The wine moved through me like liquid fire as I watched William Harrington’s words take shape in slow motion. For one suspended second, the whole dining room seemed to drift away from its own polished reality. Crystal stemware caught the candlelight.
Silver flashed beneath the chandeliers. A server in white gloves paused near the sideboard with a bottle of Napa cabernet tilted in midair, as though even he had forgotten how to move. Outside the tall windows, the grounds of the Harrington estate disappeared into the dark, the winter lawn clipped into neat obedience beneath landscape lighting that made everything look staged, expensive, untouchable.
My fingernails bit crescents into my palms under the table. William’s voice was somehow muffled and painfully clear at the same time. “My son deserves better than someone from the gutter,” he announced to a room full of country club friends, board members, business associates, and family who had gone still in their seats.
“Not street garbage in a borrowed dress pretending to belong in our world.”
Twenty-three pairs of eyes slid toward me. I counted them because it was easier than letting myself feel the full force of what had just happened. Twenty-three faces.
Twenty-three little flinches, widened eyes, lowered gazes, frozen mouths. Twenty-three witnesses waiting to see whether the nobody dating the prince would dare answer the king. I could feel each heartbeat high in my throat.
Slowly, carefully, I lifted the linen napkin from my lap and folded it once, then again, smoothing the fabric with fingertips that did not shake as much as they wanted to. The napkin probably cost more than the monthly rent on my first apartment. I set it beside my untouched plate of salmon resting on a bed of saffron risotto I no longer had any chance of tasting.
“Thank you for dinner, Mr. Harrington,” I said, rising with deliberate calm. “And thank you for finally being honest about how you feel.”
No one moved.
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