Chapter 297

[ 1,171 words ]

Delia’s POV

Mother was in the morning room when I arrived.

She was at her writing desk with her reading glasses on and a stack of correspondence in front of her—the kind of correspondence that constituted my mother’s social life, the invitations and responses and thank-you notes and follow-ups that kept the Kensington name circulating in the right rooms. She looked up when I came in and immediately took her glasses off, which meant she could see from my face that I had not come for a casual visit.

“Sit down,” she said.

I sat.

“Katia’s husband has arrived,” I said.

Mama set her glasses down on the desk. “I saw the broadcast. Jude Wolfe.” She said the name carefully, the way she said names she was assessing. “British. Motorsport p>

“Yes,” I said.

“Does he have money?” Mama asked.

The directness of it—no preamble, no pretense of asking about Katia’s well-being or the state of the marriage or any of the things a mother might theoretically want to know—landed in the room with the frankness that had always defined Martha Kensington’s approach to the world.

“He does,” I said. “But not more than my husband p>

Mama nodded once. The nod of a woman filing information.

“So,” she said. “What are you here for p>

I looked at my hands for a moment. Then I looked back up at her.

“I think we should have a family dinner,” I said. “Invite Katia. And her husband. A chance for the family to meet Jude Wolfe properly p>

Mama was quiet.

She turned slightly in her chair, looking toward the window where the garden was doing its early afternoon thing—the gardeners moving along the far hedge, the stillness of a well-maintained property on a grey day. She had the expression she wore when she was calculating something she was not yet ready to say out loud.

“Delia,” she said finally.

“What p>

“Do you remember what you told me after the last dinner?” she said. “You said we should never invite Katia again. Those were your exact words. You said the evening was a disaster and that inviting her only gave her a platform to p>

“I know what I said,” I said.

“And now you want to invite her p>

“The situation has changed,” I said. “She has a husband now. The world knows about it. It would look strange if the family did not make any effort to meet him p>

Mama looked at me with the careful, assessing gaze she reserved for situations she did not entirely believe.

“There is something else,” she said.

“There is not,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment longer. Then she turned back to the window.

“Even if I wanted to,” she said, “I am not sure Katia would come. Her behavior at the last dinner, Delia. Standing up at my table and saying what she said. In front of David. In front of Christopher.” She paused. “And then there is the other matter p>

“What other matter?” I said.

Mama’s jaw tightened slightly.

“Celeste Windsor,” she said. “She is no longer inviting me to the high teas p>

I stared at her.

“She has hosted those teas for fifteen years,” Mama said, her voice carrying the controlled damage of a woman describing something that had wounded her social standing. “I have been on the guest list since the beginning. And now I am not.” She looked at me. “Because your sister stood up at a dinner table and told the world I threw her out pregnant and that I arrange my apologies around social access rather than genuine remorse.” She paused. “Celeste Windsor heard that. And Celeste Windsor apparently agrees with her p>

The silence in the morning room was uncomfortable.

“I am sorry,” I said. “But that is exactly why we need this dinner. If Katia comes, if she sits at your table and introduces her husband and we make it a proper family event, Celeste Windsor will hear about it. It shows that the families are on reasonable terms. It puts you back in the picture p>

Mama looked at me.

“And why would Katia agree to come?” she said. “After everything p>

“Because we are not inviting her,” I said. “We are inviting her husband. We want to get to know Jude Wolfe. That is a reasonable request. A family wanting to meet the man who married their daughter.” I paused. “She will come. She would not let Jude face this family alone p>

Mama considered this.

I watched her turning it over—the social calculation of it, the risk against the potential restoration of the Kensington name in Celeste Windsor’s world, the image of a family dinner that looked civilized and welcoming and generous rather than fractured and difficult.

“And you will bring Julian?” Martha said.

“Yes,” I said.

She looked at me for a long moment.

“Delia,” she said. “Are you certain Julian will come to a Kensington family dinner p>

“I will make sure of it,” I said.

Mama picked up her reading glasses. She put them back on. She looked at the correspondence on her desk for a moment.

“I will send the invitation,” she said.

I stood up.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Delia.” Her voice stopped me at the door.

I turned.

“If this dinner goes the way the last one did,” she said, looking at me over her glasses, “I will hold you personally responsible p>

“It will not,” I said.

I walked out.

I sat in the car outside the Kensington house and looked at my phone.

Katia would come because the invitation would be framed around Jude and no Kensington woman could resist the optics of introducing her husband to the family. She would come because it gave her a stage, and Katia never turned down a stage.

And I would bring Julian.

I did not know exactly how I was going to bring Julian to a Kensington family dinner. But I was going to figure that out. Because I needed them in the same room. I needed to watch Julian and Katia’s husband in the same space and see what happened. I needed to see the dynamics with my own eyes rather than through the fog of speculation and absence and two meal trays going upstairs three times a day.

I needed to know what I was actually dealing with.

I started the engine.

And I will bring Julian.

I did not know who was up there. That was the truth I had been sitting with since I walked out of Katia’s board meeting and stood in the corridor with my hand on the door handle.

But I knew one thing.

Whatever was happening in that east wing — whoever Julian had been eating with and sleeping beside for three days — I was not going to find out by standing in corridors and counting cutlery. I needed a controlled environment. A table. Both of them in the same room where I could watch and see and finally understand what I was actually dealing with.

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