Chapter Seventeen
The celebrant, Graham Peters, a genial man in his fifties with kind eyes and a neatly pressed linen shirt, sat in one of the armchairs opposite Caroline and James. His notebook rested on his knee, his pen poised with the hopeful patience of someone who still believed weddings could be fun.
The sitting room was bright with mid-morning light, sharp and honeyed as it poured through the tall windows.
Cleo had arranged cut-glass vases along the low table, each filled with pale pink roses and sprigs of eucalyptus that matched the upholstery perfectly.
Graham wasn’t one of Margaret’s usual polished society picks, he was an old friend of Elaine’s, a retired school principal who’d discovered a second calling in officiating ceremonies that actually meant something.
He’d married dozens of local couples over the years, his down-to-earth presence and friendly humour making him a favourite in the region.
Margaret, naturally, considered him “unorthodox,” which meant this was going to be an interesting meeting.
Caroline sat straight-backed beside James on the cream sofa, elegant even in unease. She had dressed simply, linen trousers, a silk blouse, but the faint tremor in her clasped hands betrayed her nerves.
James was equally as polished, but there was a tightness about him that the expensive suit couldn’t quite hide. One arm rested along the back of the couch in studied casualness, while his jaw betrayed every ounce of unease.
Margaret was perched in the armchair nearest the window, sunlight glancing off the pearl buttons of her jacket.
Her posture was perfect, her expression serene in that particular way only people used to getting their way could manage.
Every few seconds, she smoothed an invisible crease from her skirt, the motion small but pointed.
Elaine sat behind her son, her silver hair neatly pinned back. Her expression was calm, but there was an alertness in her eyes that suggested she missed absolutely nothing.
I had stationed myself discreetly in the corner with Cleo and observed the way their body language shifted in tiny ways, a twitch of a hand, a quick look. It was one of my unspoken jobs, reading the air before anyone else noticed it starting to thicken.
Graham cleared his throat and smiled, still blissfully unaware of the incoming storm. “So,” he said warmly, “today’s really just about tone, how you want the ceremony to feel. Personal, formal, traditional, light-hearted…”
Before either Caroline or James could speak, Margaret leaned forward, her pearls catching the light.
“Elegant,” Margaret said. “Timeless. Nothing overly modern, please. And absolutely no jokes during the vows.”
Graham hesitated, pen hovering just above the page. “Ah. Well, humour can sometimes help ease nerves.”
“There will be no nerves,” Margaret said with brisk authority.
From my seat in the corner, I smiled politely and made a mental note to keep the vodka locked up until after the ceremony.
“Mother, please,” Caroline said, her patience already fraying.
“It’s bad enough that you aren’t being married by Father Peter,” Margaret went on. “Your grandmother would have been horrified if she were here. I will not have this ceremony turned into a sideshow on top of it.”
“Father Peter refused because James isn’t part of the church,” Caroline reminded her gently.
Margaret gave a small, indignant humph, like the very notion offended the air around her. “He could have been persuaded, if someone hadn’t been so determined to do things differently.”
James spoke up, his tone steely. “With all due respect, Mrs Harrington, my beliefs aren’t up for negotiation.”
Margaret’s eyes flicked towards him, her smile thinning. “Of course not. I simply believe faith can be… revisited.”
Elaine moved in her chair. “Or they can be respected,” she replied, without raising her voice.
The room fell still. Poor Graham looked around uncertainly, clearly wondering if he should pretend to faint just to escape.
Caroline drew in a breath, trying to pull the conversation back from the edge. “Maybe we just focus on writing something simple,” she said. “Something that feels like us.”
Relief flashed across Graham’s face as he nodded. “Simple and meaningful. I can work with that.”
Margaret smoothed the skirt of her linen dress, the movement sharp enough to slice air. “Simple is all well and good,” she said, “but there’s a fine line between understated and underwhelming. This is a Harrington wedding, not a registry service.”
Elaine glanced up then, her expression calm but her tone edged with authority. “And it’s also a Quinn wedding. James and Caroline’s names are both on the invitation, last I checked.”
Margaret blinked, as if she hadn’t expected to be challenged. “Of course, Elaine, but a family like ours has certain expectations.”
Elaine’s tone remained gentle. “I’m sure it does.” She folded her hands in her lap. “But this is Caroline and James’s wedding.”
Margaret straightened. “I’m ensuring the tone is appropriate. I’m sure you’d agree that standards matter.”
“Standards, yes. But so does happiness.” Elaine looked towards her son, then back to Margaret. “If you’d spent the last thirty years watching people work themselves sick trying to meet other people’s standards, you’d know the difference.”
The silence that followed was delicate, like the moment before a glass tips off a table.
Caroline was clearly torn between gratitude and mortification. “Maybe we should just elope,” she muttered.
James gave her a faint smile. “Bit late for that now.”
Graham, bless him, cleared his throat and attempted to steer them back to neutral ground. “Well,” he said, with a brightness that sounded only slightly forced, “why don’t we start with the vows and see what tone emerges naturally?”
Margaret pressed her lips together but said nothing.
Elaine leaned towards Caroline, her voice loud enough that everyone could hear. “It’s your day, love. Don’t let anyone make you forget that.”
From my corner, I made another observation, this time not about flowers or timings, but about Elaine.
She might have seemed gentle, but she had the kind of backbone that could hold up a cathedral.
The rest of the meeting passed in polite smiles stretched over hidden tension. It had gone as well as could be expected, which was to say, no one had thrown anything.
Margaret had retreated to make “minor notes” on the ceremony script (which would likely result in a complete rewrite), Caroline was pretending not to care, and James seemed like a man weighing the pros and cons of moving to Mexico.
Everyone retreated to their rooms for the afternoon, as if we’d collectively agreed not to deal with anything for a few hours.
By the time the sun began to dip, the estate had relaxed again, dinner sounds drifting out from the dining room.
I wandered out to the veranda, leaving my well-trained staff to take over while I waited to meet Noah for a debrief. Between the family theatrics and a steadily growing list of odd details, we needed to make sense of what we’d each noticed.
Out here, the night air was cooler, scented with jasmine and the faint tang of wine.
Noah came out to meet me, a bottle of red in one hand, two glasses in the other. I turned as he approached.
“You survived the summit,” he said.
“Barely,” I replied. “It’s a miracle no one left in tears. Or handcuffs.”
He smiled. “That bad?”
“Let’s just say Margaret has strong opinions about eternal vows. Preferably delivered by a priest she personally vetted in 1989.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Sounds about right. I had a feeling today might require alcohol.”
He poured me a glass, and I took it gratefully.
“So,” he said, sitting next to me, “you said you’d found something?”
“Not found,” I said, setting down my folder. “More like… observed.”
He raised a brow. “That sounds ominous.”
I took a breath. “Well, Caroline’s been jumpy since the welcome party. Today, during the dress fittings, Sophie nearly burst into tears over a hemline. And Lucas…”
“What about him?”
“He’s acting strange.” I said. “I feel like he’s hiding something beneath all those one-liners and Calvin Klein sunglasses.”
Noah’s mouth twitched. “I did peg him as someone with absolutely no sense of boundaries.”
“Exactly,” I said. “He flirts his way through every situation. If the marquee caught fire, he’d probably ask it out for a drink.”
That made Noah laugh properly this time, low and deep. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
He paused then, glancing back towards the glow of the terrace.
“You know…” he said slowly, “now that we’re talking about him… Lucas disappeared for a while last night.”
I blinked. “He did?”
Noah nodded, a slight furrow between his brows. “For someone who thrives on attention, he slipped away pretty discreetly.”
“Huh.” I kept my tone light, casual. “I thought he was just off charming another table. Or taking selfies with better lighting.”
“That’s what I assumed too,” Noah said. “But he wasn’t on the terrace. Or on the lawn. Or anywhere he normally gravitates to.”
I tried to brush it off, but something about the way he said it nudged at the back of my mind. “Probably nothing,” I said. “Maybe he needed a breather. Even peacocks sleep sometimes.”
Noah’s mouth tipped into a faint smile. “True.”
“It’s just all so weird. Everyone’s saying they’re fine, but they’re all holding something back.
” I swirled my wine absently. “Cleo spent half the afternoon combing through footage and photos from the welcome party. Security cameras, guest photos, tagged Instagram stories, random influencer videos, everything.”
“Find anything?”
“Nothing useful,” I sighed. “Which honestly feels statistically impossible considering there were about three hundred people there and half of them document their lives for a living. Famous people, business people, influencers… you couldn’t walk three steps without ending up in someone’s background content. ”
Noah chuckled at that.
He took a sip of wine, his eyes scanning the vines as if the answers might be tucked between the rows.
“You’re not wrong,” he observed. “My end of the day wasn’t much calmer.
The estate staff found one of the cellar doors unlocked yesterday afternoon.
No sign of a break-in, but it’s strange. Those keys never leave my office.”
A chill ran through me. “You think someone was in there?”
“I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair in that way he did when he was thinking too hard. “It’s difficult to tell. Half the guests are wandering the grounds like it’s an art museum.”
I sighed. “Well… who else has access to the keys?”
“Just me,” he said automatically, then paused. “Oh, and Izzy.”
His eyes widened a fraction as he realised the implication. “But I trust Izzy,” he added quickly. “She’s like family.”
“Of course,” I said gently. “I know you do.”
Still… the unease sat between us.
“And you said the cabinet in the east wing had been touched,” Noah murmured, almost to himself. “Not stolen from… but disturbed.”
“Like someone is looking for something.”
He stood still, his gaze fixed on the dark outline of the vines ahead of us. The breeze pushed a few loose strands of hair across his forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah,” he said finally, voice lower than before.
I watched him for a beat. The set of his shoulders was calm, but his mouth flattened into a thin line, the only tell that he was rattled.
“Did anything look different in the cellar?” I asked.
He hesitated, swirling the wine in his glass. “Not that I could see. Nothing obvious, at least. The bottles were all in place, the furniture untouched. But…” He paused.
“But what?”
“There was a smell,” he said finally. “Faint, floral. Perfume. I thought maybe it was the barrels, but it lingered longer than it should have.”
I turned towards the distant rows of vines where the cellar doors sat half-hidden under ivy and stone. “So now we’ve got a ghost with expensive taste. Perfect.”
Noah nodded. “Yeah. Really shaping up to be a flawless wedding weekend.”
I laughed but the truth was, the idea of someone creeping around the cellars in the dark made my stomach twist.
“I’ll check the cellar again tomorrow,” he said as he leaned back in his chair. “Have a real look around. See if there are any clues down there, just to be sure.”
There was something in his voice, steady, careful, that told me he’d already been worrying about it more than he wanted to admit.
“Do you actually believe this is connected?” he asked. “All of it?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it doesn’t feel random. Someone’s taken that brooch, and they seem to be searching for something else.”
He studied me briefly, his expression changing. “You never give up, do you?”
“Not when I’m implicated, and there’s an open bar.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Good combination.”
We sat like that for a while, almost shoulder to shoulder, the conversation tapering into quiet. The night was still, the vines were silvered by moonlight now, the kind of air that made sound travel.
Then, in the glass of the terrace door, I caught a reflection, not just movement, but a shape. Someone standing in the shadows.
I turned sharply, but by the time I looked again, the space was empty. Just the leaves shifting in the breeze and the shimmer of starlight on the pavement.
A shiver went down my neck.
Noah followed my gaze. “What is it?”
“Someone’s out there,” I said, barely above a whisper. “Watching us.”