Caitlyn really could be a good friend when she wanted. As had Calvin thus far, Nina had to admit. Perhaps he was being honest about the suggestion that a marriage between them would be a temporary arrangement. If he was truly her friend…would that be so bad?
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“We’ve always kept each other’s secrets, haven’t we? You’re like my own sister.”
Nina sighed. “You can imagine what’s going to happen, after everything that happened with Eric.”
At the mention of Nina’s cousin, Caitlyn looked truly pained. It was no secret that she had nursed an intense infatuation with Eric since they were all children. His engagement had nearly ruined her. And now that he was gone…well, Caitlyn couldn’t be happy about that either. Florian Hendricks or not.
“It’s all just terrible,” she agreed in a voice that cracked. “Have you—have you heard from him?”
Nina shook her head. “Nothing. He hates all of us now. And I don’t blame him. Why wouldn’t he, considering what they did? Our kind of people can be so awful to others when they don’t fit in.”
Caitlyn pressed her slightly fuller lips together. She’d been on the receiving end of a few of those comments herself over the years.
“Which means you can’t disappoint them either,” she said with full understanding. “Of course not. But if your grandmother finds out about this baby, she will be enraged. Oh, N, what are you going to do if you’re not getting rid of it?”
“Did you tell her the news?”
They both turned to find Calvin back at the table, still adjusting his pants and wiping his damp hands on his jacket. Caitlyn’s lip curled with slight disgust. Nina trained her face blank. Was she really going to…marry…this man? Would anyone in her family believe she’d willingly attach herself to someone so uncouth?
Calvin sat down and smiled at Caitlyn, who looked like she was fighting to maintain a straight face.
“News?” she asked. “What news is that, N?”
“I’ll let you tell her, princess.” Calvin raised one brow, and his gaze darted between Nina and Caitlyn as he grabbed his beer and took another thick, messy gulp.
Was that a threat or a reminder? Nina couldn’t tell. But fear danced up her spine regardless. Of what, she couldn’t quite say, but if she closed her eyes, she could still see the pictures of Eric at Penny’s funeral. And the smug look on Grandmother’s face behind him.
Ostracization.
Financial ruin.
Total humiliation within and outside of her family’s home.
Maybe someone’s death.
These were the things facing Nina if she went it alone.
“You have to keep this to yourself too, Cait,” she told her friend with as much conviction as she could muster. “At least for a few days. But you might as well hear it first.”
Caitlyn leaned in, bright blue eyes dancing with anticipation. She loved nothing better than a secret.
Nina swallowed thickly. Her throat was so dry.
“Yes,” Calvin said as he set a hand over hers. “I’ve just asked Nina to marry me. Do you want to tell her what you said, princess?”
A breeze floated off the water, catching a leaf of lettuce Calvin had dropped earlier and carrying it away into the pond.
Nina swallowed hard. Calvin’s thick fingers didn’t move from hers. Her stomach turned, reminding her of what she was harboring.
“I—I said…” She drifted off, then finally managed to drag her gaze back to Caitlyn’s. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I said yes.”
Chapter Three
June 2008
“Nina. Nina.”
The name bounced through the dusty chapel, echoing off plaster walls beyond flowered hats and polite faces.
Nina blinked and found Calvin Gardner, her husband-to-be, glaring at her from the other side of the altar while the officiant blinked through oversized glasses like a bemused owl.
“For God’s sake,” Calvin hissed, pulling for the tenth time at the part of his stiff tuxedo collar that dug into his jowls. “Can you answer the man’s question?”
Nina took a moment to remember where she was. A church. In a white dress. In front of friends, family, and an assortment of people who had come to watch the novelty of an heiress marry a nobody.
Marry.
The strength of the word hit her in the stomach yet again. The same way the word “object” had just a minute or two before.
When the minister had asked the assembly in a bored tone whether anyone objected, Nina had chanced a peek through her veil. No one had raised a hand.
She had looked to the doors at the back of the hall, half expecting to see Peppe, or maybe even Eric, crash through them.
The doors stayed firmly shut.
Nina took a deep breath, trying and failing to ignore the way the boning of her dress—yes, her wedding dress—dug into her expanding ribs. It had only been days since her final fitting, and at almost ten weeks along, she was already outgrowing it.
It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t have chosen this dress for herself under normal circumstances anyway. Too much lace covering her arms and bodice, the full skirt wider than it was tall.
But then again, this wasn’t the wedding Nina would have chosen either. No little girl dreams of getting pregnant out of wedlock and marrying a man who vaguely resembles a banana muffin, all before she’s twenty-one. She had always seen herself getting married on the beach, perhaps near her family’s estate in the Hamptons. Wearing a slip dress like Catherine Bessette-Kennedy, not one like Grace of Monaco. Dancing in the moonlight in the arms of a man who loved her.
She should have known it was time to forfeit those dreams the second she met Peppe. She should have known in that moment that she would never be worthy of them.
Nina swallowed as she looked between Calvin’s livid face and the minister’s. “Um, I’m so sorry. Can you repeat the question?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Calvin muttered.
The minister adjusted his glasses and patted Calvin kindly on the shoulder like he was calming a toddler about to throw a tantrum. It didn’t seem to work.
“Of course, dear. It happens all the time.” He cleared his voice and repeated, in a louder voice: “Nina Evelyn Astor de Vries, will you have this man to be your husband; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”
St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery was silent, the only noise the occasional whisper of paper fans and screech of rented chairs on the wood floors. It was hot, even for late June in New York, and the second-oldest church in the city did not have working air-conditioning that day.
One hundred and four of New York’s most elite people—her people, as Nina had been told all her life—were crunched onto the chairs, fanning their sweat-soaked faces while they awaited her response. It was a small crowd by de Vries standards. Even Aunt Heather’s second wedding was twice this size at the Vineyard, and that had been called a modest affair.
“Ahem.”
In the front row, Celeste de Vries’s light cough spoke volumes. She, like the rest of the family, looked perfectly put together in her light pink Chanel suit, her silver hair pinned into a classic French twist, and a wide-brimmed hat tipped elegantly to one side. Beside her, Nina’s mother, Violet, watched with only a slightly less bored than usual expression through her typical Chardonnay glaze. Edwin Astor, unsurprisingly, had elected not to come. Too short notice, he’d said. And with only two weeks between the announcement and this strange procession, he was right.