This is a private matter, and we’ll handle it accordingly.

By lunch, flowers and gifts and congratulatory messages have flooded in. My suite at the Mandarin Oriental smells like a florist shop. The cloying scent is enough to make me sick.

“Take it all,” I tell the bellman I rang for. “If there’s anything you’d like for yourself, it’s yours. Donate the rest to Boston Children’s.”

“Right away, sir.”

I have no doubt Lainey is receiving all the same gifts and well wishes I am, only I imagine her grandmother is probably reading every note aloud with a look of sublime satisfaction on her face.

My stomach twists at the thought of Lainey. We haven’t seen each other or spoken since Italy, though neither one of us has reached out to try to remedy that. The more time I’ve had to consider the situation from all angles, the more my anger with her grows.

It’s hard to extricate her from the epicenter of this mess. She might not have specifically instigated the betrothal (though even that I can’t be certain of), but at the very least, she’s complicit in it, and I can’t look past that.

She more than anyone should understand what it feels like to be pressed beneath someone’s thumb. I’ve made it clear to her that I won’t marry despite my father’s demands. She knows how long I’ve battled to carve my own path in life. She could have spoken up and come to my defense. If she was unwilling to go through with the engagement, my father wouldn’t have forced her. She had the power to end it all right then and there.

Instead, here we are, two weeks since leaving Italy, betrothed in the eyes of the world, and tonight I’ll have to see her at the St. John’s Alumni Fundraiser in New York City. I doubt it will be pretty.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Lainey

I feel stuck, flattened beneath my grandmother’s expectations. The discussion in the library in Italy transpired so quickly. Emmett and Lainey will wed. The solution to everyone’s problems was formed so suddenly, it’s like my grandmother and Frédéric had it pre-orchestrated all along. Never mind that Emmett and Lainey haven’t agreed. That detail is of no consequence to them.

I’ve replayed that night a thousand times over. I’ve fantasized about handling things differently. I assumed I’d remedy things as soon as I returned to Boston. Back at my grandmother’s house, I helped Margaret unpack my clothes and showed her all the little souvenirs I bought for her, the olive oil and pasta and flaky cookies we tore the plastic open on right away. After, I took a hot shower, and as I wrapped myself in my robe, I tried to build up the courage to go talk to my grandmother.

A real talk, not the idle chitchat we’ve been playing at. Oh did I like the cheese they served on the plane? Was the villa everything I thought it would be? Where should we go the next time we’re overseas?