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Chapter Eleven

Blaire

Aweek after Geneva, I return to the Kensington estate on a Saturday evening with absolutely nothing in my hands that belongs to the collection.

It feels strange enough that I notice it as soon as I step out onto the terrace.

Tonight is Eleanor’s birthday, and the estate looks different without work attached to it. The doors along the back of the house stand open to the gardens, where small tables have been arranged beneath strings of warm lights. A band is playing near the far end of the lawn, waiters move easily through the crowd with champagne and cocktails, and somewhere beyond the terrace someone is already laughing loudly enough to carry over the music.

There are perhaps fifty people here, most of them family friends and people the Kensingtons have known for years. It is intimate by their standards, but relaxed enough that no one seems particularly concerned with where they are supposed to stand or whom they are supposed to impress.

Neither am I.

I am wearing a dark green dress that moves around my knees when I walk, with thin heels I already suspect I will regret by the end of the night. My hair is loose instead of pinned back for work, and for once I do not have a notebook, catalogue, tablet or file within reach.

I take a glass of champagne from a passing tray and tell myself not to look for Ross immediately.

I make it perhaps ten seconds.

He is near the edge of the terrace talking with Charles and two men I recognize from previous dinners. He has lost the tie entirely tonight, the collar of his white shirt open beneath a dark jacket, and one hand is tucked casually into his pocket while he listens.

Then he looks across the terrace and finds me. The change in his expression is slight, but I know him well enough now to see it. His attention settles on me and stays there.

Something low and familiar turns over in my stomach. Geneva has made that worse. Or better. I have not decided which.

Ross says something to his father, excuses himself from the conversation and crosses the terrace toward me. He does not hurry, but there is something about the way he comes directly to me that makes the rest of the party blur at the edges.

“You came,” he says when he reaches me.

“You invited me.”

“I was still not certain.”

I raise my glass.

“Your mother invited me too. Hers carried more authority.”

Ross smiles. “I suspected that might be the case.”

His eyes move over me slowly enough that I feel it.

“You look beautiful,” he says.

“Thank you.”

I glance at his open collar.

“You look suspiciously relaxed.”

“I am capable of it.”

“I have seen very little evidence.”

“You saw me in Geneva.”

“That was different.”

Ross studies me. “How?”