This is a private matter, and we’ll handle it accordingly.
By lunch, flowers and gifts and congratulatory messages have flooded in. My suite at the Mandarin Oriental smells like a florist shop. The cloying scent is enough to make me sick.
“Take it all,” I tell the bellman I rang for. “If there’s anything you’d like for yourself, it’s yours. Donate the rest to Boston Children’s.”
“Right away, sir.”
I have no doubt Lainey is receiving all the same gifts and well wishes I am, only I imagine her grandmother is probably reading every note aloud with a look of sublime satisfaction on her face.
My stomach twists at the thought of Lainey. We haven’t seen each other or spoken since Italy, though neither one of us has reached out to try to remedy that. The more time I’ve had to consider the situation from all angles, the more my anger with her grows.
It’s hard to extricate her from the epicenter of this mess. She might not have specifically instigated the betrothal (though even that I can’t be certain of), but at the very least, she’s complicit in it, and I can’t look past that.
She more than anyone should understand what it feels like to be pressed beneath someone’s thumb. I’ve made it clear to her that I won’t marry despite my father’s demands. She knows how long I’ve battled to carve my own path in life. She could have spoken up and come to my defense. If she was unwilling to go through with the engagement, my father wouldn’t have forced her. She had the power to end it all right then and there.
Instead, here we are, two weeks since leaving Italy, betrothed in the eyes of the world, and tonight I’ll have to see her at the St. John’s Alumni Fundraiser in New York City. I doubt it will be pretty.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lainey
I feel stuck, flattened beneath my grandmother’s expectations. The discussion in the library in Italy transpired so quickly. Emmett and Lainey will wed. The solution to everyone’s problems was formed so suddenly, it’s like my grandmother and Frédéric had it pre-orchestrated all along. Never mind that Emmett and Lainey haven’t agreed. That detail is of no consequence to them.
I’ve replayed that night a thousand times over. I’ve fantasized about handling things differently. I assumed I’d remedy things as soon as I returned to Boston. Back at my grandmother’s house, I helped Margaret unpack my clothes and showed her all the little souvenirs I bought for her, the olive oil and pasta and flaky cookies we tore the plastic open on right away. After, I took a hot shower, and as I wrapped myself in my robe, I tried to build up the courage to go talk to my grandmother.
A real talk, not the idle chitchat we’ve been playing at. Oh did I like the cheese they served on the plane? Was the villa everything I thought it would be? Where should we go the next time we’re overseas?
I towel-dried my hair then wiped the steam from the mirror, and my reflection stopped me dead in my tracks. The courage I’d been building went up in a puff of smoke. The woman staring back at me had red-rimmed eyes and limp hair and a coward’s posture.
On the flight home, I might have considered going to the extreme, bucking my grandmother’s demands of me and walking away from everything I’ve ever known. But for what? Freedom?
What does an animal born in captivity know of freedom?
I turned off my bathroom light and walked toward my bed, all too eager to bury myself beneath the sheets.
The courage I lost that night never returns. The days start to pass, and I find myself right back where I was before Italy. Life becomes a familiar hamster wheel as I dress in the clothes Margaret picks for me and go to work at Morgan Fine Art Gallery or attend a charity luncheon or accompany my grandmother on a shopping trip or to one of her clubs.
All the while, I carry a tight ball of anxiety with me everywhere I go. My appetite disappears. I sleep so little at night it’s hard to hide the evidence in the morning.
The guilt gnaws at me constantly. Not only did I upset my grandmother in Italy, I showed her a side of myself I’m always so careful to suppress. The woman who flirted with Emmett in the bathtub, who sneaked out to visit him on the pier, who was late to dinner and disrespectful to her host—she’s not someone my grandmother would be proud of.
I feel terrible about my ruined betrothal to Royce. Had things only worked out between us, if I could only go back and fix my bad behavior, act differently, behave like I’ve been taught to…I wouldn’t be feeling as if my life is falling to pieces.