Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Annie
By noon, Stanhope House has stopped looking like a home and started looking like something Catherine intends to unveil.
Two men carry a gilt mirror through the main hall while a florist backs down the steps with both arms full of greenery.
Somewhere beyond the ballroom doors, someone is arguing about ladder placement.
Heavy lemon polish coats the air, cut sharp by the scent of fresh shears and bruised stems from the foyer.
The masquerade is tomorrow night, which means everyone is performing being okay, even when they’re not.
I carry my shoe bag through the west corridor and step around a crate labeled VENETIAN MASKS, FRAGILE, acutely aware that the glassware and costumes get treated with more care than anything I owned growing up. A houseman I’ve known for six years nods to me.
“Mrs. Dillon.”
“Henry,” I say, and keep moving before anyone can hand me a clipboard.
Technically, I’m one of the hostesses. Reed is my husband, and Stanhope is our home. My name is on enough invitations and committees that I should have some claim here. Technically. In every way that matters, however, this is Catherine’s event.
Catherine controls the guest list, the flowers, the seating, the photographers, the lighting, the family traditions, and the order in which people are meant to be impressed.
She controls which rooms are opened and which are hidden.
She controls the invisible rules I learned years ago not to question unless I wanted an entire room to go quietly still around me.
The fitting room has been set up in the old ladies’ withdrawing room. Three garment racks stand along the wall, tissue paper spills from hatboxes, and a narrow platform sits near the full-length mirrors. Mrs. Davenport, Catherine’s dressmaker, is already kneeling with pins held between her lips.
“There you are,” she says around them. “Shoes on, please. Gown first, then mask.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
According to lore, Mrs. Davenport has worked every major Dillon event since Reed was in middle school.
She’s hemmed debutante gowns, wedding dresses, mourning suits, and whatever one wears to a charity luncheon where people blow more kisses than a homecoming queen on a parade float.
She is brisk, skilled, and far too professional to comment on family tension unless it pulls a seam crooked.
I change behind the screen, treating the dress with nearly the same care as I treated my own wedding gown.
The gown slides over my skin in a cool, heavy sweep. Deep red, almost wine-dark, fitted clean through the waist and ribs, then pooling around my feet. It isn’t bright or girlish. Under the lamplight, the fabric goes nearly black in the folds.
I step onto the platform. For a second, before anyone speaks, I like what I see.
My hair is pinned up in a loose, dark twist that leaves my neck bare.
The earrings are small black drops. No necklace.
There’s nothing to soften the line of the gown or compete with the half-mask waiting on the table: black raven feathers, glossy and soft, cut to follow my cheekbones.
It’s the first Stanhope costume I’ve ever chosen without letting Catherine talk me into something paler, safer, and easier to photograph beside Reed.
Mrs. Davenport studies the waist. “You were right about the color.”
“Thank you,” I say, watching her in the glass. “I was hoping it would work.”
Her mouth twitches. “Don’t move.”
The first pin tugs at my side, tightening the fabric.
I look at myself in the mirror and think of my photographs: black birds on fence posts, fog caught in bare trees, and old houses with the windows punched out.
All the things Catherine calls quaint when she’s being generous and dreary when she’s not.
The door opens. Catherine enters with a folder under one arm and two strands of pearls at her throat. Her gaze moves over me, taking in the gown, the hem, the hair, and the empty space at my throat.
She pauses. “That color was the right choice,” she says.
I know better than to relax, but some foolish piece of me does anyway.
Catherine turns to Mrs. Davenport. “Annie needs something with presence.”
Mrs. Davenport bends to adjust the skirt. “The cut suits her.”
“It does.” Catherine steps closer, considering me through the mirror. “The camera has always loved Annie. We just have to make sure she doesn't spend the entire evening hiding behind Reed.”
The pin at my waist doesn't move, but I feel it anyway. Mrs. Davenport’s hands still for half a second.
Catherine opens her folder as if she’s only mentioned the weather. “The photographer will want family portraits before the first dance. Annie, dear, you understand. If you drift off into corners, we’ll lose the whole schedule.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m planning on doing the Electric Slide around hour three. Nobody will be able to miss me.”
Mrs. Davenport looks down fast.
Catherine has already turned toward the table with the masks, luckily missing my joke.
That’s how Catherine does it: never enough to slap a label on, and never enough that I can repeat it later without sounding ridiculous.
She likes the dress. She thinks I need presence.
She wants good photographs. It’s all reasonable, practical, and smooth.
And still, somehow, I’m smaller when she finishes speaking.
I stand still while another pin bites near my hip.
I know how to stand still now. I know which women kiss both cheeks and which give one cool brush of air near the jaw.
I know not to refill my own champagne glass at formal dinners, even though my hand still twitches toward the bottle.
I know the difference between “Where did you find that?” because someone likes my dress, and “Where did you find that?” because they want to discuss it in the car on the way home.
I know when Catherine’s suggestion is actually an insult with a ribbon wrapped around it.
Smile. Laugh. Don’t bristle. Don’t embarrass Reed. Don’t give anyone a story they can repeat with faked concern. Poor Annie. So sensitive.
The door opens again before Mrs. Davenport can unpin me. Lexi Cavanaugh steps inside with a sheaf of floral diagrams. Her dark hair is twisted under a silk scarf, and her cheeks are pink from the cold. She looks like she belongs. She’s effortlessly gorgeous in the way all women like her are.
“You’re early,” Catherine says.
“I escaped the florist.” Lexi lifts the papers. “She’s impossible, just as she’s always been. Still, she listens to directions, which is more than we can say for some people.”
Catherine takes the diagram from her. “As usual, you’ve managed to save us.”
Lexi turns then, and her eyes land on me. For the smallest second, she stops. It isn't long enough to make a scene, just long enough for the room to go still between us. Her gaze takes in the gown, my pinned hair, and the raven mask resting in Mrs. Davenport’s hand. Then she smiles.
“Oh, Annie,” she says. “That’s gorgeous.”
“Thank you.”
“Raven feathers?” she asks.
“I wanted something darker this year.”
“It’s perfect for you.” She doesn't touch the mask, only watching as Mrs. Davenport holds it up against the dark-red bodice. “Very dramatic. In a good way.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Lexi laughs, easy and bright. “I still haven’t decided on my mask, so I’m envious of anyone who already has everything settled.”
“You’ll look beautiful,” Catherine says with automatic certainty.
Lexi smiles like she’s heard that tone all her life.
Mrs. Davenport helps me out of the mask and loosens the back of the gown. I stand in half-fastened formalwear while Catherine and Lexi lean over the floral diagram.
“No candles near the east passage,” Catherine says. “The insurance people are still hovering after Reed and Glen’s wine-room incident.”
Lexi lets out a laugh. “Oh my God. Reed still insists that wasn't his fault.”
Catherine’s mouth softens in a way it never does for me. “He locked the door.”
“He swore it was an accident,” Lexi says, her laugh like a tinkling bell. “But you know how he always swore anything was an accident when it got him into trouble.”
“That time it got both of you in trouble, unfortunately."
“I tore six inches from my dress climbing through that service hatch.” Lexi looks at me, still laughing. “You would have died, Annie. Reed was seventeen and trying to convince everyone he had the situation completely handled.”
“That does sound familiar,” I say.
There. That sounds natural enough. The room doesn’t pause, which means I'm the only one in it who feels uncomfortable.
Lexi remembers which cousin cried. Catherine remembers Reed tracking mud through the gallery. Mrs. Davenport remembers hearing the story from Reed’s grandmother, who passed the next year and declared the whole thing proof that boys should be shipped away until twenty-five.
Names stack on names. Rooms I know as an adult become places where Reed was a child, a teenager, a reckless boy with long limbs and too much confidence. Lexi knows the door that sticks near the wine room. She knows which service hatch leads where. She knows how Catherine looked when she found them.
“Reed probably never told you,” Lexi says, including me again with a quick glance. “He still hates losing an argument about fault.”
“No,” I say. “He seems so calm and reasonable.”
Lexi grins. Catherine laughs. I smile in the correct places.
I’m not jealous. That would be ridiculous. Reed loves me. Reed married me. Reed comes to my darkroom and kisses me against the worktable. He’ll be in bed beside me tonight. Everyone knows he chose me.
So what exactly am I supposed to be upset about? That Lexi knew him at seventeen? That she understands this house without a map? That Catherine can say three words and Lexi immediately knows which vase, which aunt, which disaster, which summer?
I’ve been married to Reed for nearly six years, and I still feel like someone handed me the script five minutes before the curtain went up.
Mrs. Davenport unfastens the gown, and I step behind the screen. By the time I come out in my own clothes, Catherine is gone, Lexi is on the platform, and my dress hangs from a padded hanger beside the raven mask. Lexi’s pale garment bag lies open on the chair. I don't look too closely.
I gather the mask box and give Mrs. Davenport my thanks.
“Careful with the feathers,” she says.
“Yes, ma’am.”
The hallway outside feels cooler. I draw one breath, then another, and nearly make the stairs before Mrs. Kingsley catches me near the ballroom, undoubtedly here for some function I’ve either forgotten or was never privy to.
“Annie, darling.”
Three women turn toward me, all silk scarves, tasteful jewelry, and faces I recognize from dinners, committees, and society pages I pretend not to read. Mrs. Kingsley kisses one cheek. Patricia Knight gives me both. Margaret Landry squeezes my arm like we share secrets.
“We were just saying how lovely it is that you and Reed are coming up on six years,” Patricia says. “Six, isn't it?”
“Almost,” I say.
“Still so devoted,” Mrs. Kingsley says. “It’s wonderful to see.”
Then Margaret smiles. “So when are you two finally going to give Catherine a grandbaby?”
The mask box shifts in my hands.
Mrs. Kingsley laughs softly. “She’s been waiting long enough.”
“That house needs children running around it again,” Patricia adds.
I reach for the easiest joke. “I promise Catherine will be among the first thirty or forty people informed.”
They laugh, and I smile as if nothing really matters.
My hand tightens on the box until the cardboard presses into my palm. Three months ago, I sat on the bathroom floor with Reed kneeling in front of me, his face so broken I had to close my eyes. Before that: needles, retrievals, phone calls, the nurse’s guarded voice.
“You two would make beautiful babies,” Margaret says.
I smile. I’ve become very good at smiling through sentences that once sent me running to bathrooms in tears.
“Excuse me,” I say, keeping my tone smooth and pleasant. “I should take this upstairs before the feathers get damaged on the way through the hall.”
They let me go, still smiling.
The ballroom is crowded when I pass through.
Florists haul buckets of greenery across old wood floors while a ladder scrapes near the musicians’ balcony.
Staff call instructions over the rustle of tissue paper and the clatter of rented chairs.
White roses wait in tubs, their heavy sweetness hanging suffocatingly low in the draft.
I keep walking past the ballroom, past the morning room.
Catherine’s voice slips through the half-open door. “No, don’t ask her about it,” she says. “She’s been through enough.”
I stop. It’s not eavesdropping if the words reach out and grab you, right?
A pause. Then Catherine sighs. “Yes, I know. It’s terribly sad.”
Catherine speaks again, sharper now. “No, Tuesday is impossible. I told Margaret that already. Have the orchids moved before dinner.”
Just like that, the moment rearranges itself into something ordinary: flowers, schedules, some other woman with some other tragedy nobody wants to mention.
I just have to get through the masquerade ball. Then, I’ll make it to the next event. The next test.
One night. That’s all.
Wear the dress. Wear the mask. Stand beside Reed.
Smile for Catherine’s photographer. Talk to donors, cousins, and people who knew this family long before I arrived.
Dance with my husband. Go upstairs afterward, take the pins out of my hair, wash off the makeup, and retreat into the locked room where Reed and I can be ourselves again.
I can survive one night. I’ve survived worse.