The Husband They Bought To Die

Chapter Seven: Smooth As A Lie

The Vales refused to lose.

Two days after Quell's death, a card of heavy cream stock arrived at Whitlock House. The Vale family requested the Whitlocks' presence at the Pearl Banquet at the Lighthouse Club, where Preston would present his betrothal gift to Iris before two hundred guests. Everyone understood what that meant. Once Iris accepted the gift in front of half of Harrowgate's elite, the engagement could not be broken without a scandal no family could survive.

Margaret read the card twice, then summoned Gideon to the drawing room. She hadn't slept well since the arrest. There were shadows under her eyes, and her voice had lost some of its iron, but none of its contempt.

"Quell was a fraud," she said, "but the Vales are not. They want you gone, and I want this wedding." She set the card down. "You may stay three more days, on one condition. Tomorrow night, you will work the banquet as a waiter. The Vales should see exactly what you are."

Iris rose so fast her chair scraped the floor. "Grandmother, he is my husband, not your servant."

"I'll do it," Gideon said.

Iris turned and stared at him as if he had lost his mind. He didn't explain. Preston Vale wore Lucius's crest on his wrists, and his family's lawyer had been the last man to see Quell alive. Tomorrow night Preston would be relaxed and triumphant, working a room full of powerful people, and a waiter was invisible. Gideon wanted to see who Preston talked to.

He had already spent one long night at Ash Street reading everything Bram had gathered on the Vales over three years. Bram had kept quiet friends inside Meridian the whole time, and one entry in particular had made Gideon read it twice.

The Lighthouse Club stood at the end of the old harbor pier, a converted lighthouse with a glass ballroom built out over the black water. Chandeliers blazed overhead, and the sea moved beneath the floor like something alive. Gideon wore a borrowed white jacket and carried a silver tray of champagne through the crowd, and not one of the two hundred guests looked at his face.

He watched Preston all evening. Preston shook hands with ministers' sons and shipping magnates, laughed at all the right moments, and kept one hand on Iris's back as he steered her through the room. She wore dark blue and the expression of a hostage.

At nine o'clock, the string quartet fell silent, and Preston stepped onto the small stage while two Vale guards carried up a velvet case.

"My family has a tradition," he announced, smiling at the room. "When a Vale chooses his bride, he gives her the Tide Queen." He opened the case, and a soft gasp swept the ballroom. Inside lay three strands of large, luminous pearls, gathered by a clasp of white gold and diamonds. "Forty million dollars, and a hundred years of Vale history. Iris, would you?"

Iris climbed the steps as if walking to her own sentencing. Preston fastened the necklace around her throat, and the room broke into applause.

Gideon stood very still with his tray, though not for the reason everyone else did. He knew where the real Tide Queen was. According to the entry he had read twice, it sat in a Meridian vault, quietly pledged by Vale Maritime as collateral two years ago. Whatever hung around Iris's neck tonight, it was not the Tide Queen.

He set his tray down on a side table.

"That's glass," he said, loud enough for the room to hear.

The applause died. Two hundred heads turned toward the waiter in the borrowed white jacket. For a beat there was perfect silence, and then laughter rolled across the ballroom like a wave.

Preston's smile held, but his eyes went flat. "Our waiter is a jewel expert now?" He spread his hands to the crowd. "Fine. Prove it. And when you can't, I'll have you thrown off the end of this pier."

"Get Fenwick," someone called. "Fenwick will settle it."

The club's appraiser, a thin man with a jeweler's loupe on a chain, was pushed forward. He examined the pearls at Iris's throat for a long moment. Then his eyes flicked toward Preston, and a bead of sweat ran down his temple. "Genuine," he said. "South Sea pearls of the very highest quality."

The laughter swelled. Preston nodded to his guards.

Gideon walked up the steps before they could reach him. Iris went perfectly still as he stopped in front of her. He lifted a single pearl from the strand at her collarbone, gently, his fingers brushing her skin, and drew it slowly across the edge of his front tooth.

A real pearl is built from layer upon layer of nacre, and it always feels faintly gritty against a tooth, like fine sand. This one slid across without a whisper of friction. It was smooth as a lie.

"Glass," he said again, quietly this time.

"Get him out of here," Preston snapped, and the guards closed in.

"Leave him."

The voice came from the back of the room, cool and unhurried, and it stopped the guards mid-step. The crowd parted for a woman in a black silk gown, perhaps thirty years old, with dark hair swept over one shoulder and a single emerald at her throat. Everyone in Harrowgate knew Madam Sabine Royce. The young widow owned the Lighthouse Club, and her jewel collection was the finest in the province.

She climbed the steps, lifted the strand from Iris's neck, and tested a pearl against her own tooth as calmly as if she were tasting wine. Then she rolled it between her fingers beneath the chandelier.

"Glass," she said. "Good glass. But glass."

The room turned. Whispers raced through the crowd, and Gideon could hear every one of them. If the Vales were gifting fakes, where was the real Tide Queen? And if they had sold it or pawned it, Vale Maritime was in serious trouble.

Preston's face had drained of color.

Sabine let the pearls fall back against Iris's collarbone and turned to Gideon. She studied him a moment too long, her head tilted slightly.

"Mr. Gray, is it?" she said softly, for his ears alone. "Strange. I never forget a face, and I've seen yours before. Three years ago, at a Meridian gala."

Then she smiled.

"Come upstairs. Alone."