Chapter 317

[ 1,099 words ]

Julian’s POV

Martha opened the first box like a woman unwrapping something she had been promised in a dream for years and had stopped believing would actually arrive.

Inside sat a crystal decanter set, hand-cut, the kind of thing that belonged in a museum case more than a liquor cabinet, and she made a small, delighted sound that David echoed a moment later when his own box revealed a set of cufflinks I recognized immediately as a brand that did not produce anything under five figures.

Delia’s box held a bracelet.

I watched her open it with the same careful expression she had been wearing all evening, turning the thin gold chain over in her fingers, murmuring something polite and entirely hollow in Jude’s direction. She did not look at me while she said it. I did not need her to. I understood exactly what this gift was costing her, watching a man she had no real claim to perform generosity in a room where she had spent two years receiving nothing at all from the man whose name she actually carried.

Then Jude turned to me.

“I did not forget you, Windsor,” he said, producing a smaller, flatter box from inside his jacket rather than from the pile near the window. “I had this set aside separately p>

I took it without enthusiasm.

Inside was a watch. An exceptional one, the kind of piece that men who understood watches recognized instantly and men who did not would still sense the weight of, even without knowing the name behind it.

“I wanted to mark the occasion properly,” Jude said, watching my face with the careful attention of a man gauging whether his gesture had landed the way he intended. “We are brothers now, in a sense. We married sisters. That makes us family, whether either of us wanted it that way.” He smiled, easy and warm, performing for the room as much as for me. “I appreciate you, Windsor. Truly. For looking after Katia the way you have p>

I looked at the watch.

I looked at him.

“Thank you,” I said.

I did not mean it, and I suspected he knew I did not mean it, but the room did not need to know that, and Katia least of all needed to watch me make a scene over a piece of metal and leather that meant nothing to me beyond the fact that he had chosen to give it.

Then he turned to Katia.

He produced a third box, this one larger than the others, and inside sat a necklace, diamonds set in a delicate, modern line that suited her throat the way good jewelry was designed to. He fastened it himself, his hands moving with the easy confidence of a man who had clearly practiced the gesture in his head before arriving, and the room made the appropriate sounds of admiration while I sat in my chair near the window and kept my face entirely still.

Then he produced a fourth box.

A ring.

Not large, not garish, the kind of tasteful piece a man chose when he wanted to signal permanence without announcing it too loudly. He took her hand, the one without the ring I had given her seven years ago in a courthouse neither of us had ever told anyone about, and began to slide his ring onto her finger.

Something in my chest went entirely cold.

I did not move. I did not stand. I kept my hands flat against the arms of my chair and watched him reach for her left hand, the hand where the Windsor firestone already sat in plain view, the same ring she had worn openly since the photograph of her at that gala had been published months ago, the one that had told me, before anything else in this city could, exactly who she was.

Everyone at that table had seen it a hundred times by now. Nobody asked about it anymore. It had simply become a fixture of her hand the way a birthmark becomes a fixture of skin, noticed once and then folded into the ordinary furniture of a person’s appearance.

Jude had seen it too, clearly, and clearly understood nothing about what it actually was.

“That ring,” I said, before he could finish, “is unique. You should put the new one on her right hand p>

The room went quiet.

Jude looked up at me.

“It is simply a ring, Windsor,” he said, his tone light but carrying the faint edge of a man who did not appreciate being corrected in front of an audience he had spent the evening cultivating.

“It came from somewhere meaningful,” I said. “It has history. I would prefer it not be crowded p>

Katia looked at me.

I held her gaze for exactly as long as I could without revealing anything that would explain the sudden, absolute certainty in my voice, and then she did something I had not expected. She did not ask why. She simply turned her left hand slightly away and offered her right hand instead, and Jude, after a brief pause that told me he had noticed the strangeness of the moment even if he could not name it, slid the new ring onto her right hand instead.

I exhaled slowly, the cold in my chest receding only slightly.

I could not have explained to anyone in that room why the thought of another man’s ring sitting beside mine on her hand had nearly made me stand up and remove it myself. I only knew that I had spent seven years guarding that ring’s place on her finger without her ever knowing I was the one guarding it, and I was not prepared to watch it crowded out by a man who had no idea what he was actually competing against.

Martha clapped her hands together, delighted, already moving on to admire the necklace properly, and the room settled back into its earlier rhythm as though nothing strange had happened at all.

I waited until dessert had been cleared and the conversation had drifted toward something inconsequential about David’s golf game before I stood and crossed the room to where Jude was finishing his wine.

“Walk with me,” I said. “I would like a drink. Somewhere quieter than this p>

Jude looked at me, surprised, then recovered into something gracious.

“I would like that,” he said.

I led him toward the study at the back of the house, my expression giving away nothing of what I actually intended for the conversation waiting on the other side of that door.

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.