Chapter 5

The brunch was beautiful in the way Delphine’s events always were: expensive, controlled, and cold at the center.

White linen. Silver candlesticks. Bittersweet branches in low vases. Rain tapped the canvas above our heads, a soft drumroll for a performance no one had admitted was a performance.

I moved between tables with the tray. I served the foundation donors, the old family friends, the women who had known my mother and now pretended Delphine had always been the mistress of Wren Hall. A few of them looked at me twice. I saw recognition flicker, then confusion. Delphine had told them I was catering. They believed her, because believing Delphine was easier than asking why Eleanor Sloane’s daughter was carrying champagne at her stepbrother’s engagement brunch.

Grant caught my eye once and frowned. “Do I know you?”

“We’ve met,” I said. “Congratulations.”

Cecily, glossy in pale pink, laughed. “Why does the help keep staring? It’s unsettling.”

“She’s not staring,” Grant said, but he looked away.

Warren stood near the head table, his hands wrapped around a glass he wasn’t drinking. He saw me and went pale. He looked at Delphine, then at the exit, then back at his shoes. I had never seen a man so practiced at disappearing while standing still.

I set my tray down near the service entrance and found Mrs. Calder.

“Bring the trust file now,” I said under my breath.

She nodded and slipped out through the service flap.

At twelve eighteen, Delphine tapped her glass. The tent quieted. She stood at the center table, the emerald pendant catching the gray light. My mother’s pendant. My mother’s house. My mother’s foundation.

“Thank you all for coming,” Delphine said. “Grant’s engagement is a joyful moment, but it is also a moment of legacy. The Sloane Family Foundation must grow. It must pass into the right hands. And I am so proud to announce that Grant will lead the foundation as its next chair.”

Applause rippled through the tent. Grant looked surprised in the way of a man who had been told he deserved everything. Cecily kissed his cheek. The donors raised their glasses.

Delphine beamed. “Grant will lead the foundation-”

“Ms. Mara Sloane?”

The voice came from behind the linen, clear and calm.

Delphine’s raised hand stopped mid-gesture. She turned, annoyed, and waved the speaker off without looking. “She’s with catering.”

Mr. Ives stepped into the center of the tent, the leather folder in his hands. “No, ma’am,” he said. “She’s the emergency trustee.”