Chapter 209

[ 1,068 words ]

Delia’s POV

Victor was patient.

That was the problem. He moved slowly and with the focus of a man who had been building something for years and was not going to rush the final piece. I had left his penthouse with the promise that he was working on it and the hollow feeling of a woman who had given everything she had and was waiting to find out if it was enough.

I did not do well with waiting.

I drove to my mother’s.

Mama was in the sitting room when I arrived. She had been home since the dinner last night, and she looked up when I walked in with the expression of a woman who had been doing the same calculations I had been doing and had not yet arrived at an answer she liked.

“Sit down,” she said.

I sat.

“Last night,” Mama said carefully. “Julian took Katia upstairs p>

“Yes,” I said.

“And he came back down.” She paused. “In different clothes p>

“Grey sweatpants,” I said. “Yes p>

“I noticed,” Mama said. She had. I had seen her notice the slight tightening around her eyes when Julian had walked back into the dining room in completely different clothes and sat down next to me like it was nothing. “I did not say anything at the table because it was not the time.” She looked at me. “But I noticed p>

“There is more,” I said.

Mama waited.

“Katia did not leave,” I said. “I waited until two in the morning. I did not hear anyone leave. When I woke up and came downstairs this morning, she was still there. She walked through the entrance hall in a dress I did not recognise.” I paused. “She was limping, Mother. She was moving like every step cost her something p>

Mama went very still.

“She spent the night?” Mama asked.

“Yes p>

The sitting room was quiet for a moment.

“Delia,” Mama said. Her voice had shifted into the careful register she used when she was about to ask something she already suspected the answer to. “Where did you sleep last night while all of this was happening p>

I looked at the table.

“In my wing,” I said.

“Alone?” Mama asked.

“Yes p>

“And the night before that p>

“Also alone,” I said.

Martha looked at me.

“Delia,” she said. “How long has this been going on? Julian not—” She stopped, reformulating, “How long have you been sleeping in separate wings? The last time I remember he took you upstairs p>

I met her eyes.

“That night, nothing happened, Mother. Since the beginning,” I said. “Since the day I moved in. He has never once come to my room. He has never touched me. Not once in our entire marriage.” I looked at the window. “I told you some of this before. But I don’t think you understood how completely he has never looked at me. It is not that he prefers someone else temporarily. It is that I have never existed to him p>

Mama was quiet for a long time.

“And yet, Katia,” she said. It was not a question.

“And yet, Katia,” I confirmed.

Another silence.

“Right,” Mama said.

That word. I had heard it my entire life — the clipped, decisive right that meant she had moved from listening to planning. She stood and went to the window and looked out at the garden for a moment with her hands clasped behind her back.

“We need another dinner,” she said.

I looked at her. “We just had one p>

“At his house,” she said. “His table, his kitchen, his terms. He controlled everything last night.” She turned. “I want dinner here. My house. My seating. My rules p>

“What are you thinking?” I said.

“Katia has always had one weakness,” Mama said. “She cannot bear to have something she has claimed be wanted by someone else. If Julian is looking at her the way I think he is looking at her, we put another man in front of her. Someone who pays attention to her, visibly, at my table where both families can see it p>

I thought about that.

Julian’s face when he looked at Katia. The way his attention found her in a room before anything else. The seafood boil — he had asked me what her favourite dish was, and I had not known, and he had found out anyway and had it prepared without telling me.

What would that face do if someone else decided Katia was worth looking at?

“Do you remember Christopher?” Mama said. “From the spa weekend p>

“The one with the roses,” I said.

“He called me last week,” Mama said. “He was not put off by the way things went. He found Katia — his word was compelling.” She paused. “I am going to call him today p>

“And you think Julian will react,” I said.

“I think,” Mama said, “A man who has gone to the trouble of asking her younger sister what her favourite dish is cannot watch that woman being courted by someone else without reacting.” She looked at me steadily. “And when he reacts, at my table, in front of both families, we will have something to work with p>

I sat with that.

“Katia will not come,” I said. “Not after this morning p>

“She will come,” Mama said, “because I will invite her as her mother. And whatever walls Katia has built, she has never been able to say no to a direct family invitation. That is the one crack in her armour.” She sat back down. “Julian will come because his grandmother will be there p>

“When?” I said.

“Next Saturday,” she said. “That gives me a week to arrange everything p>

I looked at my mother across the sitting room.

She had been at that dinner last night. She had seen all of it with her own eyes and had said nothing and had come home and sat in her sitting room and done the calculations quietly and had arrived at a plan that might actually work.

“Call Christopher,” I said.

“I already left him a message,” Mama said.

I almost smiled.

“Saturday,” I said.

“Saturday,” she confirmed. “And Delia.” She looked at me directly. “Whatever is happening between your husband and your sister, we are Kensingtons. We do not lose p>

I nodded.

I drove home with something I had not had all week.

Hope.

Small and fragile and possibly misplaced.

But mine.

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