The dress slid over her like a return to language she had almost forgotten how to speak. Hair pinned, then released, then pinned again. Makeup that sharpened rather than softened. Sapphire at the throat. Her grandmother’s diamond studs. Her father’s old watch on one wrist, because even now she wanted something of him near her pulse.
When she stepped out of the room, the house looked unfamiliar.
Not because it had changed. Because she had.
The driver Benedict sent was waiting outside in a black sedan. A security detail stood discreetly in the driveway. The night air bit cold and clean against her skin. As she lowered herself into the back seat, the baby kicked once, hard.
Vivien rested a hand over the movement.
“We’re almost done,” she murmured.
At the Archdale, Preston had acquired a drink and a pocket of admirers. He stood near the ballroom entrance discussing markets with the confident vagueness of a man whose greatest skill was hearing smart people talk and then reusing fragments of their sentences as if they had originated in him.
A real estate developer from Boston asked him about capital flow into sustainable infrastructure.