Chapter 2 - THE EXCUSE CAME TOO QUICKLY
Chloe followed Daniel into a private library off the ballroom.
“It looked horrible.”
Daniel turned around.
“It was horrible.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then tell me what you meant.”
Chloe stopped.
Her wedding dress filled the doorway behind her, perfect ivory silk against dark walnut paneling.
“I thought she was staff.”
Daniel stared at her.
Chloe realized what she had said.
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“I was stressed. My heel had something on it. She was already down there—”
“You told an elderly woman to clean your shoe.”
Chloe’s cheeks reddened.
“Victoria spilled the dessert.”
“My mother’s name is Victoria.”
“Your mother dumped food on her.”
“It was an accident.”
Daniel gave a short laugh with no humor in it.
“And your father accidentally tripped her?”
Chloe folded her arms.
“He said she stepped into him.”
Daniel looked through the library doors.
Harold stood twenty feet away speaking urgently to one of the wedding coordinators.
He did not look ashamed.
He looked irritated.
Daniel had seen that expression before.
At the rehearsal dinner, when a server brought Harold the wrong bourbon.
At Thanksgiving, when Chloe complained that the housekeeper at Daniel’s Boston condo had “an attitude.”
At a charity dinner in May, when Victoria snapped her fingers at a bartender.
Each time, Daniel had dismissed it as generational arrogance, wedding stress, or the Bellamys’ theatrical way of moving through the world.
His grandmother had not.
That was why Eleanor had worn the uniform.
Three weeks earlier, Eleanor had called Daniel after hearing complaints from two people working on the wedding.
Chloe had reduced scheduled staff meals because she did not want “employees eating where guests might see them.”
Victoria had demanded that a florist’s assistant use the service elevator because her clothes looked “too casual.”
Harold had threatened to withhold gratuities after a valet declined to leave another guest’s car unattended.
Daniel had defended Chloe.
Eleanor had said, “People show you who they are most clearly when they believe the person in front of them cannot cost them anything.”
Daniel had accused her of judging Chloe.
So Eleanor came to Newport early.
She asked Harborcrest’s banquet director for a spare uniform.
She wanted to see for herself.
Now Daniel was furious with Chloe.
He was also furious with Eleanor.
Because his grandmother had manipulated the evening to prove a point.
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But beneath both emotions sat something worse.
The point had been proven.
