Chapter Seventeen The Ring in the Velvet Case
In which a promotion, a wedding trip, and a mother's ring all arrive in one golden afternoon
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The telephone called Graham back to the office early the next morning — the Director's secretary insisted it was urgent.
He left in something of a hurry, and Calie, briefly anxious that their New York trip might now have to be postponed, resolved not to fret over it and settled instead for a comforting chat with her mother by phone while she waited.
Graham walked into the Director's office with a knot of nerves he couldn't quite shake — he owed it to Calie, he felt, to get her back to New York and matters there properly settled, but he half expected the Halifax business to keep him pinned to Washington indefinitely instead.
The Director waved him to a chair, affable as ever.
"Sorry to drag you in so early, but we needed you. They've arrested Halifax and five others overnight, and you're the only man who can put a face to most of them. Would it be too much to ask you back to New York today?"
Graham nearly came out of his chair with relief.
"That suits my own plans perfectly, sir — there are a few personal matters I'd like to see to there myself, that I didn't have time for on the way through."
He paused, half marveling at how neatly the way had opened for him to keep his marriage quiet a little longer. Perhaps the Director never needed to know the ceremony had taken place the very night of the Halifax dinner at all.
"Good," the Director said, smiling. "You've certainly earned the right to a little personal business on the side.
Afternoon train work for you? Good. Give me the short version of your trip first, in case there's anything we missed yesterday.
But first — step in here a moment. Something to show you. "
He opened the door to the adjoining office.
"You knew Ferry left the Department on account of his health? I've had your things moved in here. This is your office now — you'll be working directly beside me from here on."
Graham stared, entirely too stunned for words. He'd hoped for advancement eventually. This — jumped clean over men who'd outranked him for years — had never once crossed his mind as a real possibility.
"Don't start thanking me," the Director said briskly, waving off Graham's stammered attempt at gratitude.
"You've earned it plainly enough. And while we're at it — someone needs to go over to Europe and handle the Stanhope business.
That'll fall to you, I'm afraid. Sorry to keep sending you halfway round the globe, but you might as well make a bit of a holiday of it while you're there — the Department will grant you the time if you want it.
Here's the full file, everything you need.
You already understand the case as well as I do.
Now — let's get through the paperwork quickly, I imagine you'd rather be packing than sitting here with me. "
And so, in the rush to finish, Graham's whole extraordinary journey — the theft, the chase, the wedding, the kidnapping attempt, the narrow Pittsburgh escape — got reduced to a handful of dry, essential facts, told in half the detail it deserved.
The Director shook his hand warmly at the door, brusque as ever in closing out the meeting, and Graham found himself walking the familiar halls in something like a daze of happiness, his secret — his and Calie's alone — still entirely intact.
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Calie was watching from the window when his key turned in the lock, and she spun toward him with unguarded delight the instant he stepped through the door.
"Get packed," he said, grinning like a schoolboy, "we're bound for New York on the afternoon train — and there's a wedding trip to Europe thrown in besides. And I've been promoted to the desk right next to the Director's. Not a bad morning's work, wouldn't you say?"
He tossed his hat in the air, crossed to her, and bent to press a reverent kiss against her brow.
"Oh, how wonderful," Calie cried, delighted. "Come sit and tell me everything properly. Was he terribly shocked to learn you'd married without a word to him?"
"That's the best part — I never had to tell him at all. He won't know until the day I sail, if then. It's not really his business how it happened, and it would be a difficult thing to explain properly. No one needs to know but your mother and Jeff, unless you'd rather more people knew."
"Oh, I'm so relieved," Calie said, delighted.
"I'd been worrying a little over what people might think — we could never properly explain the truth of it, and they'd always be watching us, wondering if we really cared for each other.
It would be dreadful. I think this should stay entirely our own secret, don't you — just ours, and Mother's and Jeff's? "
"Entirely my thinking as well. I was still working out how to keep it from him when he handed me the perfect excuse himself — sending me straight back to New York to identify the Halifax men.
I told him it suited my own plans exactly, since I had personal matters to attend to there anyway.
That settled it. All I'll ever need to tell him is that I got married — not precisely when. "
"But the announcements," Calie said, catching her breath with a laugh. "I hadn't even thought of it — we'll need something, or my friends will be utterly confused by my new name. Should we send him one?"
"Do we truly need announcements at all? You can tell your close friends yourself, and the rest will forget the name soon enough — we're unlikely to run into most of them right away.
I'll write my chief something informal, leave the date out entirely.
He won't think twice about it. We'll sort the details out with your—" he paused, then finished with a tender smile, "—with your mother.
It's a good word to say. I never had the chance to know my own. "
Calie curled her hands into his. "I'm so happy I hardly know what to do with myself. But I still don't understand how you managed a wedding trip without ever telling him we were married."
"Simplest thing in the world. He asked if I'd mind a trip to Europe on the Department's business, mentioned I could take some vacation time while I was there.
He has no idea that vacation is about to become our honeymoon.
I'll write him from New York, or call once we're ready to sail.
I may need two or three days in the city to finish the Halifax matter first, and then we're free.
You can spend that time winning your mother over to her new son-in-law.
Do you think it'll be difficult, explaining everything to her? "
"Not in the least," Calie said brightly.
"She never once liked Gregory — it was the only real disagreement we ever had, my marrying him at all.
She always suspected I wasn't happy about it, and couldn't understand why I insisted on going through with it when I hadn't laid eyes on him in ten years.
She begged me to wait, at least until he'd been home a year or two, but he wouldn't hear of any delay and threatened to carry out his worst the moment I hesitated. "
Something hard and angry rose in Graham's chest at that — real, righteous fury at a man who'd built his whole strategy on frightening a woman this gentle, this lovely, into submission.
Whatever else came of it, he resolved privately to track the man down the moment he reached New York and see him properly answer for it.
It puzzled him a little how easily Gregory seemed to have abandoned the field once Calie had actually married someone else — perhaps the man was more coward than schemer underneath it all, and had simply fled the country rather than face what he'd set in motion.
Graham meant to find out for certain, and put Calie's mind entirely at rest before any of it could resurface to trouble her later.
He bent and kissed her again, a caress that felt, to them both, like a small down payment on every wrong still owed her.
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It occurred to them both, eventually, that trains had no patience for lingering lovers, and they set to work at last. Calie had little enough to pack — her trunk was still somewhere in Chicago, needing to be wired for — and Graham handled that first, tracking down the claim number and ordering it forwarded to New York by telegraph.
He rang for Henry next, asked Calie to see to lunch, and went to gather what he'd need for a stay of several weeks — considerably more than he'd packed for his original three-day errand.
He was in the bedroom, pulling things from drawers, when Calie, finished with her instructions to Henry, found him standing in the doorway holding an old velvet jewel case he'd just retrieved from the small wall safe.
Something in his face had gone soft and wondering, as though he'd rediscovered something precious he'd nearly forgotten he owned.
"Dear," he said, "I wonder if you'd want these. They were my mother's. This ring, at least, could do until I can find you a proper one of your own. Try it, would you?"
He held out a ring set with a diamond of remarkable clarity, in an old, elegant setting.
James 1:17 rose gently in him as he held it out to her: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.
" It felt, somehow, exactly right — this small, inherited piece of grace passed down to a woman he'd never expected and could no longer imagine his life without.
Calie held out her hand, the plain wedding band already in place from the church, and he slid the diamond above it. It fit as though it had been made for her.
"It's beautiful," she breathed, turning her hand to catch the light. "I'd choose this over anything new, truly. Your dear mother."
"There's a little string of pearls too, and a pin or two — not much else. I've always kept them close. They felt like the only real link I had left to her." He paused, then gave her a smile she'd remember for years. "I suppose, without quite knowing it, I've been keeping them for you all along."
Her answering look needed no words at all — which was fortunate, since Henry chose that exact moment to appear and remind them both that the train left in barely two hours, leaving no further room for sentiment.
And yet, try as they might, neither of them could manage to be practical that whole afternoon.
They lingered over lunch, dawdled over packing, stopped every few minutes to admire some small picture or keepsake Graham had collected on his travels, until Henry finally took matters firmly into his own capable hands, packed the bags himself, and arranged to send the luggage on ahead — quietly delighted, the whole while, at the evident devotion between his master and his new mistress, but far too practical a man to let sentiment interfere with a train schedule.