyone knows whose voice that was and everyone knows what it means.
William finds me across the room, my hand resting on the back of his ex-wife’s chair, and the color in his face begins its familiar climb.
“One twenty,” he says.
“Two hundred.” I don’t look up from Adriana, who watches me with her chin propped on her hand and the open delight of a woman at the theater.
“Two… twenty-five.” There’s a thinness to his voice now, a man reaching the edge of what he actually has and trying not to let the room hear the bottom of it.
I don’t have an edge. That’s the thing he’s never understood about the difference between us. There’s no number at the bottom of me.
“Five hundred thousand.” I say it gently, the way you’d close a door so as not to wake anyone, and the silence that follows is the sound of William Langford running out of road in front of people.
This time, William doesn’t bid.
“Going twice…”
He can’t, and we both know it. His entire table knows it, and worst of all Blythe knows it, her hand gone still on the bump that was supposed to be his trump card.
“Sold to Mr. Beaufort and Miss Rosewood.” The auctioneer beams toward us, delighted by the drama. “And what a sum it is. Folks, our most generous bid of the evening deserves the stage. Come up, come up, let’s see the lucky couple.”
The room turns to us, applause swelling, and there’s no declining a charity its photograph. So I rise, button my jacket, and offer Adriana my hand, and she takes it and rises with me.
We make our way toward the front through a sea of clapping tables while the auctioneer waves us up with the emerald on its velvet as though he’s handing us a crown.
Climbing two steps to the small stage, the lights find us, and I take the necklace from the velvet and turn to her.
“Hold still,” I murmur, for her alone.
Adriana gathers her hair and lifts it off her neck, and turns. I drape the emerald across her collarbone and work the clasp at her nape with both hands while the whole room watches.
“Oh, would you look at that,” the auctioneer croons into his microphone, playing to the crowd, one hand pressed to his heart. “Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is how it’s done.”
The room laughs warmly, a soft sound of approval rolling through the tables.
As the clasp catches, my fingers brush the back of her neck, and she shivers. I tell myself it’s just the cold.
She turns back to face the room. I bring my hand to her waist, settle it there, and she leans into me as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Then she rises onto her toes, and presses a kiss to my cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispers against my skin.
It’s nothing but a peck. The most chaste, public gesture in the entire playbook we built this morning.
Still, it goes through me, a current straight to the floor.
And I keep my face exactly where it is before I turn my head a fraction, mouth at her ear, and pitch it low enough to be ours alone.
“So… You like me more now?”
Adriana doesn’t miss a beat. Her hand finds mine, fingers lacing through, and she gives me a smile so sweet.
“Yes,” she mumbles back, lovely as anything. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
My chest does a tightening, a pull.
Until the auctioneer is back on his microphone, sweeping a hand toward us.
“A round of applause for the happy couple, everyone!”
The room obliges, louder than before, falling for a love story in real time.
It’s working. It’s working perfectly.
When I look out past the lights, past the clapping tables, my gaze lands on the front of the room where William sits.
Only he isn’t looking at me.
He’s looking at her.
And it isn’t anger on his face, which is what I expected, what I came prepared to enjoy. It’s want, plain and late and useless, the face of a man watching the thing he threw away turn radiant in another man’s hands.
That, more than the necklace, more than the applause, is how I know tonight worked.
I feel my hand settle at her waist, drawing her that half-inch closer.
Well, safe to say, this is a flawless first performance.
And there’s just so much more to come.