9. Blair
— ? —
Blair
Seacliff had never looked more beautiful.
The gold ballroom glowed with candlelight.
Hydrangeas spilled from every surface, white and blue, the colors I’d chosen a decade ago.
A string quartet played a soft, elegant piece in the corner.
Champagne flowed. Newport’s finest circulated through the rooms, all of them dressed to impress, all of them here to celebrate ten years of Beaumont marriage.
I smiled until my face hurt.
“Blair, darling, you look radiant.”
“Blair, the flowers are stunning.”
“Blair, ten years! How do you do it?”
I made small talk. Accepted compliments. Touched Will’s arm when he passed and felt him tense under my fingers. We were performing. We were magnificent at it. A decade of practice had made us experts at the dance of public happiness.
No one looking at us would guess that my husband had barely spoken to me in two weeks. That we slept on opposite sides of the bed like strangers. That the gold box in my clutch was my last desperate hope of saving everything.
“Mrs. Beaumont.”
I turned. A server was offering a tray of champagne, and I shook my head automatically before remembering that I was supposed to be drinking. That declining champagne at my own anniversary party would raise questions I couldn’t answer.
“Thank you,” I said, taking a glass I wouldn’t touch. “It’s lovely.”
“Congratulations on your anniversary.”
“Thank you.”
I drifted toward the terrace, where the night air was cool and the crowd was thinner. I needed a moment. Just one moment to breathe, to gather myself, to find the courage to pull Will aside and show him what was in the gold box.
“You look like you’re about to shatter.”
Trip materialized beside me, elegant in a dark suit, a champagne flute in hand. His eyes were worried behind the careful smile.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re the worst liar I know. It’s one of your only flaws.”
“Only one?”
“You also have terrible taste in men. You married a Beaumont.”
I laughed despite myself. “I thought you were working on that.”
“The feud? Ancient history. Will and I have reached a détente.”
“A détente that involves him glaring at you across every room?”
“That’s just his face. Very intense. Very brooding. Very nineteenth-century novel hero.”
I looked out at the hydrangeas, gone gray and colorless in the dark. The hedge stood along the terrace, a wall between us and the guests inside.
“This is my fault,” Trip said quietly. “All of it. The secrecy, the suspicion, the way he looks at you now. Let me tell him. Tonight. I’ll explain everything.”
“No.”
“Blair.”
“No.” I turned to face him, gripping my champagne glass hard enough that my knuckles went white. “You propose to Luca in two weeks. Your moment. Your terms. I won’t let your father or my husband or anyone else take that from you.”
“Your marriage is falling apart.”
“I can fix it.”
“Can you?”
I looked through the French doors at Will, holding court with a cluster of club members, laughing at whatever someone said. He looked relaxed. Happy. Everything I knew he wasn’t.
“I have to believe I can,” I said.
Trip took my hand. Squeezed.
“You’re the best person I know.”
“I’m really not.”
“You really are.”
A movement at the edge of my vision. I looked up and saw Will watching us through the glass. Watching Trip hold my hand. Watching me smile at my best friend out on the dark terrace.
His expression didn’t change.
That was worse than anger. Worse than jealousy. This flat, dead acceptance, like he’d already made his decision and was just waiting for confirmation.
I pulled my hand from Trip’s.
“I should get back inside.”
“Blair.”
“Later. We’ll talk later.”
I didn’t look back as I walked away.
The next hour was a blur of faces and names and small talk that meant nothing. I circulated. Smiled. Played the part of the happy hostess while the gold box burned a hole in my clutch.
Soon. I’d tell him soon. I just needed the right moment, the right opening, a second of genuine connection to remind him what we had.
“You’re a patient man, William.”
The voice cut through the chatter, clear and cold, and I froze with a canapé halfway to my mouth.
Charles Vanderford II was standing beside Will at the bar. He looked distinguished, as always. Silver hair, perfect posture, a suit that cost more than most people’s cars. His smile was pleasant. His eyes were not.
“More patient than I’d be,” Charles continued, swirling his scotch. “If my wife were spending quite so much time with her childhood friend. But then, you Beaumonts have always been admirably discreet.”
Will’s jaw tightened.
“Charles.”
“No offense meant. I’m sure it’s all perfectly innocent.
Inside jokes and shared history and all that.
Though I do wonder what they find to talk about, all those cozy lunches.
All those evening outings.” Charles sipped his drink.
“But you know Blair better than anyone. If you’re not concerned, why should I be? ”
He walked away before Will could respond.
I watched the poison land. Watched Will’s face work through it, complicated and awful, until his eyes found mine across the room.
I started toward him.
He turned and walked away.
“Will.”
I followed him through the crowd, past the dancing couples, past the string quartet, past a cluster of wives who watched us with undisguised curiosity. He was heading for his study. The one room in the house that was supposed to be off-limits to guests.
“Will, wait.”
He didn’t wait.
The study door was heavy. He pushed through it, and I followed, and suddenly we were alone in his private space with the whole party just on the other side of the wall.
“Will, please. Let me explain.”
“Explain what?” He turned, and his face was terrible. Twisted with a fury I couldn’t name. “Explain why you’ve been whispering with Trip all night? Explain why you can’t seem to keep your hands off each other? Explain why every time I turn around, you’re with him instead of me?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Then what is it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
He laughed. That horrible, hollow laugh I’d come to dread.
“You can’t tell me. Perfect. That’s perfect, Blair.”
“Will, there’s something I need to-”
“I know something is going on.” His voice rose, loud enough that anyone passing the door could hear.
“I know you’re hiding something. I know you’ve been lying to me for weeks.
And I’m trying, I’m trying so hard to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I can’t do it anymore.
I can’t pretend I don’t see what’s right in front of my face. ”
“What do you think you see?”
“Trip Vanderford has been in love with you for twenty years!” The words exploded out of him.
“Everyone knows it. Every single person in that room knows it. I’ve spent a decade pretending I didn’t notice, pretending it didn’t matter, telling myself that you chose me and that was enough.
But now he’s back, and you’re sneaking around with him, and buying jewelry together, and whispering secrets, and I can’t. ”
“Will, stop.”
“He’s the one you want. He’s always been the one you wanted. You just settled for me because he wasn’t available.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then prove it. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I-” The words were right there. Trip is gay. He’s proposing to Luca. He’s been hiding his whole life and I’m the only one helping him. “I can’t.”
Will’s face crumpled.
“Then I think we need space.”
“Space?”
“I can’t do this.” He ran his hands through his hair, destroyed his careful styling, made himself look wild and broken. “I can’t be here tonight, pretending to celebrate a marriage that might already be over. I can’t toast to ten more years when I don’t even know if the last ten were real.”
“They were real.” I stepped closer, reached for him. “Will, they were real. Everything we’ve built together, everything we are. It’s real.”
He looked at me like the word had a price. “You keep saying that.”
“Yes.” I pulled the gold box from my clutch. “And I can prove it. I was going to wait until the toast, but I need you to see this now. I need you to understand.”
He looked at the box. Didn’t reach for it.
“Will. I’m pregnant.”
The word fell into the silence between us.
I watched his face work through emotions I couldn’t follow. Hope, bright and desperate. Fear, dark and consuming. Grief, for a thing he thought he’d already lost. And then, finally, horribly, suspicion.
“Pregnant.”
“Yes. Seven weeks. It happened the night Trip came home, the night we were together, the night you held me like…” My voice cracked. “It’s yours, Will. Of course it’s yours. It could only ever be yours.”
He looked at the gold box in my hands. Looked at my face. Looked at the door, behind which the whole party waited to toast our anniversary.
“Is it?”
The room went cold.
“What?”
“Is it mine?”
Two words. Three syllables. A decade of marriage, a lifetime of love, destroyed in a single question.
I felt my hand move before I knew what I was doing. The champagne glass I was still holding. The one I hadn’t touched all night. I threw it at the wall behind his head, and it shattered in an explosion of crystal and liquid, and Will didn’t even flinch.
“Open it.” I pressed the gold box into his chest, hard enough to hurt. “Open it and look me in the eye and ask me that again.”
He looked at the box.
He didn’t open it.
Of course he didn’t. Opening it would mean knowing. Opening it would mean facing the truth, whatever that truth was. And Will Beaumont, for all his suspicions, didn’t actually want the truth.
He wanted to be right.
“I can’t do this,” he said quietly. “I need space. I need time. I need to figure out what’s real and what’s.”
“What’s what, Will? What do you think is happening here?”
“I don’t know.” His voice broke. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
I stepped back.
I looked at my husband, standing in his study, champagne dripping down the wall behind him, a gold box pressed to his chest that he refused to open. I looked at the man I’d loved for fifteen years, the father of my child, the person I’d built my entire life around.
And I felt a part of me go quiet.
“Keep the box,” I said. “Open it whenever you’re ready. Or don’t. I’m done trying to prove myself to you.”
“Blair.”
“I’m leaving.”
I walked out of the study.
The party was still going. Music playing, people laughing, champagne flowing. A ballroom full of guests who didn’t know that everything had just ended in the room behind them.
Trip was waiting in the foyer. He took one look at my face and went pale.
“Blair. What happened?”
“We’re leaving.” My voice sounded strange to my own ears. Flat. Calm. “Me and Henry. Tonight.”
“Where?”
“Nan’s. Pack a bag. I’ll explain in the car.”
“Blair, wait. What did he say?”
I kept walking. Through the foyer, past the staring caterers, toward the stairs that led to Henry’s room. My son was asleep. I’d have to wake him. I’d have to explain why we were leaving in the middle of Mommy and Daddy’s party.
I’d have to figure out how to explain any of this.
“Blair.”
Trip’s voice was close behind me.
I didn’t turn around.
I couldn’t. If I turned around, I’d see Will in the study doorway. If I saw him, I’d break. And I was done breaking for a man who’d just asked me if his baby was really his.
I turned toward the stairs to get my son.