Page 49 of The Beautiful Ones

CÉCILE

By luncheon, I had learned the boundaries of my miracle.

The discovery should have frightened me more than it did.

When Adrian looked at me, language became effortless. Words rose from thought to tongue without striking any hidden obstruction. When his attention wandered, even briefly, I felt the old pressure gather at the base of my throat.

I told myself this was confidence. Nothing more.

After eighteen years of dread, surely any woman would speak more easily before the one person who expected her to succeed.

My mother had placed Adrian at my right hand at the long mahogany table. She pretended the arrangement was accidental, although she had changed the seating cards twice before the soup appeared. Nicholas sat between Lucien and Philip George, drawing both young men into some outrageous account of a gambling house in Paris. Octavia occupied the place beside my mother, where every compliment she offered carried enough sweetness to disguise its blade.

The Fairhavens had distributed themselves through the room with military precision.

Adrian’s chair remained close enough that the dark wool of his sleeve nearly brushed my blue silk whenever he moved. He did not touch his food. None of them did. Nicholas broke a roll into smaller and smaller pieces while entertaining the young gentlemen. Octavia lifted her wineglass often, yet the level of claret never seemed to fall. Adrian moved a glazed carrot from one side of his porcelain plate to the other with the quiet concentration of a man performing a task beneath his dignity.

No one appeared to notice.

I noticed everything.

For most of my life, I had survived company by studying it. Silence had made me invisible, and invisibility had made other people careless. I knew Judge Dewey repeated any opinion delivered by a richer man. I knew Lavinia George praised my mother’s gowns only after inspecting the seams for inferior workmanship. I knew Warren laughed before he understood a joke, and that Philip lowered his eyes whenever his father mentioned money.

Until that day, all those observations had remained trapped behind my teeth.

Now I released them one by one.

When Judge Dewey began a long complaint about county assessments, I asked whether the tax itself troubled him or merely the possibility that men of lesser standing might learn how much land he owned.

Lucien choked on his wine.

The judge stared at me, uncertain whether he had been insulted. Nicholas laughed first, rescuing him from the decision, and the rest of the table followed.

When Lavinia George lamented that the dampness had ruined her imported parasol, I observed that Virginia weather had never shown proper respect for French silk.

Even Lavinia smiled.

The pleasure was unlike singing. Music carried me beyond myself; this brought the world toward me. Heads turned when I spoke. Men stopped speaking over me. Women waited to hear what I might say next. Every glance that once slid past my chair now rested upon my face.

Power was an intoxicating golden drug, and I drank until I was dizzy with it.

Across the table, my mother sat as if witnessing a resurrection arranged for her personal benefit. Her fork hovered above her plate, a piece of glazed capon forgotten upon its tines. Pride softened every line of her face.

When the servants removed the soup bowls, she reached across the white linen cloth and took my hand.

“You see, Cécile?” Her eyes shone with tears. “I knew it was in you. I always knew that if you stopped being timid and made a proper effort, you would shine.”

For one foolish instant, her touch gave me what I had wanted since childhood.

Then her words turned it to ash.

She had not apologized for the physicians, the punishments or the hours spent forcing my mouth around sounds until I bled. She had rewritten my suffering into stubbornness and claimed my triumph as proof that she had been right.

I withdrew my hand beneath the pretense of reaching for my glass.

“Perhaps,” I said, smiling brightly, “I finally found something worth saying.”

My mother’s expression tightened.