Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice (36 page)

   Cassie wished she could be as certain. "It's happening too soon, but we don't have much choice. We can't announce the engagement because it might make Joe work faster, but we need to get married soon enough to counteract any smear campaign at Haverford. It's going to be tricky planning it in a month." She was still having trouble saying words like "engagement."

   "You should talk to Ann about weddings. She's the expert, having married off all three of our girls. She loves wedding planning. But I'm the legal department, so I have to ask whether it's safe to wait a month."

   "Not really," Calder said. "But I'm going to give my father a bigger fire to fight, and hopefully that will distract him until it's too late."

   "A bigger fire?"

   "You'll be reading about it in the newspapers. I'm raking up an old family scandal and feeding it to the media. Anonymously, of course."

   "And by the time he's dealt with that, you'll be married. That's good," Dave said. "We should arrange for some good publicity for you."

Calder shifted uneasily on the couch. "Publicity? Do we have to?"

   "No, but a preemptive strike would go a long way if your father intends to make trouble."

   "What do you have in mind?" he asked, trying not to sound like he was going to his own execution.

   "Something for one of the feel-good magazines.
People
or
Good Housekeeping
or something."

   Now Cassie's expression changed to worry. "They wouldn't be interested in us, would they?"

   Dave laughed. "For exclusive coverage of your engagement, you could get anything you asked for."

   It was too much for Cassie. Contemplating marriage was hard enough, but when the equation began to include
People
and leaking stories to the press, it seemed impossible. It was easier to forget the differences between them when they were alone, but to hear them bandied about so easily with Dave made her intensely uncomfortable.

   She couldn't sit still any longer. "I think I'll go see if Ann needs any help."

   "Good idea," Dave said, but Cassie could feel Calder's eyes on her as she left the room.

   Ann was in the kitchen putting away the last remnants of dinner. Cassie said, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

   "You can dry the crystal, if you like." Anne handed her an embroidered dish towel. "How are the legal affairs coming along?"

   Cassie picked up a wineglasses and began to dry it carefully. "Dave and Calder are still talking."

   "It gets a bit dull after a while, doesn't it?" Ann said in a conspiratorial manner.

   "Confusing." Cassie felt suddenly lonely. She would have given anything for the kind of close relationship Calder had with Dave and Ann, but as usual she was the outsider. "I wish I knew whether we were doing the right thing."

   Ann set down the bowl she was emptying and turned to Cassie. "What's this?"

   "We're not ready to get married yet. We don't know each other well enough. The only reason we're doing it is because of Calder's father. What if Calder regrets it some day?" Cassie pretended to pay close attention to the glass she was drying, cleaning off imaginary spots.

   Ann took the glasses that were already dry and put them away in a cupboard. "That's our wedding crystal. We've been careful with it, and it's lasted through raising three children and years of entertaining." She paused a moment, touching the rim of one of the glasses. "It would be nice if everyone was sure of what they were doing when they got married, but it's not always like that. When I married Dave, I knew he didn't love me. He was on the rebound from another woman. We even talked about it, and he told me he could never love me the way he loved her. I believed him; she was… something special, and I was just ordinary Ann Smith who had grown up down the block from him. But I'd loved him for years and he cared about me, and I decided that was enough."

   "And was it?" Cassie could not imagine the scene Ann was portraying. Dave and Ann had an ideal marriage, as near as she could tell. But perhaps appearances were deceiving.

   Ann smiled to herself. "Well, there were a few other important things I didn't take into account then, like mutual respect, being able to talk about problems, and the willingness to forgive mistakes. In some ways those are more important than love. Without them, I don't know if we would have made it. But we did, and the day Julie was born Dave told me he had been wrong, and he loved me more than he had ever loved the other woman. I told him I already knew that. He never stopped caring about her, but it was different after that. Dave has a lot of capacity for love. So does Calder, I think."

   "Yes, he does." Cassie sometimes wondered if Calder had more capacity for love than she did. Certainly when he gave it, it was with his whole heart.

   "Dave loves our three girls to death, and he would never say it, but I know he always wanted a son. Calder is special to him, and Dave wants him to be happy. Right now having you makes Calder happy."

   "I want him to be happy, too." The issue was whether she could keep making Calder happy. "I should probably go see what they're up to."

   "You do that. I'll be out shortly, and thanks for the help."

   Calder shifted uneasily on the couch. "I appreciate your offer to draw up the prenup for us, Dave, but isn't it going to cause problems between you and my parents?"

   "Nothing new. Your mother won't mind, and your father already knows what I think of him."

   "If my father minds, my mother will, too. She believes anything he tells her." Calder knew his contempt was showing, but he couldn't help it.

   Dave looked concerned. "That's not true. She disagrees with him about a lot of things. She keeps her opinion to herself."

   "If she disagreed with him, why would she put up with the way he treats her? She'd leave."

   Dave went to the bar to refill his wineglass. When he turned back, he said, "She did try to leave him once, you know."

   "She did?"

   "Yes, when you and Tommy were little."

   "But she went back." Thinking of his mother leaving his father was like seeing a mirror shatter.

   "She went back, yes, after Joe made it clear he was going to get custody of the two of you and she'd never see you again. He had the connections to make it stick, you know."

   It made him sick, the idea that he was the reason his mother had gone back to his father. But it couldn't be that simple. "I can't see it. Maybe they had a fight then, but it's been what, fifteen years since Tom left home. If she wanted to, she could have left long ago."

   Dave shrugged, as if to say he had done his best. "If I do the prenuptial, I'll need some information. What's your legal state of residence these days?"

   Calder took Cassie's hand in his, calmed by her presence. "Still Virginia."

   "Pennsylvania for you, Cassie?"

   "That's right."

"What state will the wedding be in?"

   Cassie looked up at Calder. "We're still working on that."

   "And you're planning to get married in a month?" Dave raised his voice. "Ann!"

   Ann came out of the kitchen, untying her apron. "Yes?"

   "Would you please arrange their wedding?" he said plaintively. "These babes in the woods don't even know where they're having it yet. All I need is a state."

   "Oh, my. We have a lot of work to do, then," Ann said. "What are your choices?"

   "We want it to be small and quiet, and if we get married in Haverford, a lot of people will feel left out if they aren't invited." Cassie took a sip of her coffee, letting the heat run down her throat. "Cape Cod's a possibility, but it's off season there and most of the hotels are closed. That leaves Virginia or Chicago."

   "It's not going to be in Virginia," Calder said. "My parents are not invited."

   Ann exchanged a glance with Dave. After a brief silence, she said, "Chicago, then?"

   "It would be hard. This isn't the sort of thing my mother could arrange, and I can't leave Haverford in the middle of the semester to set it up."

   Ann looked excited. "If you can tell me what you want, I can help with the arrangements."

   Dave laughed. "Here's the translation service. What Ann means is that she'll take over the entire event from start to finish. She loves planning weddings."

   "I'm just trying to help," Ann protested, but with a guilty smile.

   "I'm not sure these two wouldn't be just as happy if somebody took over the whole thing." Dave picked up a pen and pad of paper. "Meantime, I'll put down Illinois for location for now. We can always change it later if we need to. Cassie, what's your full name?"

   "Cassandra D. Boulton." She spelled the last name for him.

   "What does the D. stand for?"

   She eyed Calder suspiciously. "You put him up to this, didn't you?"

   Calder lifted his hands in a protestation of innocence. "Nothing doing."

   "You really need this, Dave?"

   "Not absolutely, but it would be better. What's the problem?" Dave asked with amused curiosity.

   "Nothing," Cassie said firmly. "Just Cassandra D. Boulton."

   Calder failed to smother a smile. Cassie glared at him and said under her breath, "Over my dead body."

Calder looked restless after they retired for the night, picking up a book, then pacing to look out the window into the darkness, then sitting on the bed to watch Cassie brushing her hair.

   She paused, putting down the brush. "Is something the matter?"

   "Do you ever think about having kids?" he asked abruptly.

   She wasn't fooled by the apparent casualness of the question. She came over and sat next to him on the bed. "I think about it, of course. Why? Do you want to have kids?"

   "That's really up to you. I'm fine with whatever you decide."

   "That wasn't what I asked, you know—I asked if you
wanted
them."

   He looked uncomfortable. "I don't know. It depends on what you want."

   She took his hands in hers. "Sometimes I wonder whether you defer all these decisions to me because you don't like making decisions or because you're afraid I'll be angry if you make the wrong choice."

   "Probably some of both. Mostly I don't want to scare you off by asking you to do something you don't want to do."

   She eyed him for a moment and then abruptly pounced on him, pushing him back on the bed. He gave a startled laugh and pulled her close to him. She said, "In case you haven't noticed, I'm planning to marry you, so you don't need to worry about scaring me off. But I don't like not knowing what you want. I'm afraid you'll wake up one day and realize you're unhappy with everything we've done."

   He drew her face to his and kissed her deeply. "I won't be unhappy."

   "I still want you to trust me enough to tell me what you want. I'm not your father; I'm not going to be mad if I disagree."

   "I
do
tell you what I want. I want
you,
and all the rest is details."

   "So, do you want children?" she asked challengingly.

   "Only if you do."

   She rolled her eyes. "I didn't ask you if we should have them; I asked you if you
wanted
them, regardless of my opinion."

   "Yes, I think I do, but I'm okay with it if you don't," he said finally.

   "Thank you," she said firmly. "It's funny, you know—when I first met you, I thought you were used to demanding whatever you wanted, but you're really quite the opposite. You're very good at giving, but you don't know how to take."