by Beth Merlin
“Do what?”
“Keep pushing on the bruise. What does it matter when Perry met Annabelle?”
“How could it not matter?”
“If anything, it’s confirmation things were as over as you thought they were when you sent him back the ring,” he said.
The elevator came, and we stepped onto it.
Jamie lowered his voice so the other riders wouldn’t hear. “If you keep down this road, this whole thing isn’t going to work. We have almost six months until the wedding. Six more months of fittings and meetings with Victoria and Annabelle. I never should have let you talk me into keeping quiet about you and Perry. Jesus, Gigi, can you imagine what will happen if it ever comes out that you and Perry were engaged and carried on all this time as if you were strangers? On top of it you’re with Gideon now, right? What would your new boyfriend think of this obsession with your old one?”
“I’m not obsessed, I’m just in shock. I didn’t know Annabelle entered the equation that early on.”
The elevator doors opened, and we spilled out into the busy lobby. Jamie turned to me as the door closed behind us.
“Wake up, Gigi. She’s not the reason you and Perry didn’t work out. He chose Elizabeth over you. Not Annabelle.”
“Georgica! Jamie!” A panicked British accented voice called over the crowd.
We turned around and spotted Victoria huddled by the security desk. We walked back over to meet her.
Jamie looked around the lobby. “What’s wrong? Where’s Gemma?”
“She stayed upstairs to go over a few more things for the shoot. I’m tired and wanted to check in and freshen up. She said our driver and security would be waiting for me downstairs, but I don’t see anyone. I was about to go catch a cab, but then I was worried about the press waiting outside the hotel. Gemma was supposed to coordinate which entrance to use so I’m not sure what to do. She isn’t answering her phone.”
“The car probably couldn’t stop and had to circle around. How about you come with us? We can drop Jamie at the studio and then I’ll bring you back to my apartment. You can freshen up there.”
She sighed. “That sounds wonderful. Thank you. I’ll let Gemma know,” she said shooting off a text.
Jamie ran outside the building and hailed a taxi. We rushed Victoria into it and gave the address for G. Malone. The cab dropped Jamie off so he could get a head start on organizing Victoria’s preview and then I directed the driver to my apartment building a few blocks away. As we pulled up, Victoria rolled down her window to look in each direction.
I came around to her side of the car to help her out. “I promise you, there’s no paparazzi here.”
“I’ve unfortunately become accustomed to them hiding in the bushes or trees. Although the closer the wedding gets, the less they bother concealing themselves.”
I rummaged through my bag for my keys. “I don’t know how you handle it. Honestly.”
“Some days I don’t either, but then I remember this is Alexander’s life. It’s just as much a part of him as his smile. If I want him, I have to accept all of him, right?”
I smiled warmly and pressed for the elevator. When it came, we squeezed on with all of Victoria’s luggage.
“My apartment isn’t much bigger than this I’m afraid,” I said.
“As long as you have a cup of tea and a loo, it’s perfect.”
We stepped inside and I directed her to the bathroom and then put a kettle on the stove for tea. I did a quick check of the apartment to make sure there wasn’t anything of Perry’s lying around. There wasn’t a single item. Whatever he hadn’t taken with him when he first left for London, I cleaned out after Gideon and I reconciled.
The kettle whistled and I pulled a small tray out from the cupboard above the sink. I set out two cups, the creamer, and sugar, and carried it out to my coffee table. I sat on the couch and a few minutes later, Victoria came out to join me. I offered her a piece of Entemann’s coffee cake with her tea. It was the best I could scrounge up on such short notice.
Victoria took a small sip of tea. “This is lovely. I’m just glad to have a few minutes of quiet and a chance at some normal conversation that isn’t centered on me or the wedding.”
“If I knew you were coming I would’ve put out a better spread.”
“No, it feels like old times. Like I’m back at university sitting with a good girlfriend,” she said, looking more solemn.
“Are you okay?”
Victoria set her cup down on the table. “I was just thinking of a friend of mine. You remind me a bit of her. We haven’t spoken in quite some time.”
“I’m sorry, that must be hard.”
Victoria shook her head. “So many of the girls in my circle treated dating Alexander as some sort of sport—capture the prince. This friend had real feelings for him though. They went out a few times, but he wasn’t interested in her, not romantically anyway. When we got together she pretty much stopped speaking to me.”
“Give her time to get used to the idea. She may come around.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I went through something similar with my closest friend, Alicia. I had a childhood crush on her boyfriend, Joshua. She didn’t know or, if she did, she didn’t acknowledge it. They broke up for a bit and I started seeing him. It almost destroyed our friendship.”
Her eyes grew wide. “What happened?”
“It wasn’t easy, but we worked through it. It’s different than what it was before but better in some ways. More honest.” I took a few forkfuls of the coffee cake and set my plate in my lap. “If you miss your friend, you should reach out to her. I know she’d be happy to hear from you.”
Victoria picked up her teacup. “Maybe I will.”
Victoria’s phone rang and she reached into her bag to answer it. “It’s Gemma. Finally.”
“I’ll give you some privacy.” I picked up the tray and carried it into the kitchen. I rinsed out the teacups and placed them back into the cabinet. A few minutes later, Victoria popped her head into the doorway.
“Gemma’s swinging by with the car to bring me over to the hotel.”
I opened up a canister to pour back the unused sugar. “Great. We aren’t meeting at the studio ’til later so you’ll have plenty of time to unwind.”
“Thank you for this.”
“It was tea and some store-bought cake. Really, it was nothing.”
“Getting to feel normal for a few minutes isn’t nothing. Not to me.”
I smiled and poured the sugar back into the jar.
“Really Gigi, I hope we can be friends. I’d really like that.”
“I’d like that too.”
Jordana was waiting for me back at the studio. Before I could even throw my purse down on my chair, she grabbed my arm and dragged me into her office.
“What the fuck, Gigi? How long have you known about Annabelle and Perry seeing each other?”
I could’ve lied and said I found out on Page Six like everyone else, but I owed Jordana the truth. I scrunched up my nose and sank down into the blue crushed-velvet chair in the corner of the room. “A few weeks now.”
“A few weeks? A few weeks? This is literally a nightmare. I am having a nightmare.” Jordana closed her eyes and laid her head down on her desk. A few seconds later she lifted it back up. “If I’m dreaming, I want to wake up now, please.”
“I found out after Victoria had already chosen us for the dress, and at that point, I wasn’t really sure what Perry had told Annabelle about our past. It turns out, not much. I told Perry we should tell Annabelle, but he thought it was already too late.”
“Isn’t this the same crap you pulled with your friend Alicia and that guy you came to Chinooka to get over?”
I sat up, shook my head. “No, no, that was totally different.”
Jordana shot me a look of disapproval. “Well, my job is to clean up these messes. So, pray tell, how do you suppose we keep the press from finding out you and Perry were once engage
d?”
“How would they? We never put an announcement in the Times—even though my mother pleaded with me to submit one about a zillion times. We never registered. We never looked at any venues. I sent him back the ring. There’s no record that Ms. Georgica Goldstein was ever going to be Mrs. Perry Gillman.”
“What about the Vogue article?”
“What about it?”
“You can’t talk about Camp Chinooka or how you and Jamie decided to start your own line after collaborating on costumes there.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you remember Perry’s article in the New York Times? The one where he talks about his lost years and the summers he spent at Chinooka? Don’t you think someone might make the connection? Or at the very least, figure out that you two know each other?”
“Georgica, is there anybody else outside of your close friends and family who knows about you and Perry?”
“Gideon knows, but he won’t say anything.”
Jordana threw her head back dramatically. I put my hands on her shoulders. “Once all this wedding hoopla dies down, nobody is going to care about me. They’ll only care about Victoria Ellicott, future Queen of England in a gown designed by G. Malone. We have too much riding on this now. I don’t see another way. It’ll be fine.”
“I hope you’re right.”
I turned away from Jordana and felt a sharp tightening in my chest. I rubbed my hands up and down the soft velvet arms of the chair and laid them in my lap.
I exhaled deeply. “Of course I am.”
Chapter Twenty
The Royal Wedding
Six months later, the “wedding hoopla” hadn’t died down one bit. If anything, it’d reached a fever pitch. It felt like every news and entertainment outlet was reporting on royal wedding stories around the clock. Despite all the pandemonium, Victoria and I managed to develop a more genuine friendship, grabbing dinner or a drink each time she was in town. I was grateful to know Victoria beyond the royal façade and as a result was able to make some adjustments to the designs that further captured her essence.
In the last few weeks, Jamie and I hadn’t slept more than a couple hours a night, most of the time just crashing somewhere in the studio when we were literally too exhausted to sew another seam or line another garment. But with the help of the artists at several ateliers across Europe—who feverishly stitched sequins and rhinestones and worked on embroidery and feathers—we completed the wedding collection in the nick of time.
Jamie rewarded himself with an Ambien, hoping that by the time we landed in London he’d be somewhat human again. It took me several tries to shake him out of his deep sleep. He finally started to come around as the flight attendants were coming through the cabin to remind everyone to adjust their seats and open the window shades in preparation for landing.
He stretched his arms up over his head. “I feel like Sleeping Beauty just waking up from a hundred-year nap,” he said through a yawn.
“You were asleep before we even took off.”
He rubbed his eyes and turned to me. “Did you sleep?”
I looked down at my watch. “I think I dozed for an hour or so.”
“I told you to take an Ambien.”
“And I told you the last and only time I took one on a flight, I woke up to discover I was covered in my in-flight meal, which I had zero recollection of eating. Besides, I don’t think it would’ve helped. I’m too anxious.”
“Why didn’t you take a Xanax?”
I help up my fingers. “I took two.”
“And only slept an hour?” He faced forward and stuffed his headphones back into his bag. “You need to relax. We have a few more fittings, and then, of course, we’ll be on hand at the different events, but the hard part is over.”
The plane pulled into the gate and I stood up to retrieve my bag from the overhead compartment. “Everything arrived to the space Gemma rented for us?”
Jamie scrolled to his email and held his phone up to me. “Confirmation right here. Everything was delivered and is there waiting for us to unpack it.”
“Well, that’s a relief. When does Thom get here?”
“The surrogate’s been having contractions. He wants to stay local, just in case.”
I shook my head. “I can’t believe it.”
“The timing’s not ideal, but we’ll figure it out. What about Gideon? When are you planning on seeing him?”
“With the schedule Gemma has us on, I may not have much time until the actual wedding. Did I tell you? Right after we finish up, Gideon’s coming back to New York with me to celebrate his first American Thanksgiving.”
“You probably did, I just can’t keep anything in my brain that isn’t wedding related. I still can’t believe you’re going on the arm of an earl.”
“He isn’t an earl yet. Anyway, at this rate, I might be going naked. In all the craziness, I didn’t even think about what I’d wear. I don’t have a dress for the ceremony or anything to wear to the reception.”
Jamie pulled out his leather-bound dossier and turned to the third page. He pointed to the tenth line. “There,” he said, “between the family tea and Victoria’s hen party, a whole three hours on our own. I told you, by hook or by crook we’ll find you a dress.”
I held up two fingers.
“We’ll find two dresses,” Jamie said. “And a fascinator.”
“Ugh, I look terrible in hats.” I pulled the dossier toward me to get a better look. “Hen party? Victoria’s having a hen party?”
“Look at the next line. Alexander’s having a stag party, so I guess all is fair in royal love and marriage. From what it says here, it’s gonna be a low-key night at her parents’ house with her sister and closest friends. We’ll be off duty, so plenty of time to find you something fabulous to wear to the wedding of the century.”
We disembarked and pulled our luggage through the gate. Gemma had warned us there could be press waiting right outside the terminal and we should make as rapid an escape as possible if we didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire of photographers.
We rushed through the terminal, which was bursting with royal wedding memorabilia. Every souvenir shop, newsstand, and even Starbucks was selling some sort of commemorative mug, plate, or T-shirt.
I asked Jamie if he’d mind if I stopped into one of the stores on our way out of the airport for a bottle of water. I grabbed a large bottle of Perrier, took it to the counter, and pulled out a few pounds to pay for it. The cashier rang me up, and when she heard my American accent, asked me if I’d be interested in a Victoria and Alexander commemorative teapot.
“I’m actually coming, not going—maybe I’ll pick one up on my way out of town,” I said.
“Makes sense. I’d wait to buy the version with her in the actual wedding dress too. Can I interest you in the issue of American Vogue with Victoria on the cover? We just got in a shipment of them. Can’t keep ’em on the shelf.”
“I already saw it back home. They hit the stands last week.”
She handed me the bottle of water and receipt and wished me a good visit.
Jamie was waiting for me outside the store. “Gemma just sent me a text. There’s a car waiting for us outside baggage claim under the name Abbott.”
I did a double take. “How does Gemma know my mother’s maiden name?”
“MI6? I have no idea? I have a feeling we’re going to need to roll with things this next week.”
We checked into The Savoy Hotel under two different pseudonyms and went to our rooms to freshen up before our first appointment at the makeshift studio Gemma had rented in Convent Garden. I fumbled with the key card until the sensor finally turned green and I heard the click of the door’s lock opening. I pushed my way inside and was greeted by a huge, beautiful bouquet of flowers I assumed were from Victoria or Gemma. I opened the small card. They were from Gideon.
Gi-
May this week be the start of a brilliant new chapter for G. Malone. I couldn’t be mo
re proud of you.
All my love and admiration,
G
I smiled and picked up my phone to call him. “Thank you for my flowers.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“One question, how’d you know where to find me? I’m staying under a pseudonym.”
“I have my ways.”
I imagined Gideon smiling coyly on the other end of the phone. “Linney?”
“Linney,” he repeated. “She asked Victoria. Can I ask you a question?”
I moved the flowers over to the nightstand. “Anything.”
“Who’s Reid Codswild?”
“Reid’s my middle name, and I can’t believe you don’t remember who Mrs. Codswild is?”
“Refresh my memory.”
“When we met at Highclere Castle, you couldn’t find my tour tickets. You gave Jamie and me the Codswilds’ and told us to play along.”
“That’s right. How could I not remember? I thought maybe it was your porn star name. What’s the game with that? I forget.”
“I think you take your first pet’s name and the first street you lived on. Mine’s actually pretty good. Chloe Madison. What would yours be?”
“Hmmm, let me see…Napoleon Cheshire.”
I sat down on the bed and slipped off my shoes. “Wow. What kind of pet was Napoleon, may I ask?”
“A horse.”
“I should’ve guessed your first pet was a pony.”
He laughed and said, “I picked up the issue of American Vogue about the wedding yesterday. I know Victoria was supposed to be the star of the magazine, but you looked gorgeous, and the article was great. Funny, honest, and the perfect amount of humility and self-deprecation. Us Brits eat that sort of thing up.”
“I don’t know how honest. I’m sure you noticed Jamie and I left out some key facts about how we came together as designers, and everything about Chinooka.”
“I noticed, but nobody else would. This late in the game, some skeletons are better off remaining in the closet.”
Maybe Perry had been right all along. Nobody else needed to get hurt by our mistakes. I was able to keep the job of a lifetime and he’d keep his relationship with Annabelle. By this time next week, Perry and I could go back to being mere acquaintances. The past would stay firmly in the past where it belonged.