him . . .
Bee must have been thinking something similar, because she
turned to Mary Beth. “Do you have an escort for Cotillion?” A sullen flush spread up Mary Beth’s neck. “Not yet,” she answered, and I saw her gaze flit to Ryan.
I moved in a little closer to him. Okay, this Paladin thing had
already derailed my life enough. Turning Saylor Stark down was supposed to mean getting my life back, not ruining Cotillion for my best friend and handing my boyfriend over to Mary Beth
R iley.
Bee glanced over at me, a little smile tugging the corner of her
lips. “Bummer. I mean, it seems like all the decent guys at school
are taken, and really, what are the chances of someone suddenly
becoming available?”
The great thing about best friends is that they know you
really well. And the terrible thing about best friends is that . . .
they know you really well. Bee knew that the thought of Ryan
taking Mary Beth to Cotillion was killing me. And what better
way to get me to change my mind about Cotillion than to dangle
that possibility?
I met Bee’s eyes. “You know what? After we grab some food,
why don’t we go back to the store and get those shoes? The more
I think about it, the more I think they would be perfect with my
dress.”
Bee grinned. “I think that sounds like an excellent idea.” I watched Mary Beth watch Ryan, longing all over her face.
And I remembered that while Ryan might not have seemed
guilty, he had been leaning. Exactly the way he used to lean
against my locker door back in ninth grade. No, there was no
way I was letting this happen. Operation Get My You–KnowWhat Together was starting now.
So I smiled at Bee, hugged my boyfriend, and said, “Me too.”
Chapter 19
That Monday, I found myself back at Magnolia House. Saylor’s eyes had widened a little when I’d walked through the door, but she hadn’t said anything, other than, “Good afternoon, Harper. I trust you’ll be ready to take over the prayer again?”
I had, and it had gone well. Unfortunately, the rest of the practice was going less smoothly.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Miss Riley!” Saylor snapped yet again.
As Mary Beth stammered out apologies, I rubbed my ankle and tried not to grimace.
Cotillion practice had only started half an hour ago, and this was Mary Beth’s third fall. The first one had been before we’d even put on our heels, and the second one had nearly taken out the potted fern by the bay window, but this third one had been on me.
As usual.
Normally, I stuck up for Mary Beth when she stumbled, but after the stuff at the mall with Ryan, I was feeling less than charitable.
I was also feeling slightly unsettled. David was currently slumped in one of the tiny velvet chairs in the sitting room, his legs out and crossed at the ankle. Even though I couldn’t see his face behind the Kurt Vonnegut paperback he was holding, I had a feeling his expression was somewhere between boredom and disdain. It was the first time I’d been this close to him since that night at Saylor’s, and even though I was doing my best to ignore it, it was almost like I could feel this thread stretching between us.
“Ladies,” Saylor said, clapping her hands. “I realize you’re all very busy and preoccupied, but Cotillion is one of the most important nights of your life. It’s when you present to the world both the kind of woman you are and the kind of woman you would like to be.”
“I am the kind of woman who would like to be done with this shit,” Mary Beth muttered. She’d taken off her heels and they dangled from her fingers, bumping my shoulder blades. I rolled my back irritably, hoping she’d move them away. And stop talking. That also would’ve been nice.
Saylor didn’t give any indication she’d heard Mary Beth. I’m pretty sure if she had, we would have seen Magnolia House’s first murder. Instead, she clasped her hands in front of her and turned her gaze on me. “For example, Miss Price. What kind of woman do you want to be?”
The question threw me, and I suddenly realized that this was a test. Apparently, walking away from Paladin-dom wasn’t going to be that easy.
I knew the things I wanted to do—make my school better, go to college, become the second female governor of the state of Alabama—but I had a feeling that wasn’t what Saylor was looking for. “I . . . I want to be a good woman,” I said finally. “One who does the right thing, not only for her community, but for herself. Who follows her heart even if it’s not the most popular thing to do.”
There were a few giggles behind me. I knew how lame that answer had sounded, but it was true. Doing the right thing didn’t seem like all that much, but look at Leigh-Anne. Look at what doing one wrong thing had cost her. Lame or no, that was my answer. And I hoped Saylor heard what I was really saying.
Across the room, I caught a little glare of light. I realized David had lowered his book, and was watching me, his lips pressed in a thin line. I wondered if he thought I was talking about him.
“That was a lovely answer, Miss Price,” Saylor said. Her voice sounded . . . different. A little lower, and without those clipped tones she usually used. Then she gave a little shake of her head and clapped again.
“All right, now we’re going to practice descending the staircase accompanied. On the actual night, your father will lead you down these stairs and to the gentleman you’ve brought as your escort. There is a trick to walking gracefully on the arm of a man, and luckily, my nephew David has graciously volunteered to assist us.”
“If by ‘graciously volunteered,’ you mean ‘was threatened and coerced,’ then yes, I did,” David said, unfolding himself from that tiny chair.
A muscle twitched in Saylor’s jaw, but she let the remark pass. “Go ahead and line up at the top of the staircase,” she said, pulling that little blue pot of lip balm out of her pocket. “Oh, and Mary Beth, if you could come down here for a moment.”
“Ugh, what now?” Mary Beth sighed, but she went.
“Remember, girls,” Saylor called as David loped up the stairs, passing Mary Beth. “You are to lay your hand gently on the forearm, not loop your arm through his. This is Cotillion, not a square dance.”
“I actually think square dances are less shameful than this,” David muttered at the top of the stairs. Still, he held his arm out gallantly to Elizabeth Adams, keeping his spine straight and shoulders back. As they made their way down the staircase, I watched Saylor and Mary Beth. They had gone into the alcove by the front door, and Saylor was talking to her while holding her hands and looking into her eyes.
Once Elizabeth was at the bottom of the staircase, David jogged back up to take Abigail Foster’s arm, then, once she was done, Amanda’s, then Bee’s. There was only one other girl between me and Amanda: Lindsay Harris. According to The Aunts, every girl in town had done Cotillion when they were young, but now, fewer and fewer girls did it every year. It was becoming one of those traditions that some people thought was a little too old-fashioned, a little embarrassing.
Once Lindsay was safely at the bottom of the stairs, David came up to me, crooking his elbow. “Shall we?”
But before I could rest my hand on his forearm, Saylor called, “Actually David, I’d like for Miss Riley to go first.”
“Sure,” David said, shrugging and raising his eyebrows.
I was left to hover there awkwardly as Mary Beth walked back up the velvet-covered stairs, her white heels still hanging from her hands. When she reached the top, she took a deep breath, slid the heels on, and took David’s arm.
David made his way down the steps as carefully as if she’d been made of glass, but he shouldn’t have bothered. Mary Beth didn’t just walk. She floated. She glided. She practically levitated down those stairs.
As she passed me, I got a hint of rose, and then they were there at the bottom of the steps. With a little squeal, Mary Beth clapped her hands and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet. Even David seemed impressed.
Magic. Whatever Saylor had done to the lady who’d run Cotillion before, or the former head of the Pine Grove Betterment Society, she’d done it to Mary Beth, too. If you asked me, it seemed like kind of a waste of something so super powerful, but if it kept me from being trampled, I guess it was all for the good.
No reason to feel bad about ditching my Paladin duties, then. What would it matter if the occasional guy broke through Saylor’s wards? Maybe she’d already made them stronger.
Now that Mary Beth had finally made her first successful run down the stairs, it was my turn again. David offered his arm, and I laid my palm as lightly as I could on his sleeve.
“We need to talk,” he said in a low voice as we started to descend.
“We don’t,” I replied through clenched teeth.
I could feel his forearm tense under my hand. “Except that we do.”
From her position at the bottom of the staircase, Saylor watched the two of us. Anyone observing would’ve thought she was making sure we were moving at the right pace while using the appropriate posture. But I knew better.
So when David turned to me again once we were done, I hurried off to the little powder room off the main foyer.
Like everything else in Magnolia House, it was done all in shades of burgundy and green. A tiny wicker table by the door held a basket of scented lotions and a small bowl of potpourri, and there were tiny framed pictures of Magnolia House throughout the years on the walls. It wasn’t actually an antebellum house—they’d built the place in the 30s—but it was still a pretty exact replica of the big places that had once filled Pine Grove. They even kept antique furniture in the bedrooms upstairs.
I was studying one of the pictures when I realized what else was covering the walls—dark green wallpaper with a familiar pattern. My vision swam with skinny golden figure eights. My hands started shaking as I turned on the little gold faucet shaped like a swan. I splashed my face with cold water and was taking a deep breath when the door suddenly opened and David was standing there.
He went to shut the door, but I pushed past him before he could. Or at least I tried to. Even though my hands only shoved against the air half a foot from him, David still got out of the way, letting me into the hallway.
“No more skulking,” I hissed, shooting a glance back at the main foyer. This corridor was nearly blocked by the main staircase, so David and I were partially hidden. “We don’t have anything to talk about. Not anymore.”
David made a move toward me. I thought he was going to grab my arm, but then he seemed to think better of it. “I need to talk to someone about this,” he said, and there was almost something pleading in his voice.
Since I’d never heard David Stark plead for anything ever, I hesitated. Then I remembered how desperate I’d been to tell someone, anyone, about what had happened with Dr. DuPont.
So I stepped back a little further into the shadows. “What is it?”
Sighing, David tugged at his hair before reaching into the pocket of his jeans. “This.” He handed me a crumpled piece of paper, and I saw that it was an e-mail.