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Jesus Christ. I’m going to die.
A strange peace came over him, slowing his heart rate and reactions and immersing all his senses in a sort of muffled slow motion. He knew it was the end. But it was as if it were happening to someone else. As if someone else were watching the trucks on the main road race closer and closer, unable to stop
or move or even swerve aside, passively succumbing to the inevitable like a paralyzed spectator.
The last thing Michael De Vere thought was, I left Summer this morning without saying good-bye. I should have said good-bye.
Then came the impact and the blackness and there were no more thoughts and nothing mattered anymore.
Roxie De Vere gazed at her reflection in her dressing room mirror.
She claimed not to care about her appearance. There would never be another man for her after Andrew. Even if her body weren’t broken and useless, she had no heart left to give, no sexual desire, no appetite for life or love and the inevitable pain that came with both. And yet, on a night like tonight, with the whole world watching, Roxie took a certain perverse pleasure in making herself look beautiful. If there was anything more poignant than a young girl confined to a wheelchair, it was surely a ravishing beauty confined to a wheelchair. More importantly, Roxie knew that when she looked her best, even now, it irritated her mother.
She’d pulled out all the stops tonight. Her naturally thick, blond hair was swept up into an elaborate chignon, fixed in place with antique Victorian hairpins studded with prettily colored glass beads. Her drop diamond earrings had once belonged to Teddy’s grandmother, Lady Maud De Vere. The light they reflected contrasted perfectly with Roxie’s smooth, softly sun-kissed skin. Her gown was simple, nothing like the fancy Dior confection that Alexia had been planning to buy for her in Paris. Left to her own devices, Roxie had opted for a plain, cream silk column that discreetly covered her shattered legs while encasing her full, smooth breasts in a subtly boned corset. The result was both innocent and sensual, an effect that Roxie highlighted with subtle makeup—palest pink lips and cheeks flushed with a dusting of shimmery peach blush. A simple, heart-shaped gold pendant hanging sweetly at her neck completed the picture.
Pushing herself over to the window, Roxie looked down at the legions of liveried staff running back and forth like ants. Tommy Lyon was striding around the grounds, a worried general in the hours before battle, shouting and gesticulating and generally marshaling the troops in Michael’s absence. Very unusually, Michael had failed to show up at Kingsmere on this most crucial of afternoons. Tommy had no idea where he was, and Michael’s cell phone, usually glued to his ear, was switched off. With the firsts guests due to start arriving in an hour, tensions were understandably running high. Roxie hoped that her friend Summer Meyer’s unexpected appearance in Oxford last night wasn’t behind her brother’s disappearing act. If Summer had caught Michael in flagrante with one of his bimbos, anything could have happened. Not that he wouldn’t deserve everything that was coming to him. But Roxie liked Summer and she liked Summer and Michael together. She’d be sorry to see Michael fuck that one up.
Back on the dressing table, Roxie’s cell phone rang. Michael’s name flashed across the screen. Speak of the devil.
“You better have a good excuse, Houdini. Poor Tommy’s about to have a breakdown out there.”
“Miss De Vere?”
The voice on the line wasn’t Michael’s. “Yes. Who is this?”
“Oxfordshire police. I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”
“How do I look?”
Alexia twirled in front of Teddy like a high school senior on prom night.
Teddy puffed out his chest happily. “You look perfect, my dear. I could die of pride.”
Good, thought Alexia. Perfect was what she’d been aiming for.
Gone was the haggard crone of this morning. Gone also the frightened woman haunted by pictures of Jenny Hamlin’s mutilated corpse. Or the paranoid politician, looking over her shoulder for imagined enemies. There would be no enemies tonight. No death. No fear. No surprises. The prime minister and his wife might have let Alexia and Teddy down, but Alexia intended to make sure it was the Whitmans who regretted their absence at tonight’s party, not the De Veres. The party was, as Lucy Meyer had predicted, going to be “awesome.”
Dresswise, Alexia had changed her mind at the last minute, opting for a dramatic dark green gown in heavy, structured jacquard silk with a high, Oriental collar. It had a touch of the Cruella De Vil about it, but not in a bad way, and it was utterly elegant and restrained. The pearl-and-diamond choker was less restrained, but at Alexia’s age, a choker covered a multitude of sins, and it was a De Vere family heirloom, which naturally delighted Teddy. With her hair recolored, styled, and sprayed into place, her skin revivified, and her makeup flawlessly applied by the incomparable Marguerite, Alexia both looked and felt a million dollars. Battle-ready, as Teddy would have called it.
“Blast this bloody, buggery thing. Where is Bailey?”
Teddy fumbled with his bow tie in front of the mirror. A regular attendee of black- and white-tie events for well over forty years, Teddy nevertheless approached each bow tie as incompetently as if it were his first.
“You don’t need Bailey.” Alexia tutted, patting his hands away and taking charge herself. “Over, around, under, through. There. It’s not rocket science, darling.”
Slipping both arms around her waist, Teddy pulled her to him. Closing her eyes, Alexia inhaled his familiar smell, a combination of Floris aftershave, Pears soap, toothpaste, and polished shoe leather. Safety. Home. She had never been attracted to Teddy sexually, not even when they were young. But she had found his physical presence comforting, pleasant rather than exciting, like cuddling a slightly worn but much-loved teddy bear. She felt the same way now. She wished she could bottle that feeling somehow, keep it to savor when she was alone, when the stresses of the present and horrors of the past became too much for her.
“I love you.”
Teddy De Vere had been married to Alexia for more than three decades. He understood his wife well enough to know that verbal expressions of affection were not her usual style.
Reaching out, he put a concerned hand on her forehead. “Are you feeling quite well, old girl?”
Alexia batted his hand away, embarrassed. “Stop making fun. Can’t I tell my own husband how much I love him from time to time?”
“I’m not making fun.” And suddenly she saw that he wasn’t. “Darling, darling Alexia,” Teddy whispered urgently. “If you had any idea how much I love you, how far I’d go to protect you . . .”
“What?”
