Corinne turned to her and broke into an exuberant smile. “I just secured the liaison office in Turkey,” she said excitedly.
“That’s wonderful.” The corners of Poppy’s mouth eased into a smile. “Although you are allowed to take a break, you know.” Poppy gazed down at Corinne’s dress and swooned. “Gorgeous. C’mon. Let’s show you off.” But just before she led Corinne out of the dressing room, Poppy touched her arm, her expression shifting to one of concern. “I meant to ask you,” she said in a low voice. “Tomorrow is May first. How are you . . . feeling?”
Corinne sucked in her stomach and looked away. She was about to say that she was fine. But then she felt a peppery sensation behind her eyes. “Sometimes I wish I’d just told him,” she blurted. “It seems so selfish that I didn’t.”
Poppy clutched Corinne’s hands. “Oh, honey.” A timorous look crossed her face. “You know, there’s still time.”
Corinne straightened up and looked at herself in the three-way mirror. Her skin was flushed, her eyes a little dilated. “Forget I mentioned it, okay? I can’t believe I even said anything.”
She grabbed her cell phone from the ottoman in the corner as Poppy gathered up her train. Her mother, Penelope, and her wedding planner, Evan Pierce, sat on an ivory divan in the main salon. Both women turned at the sound of Corinne’s swishing skirt. Penelope rose and walked shakily across the room—she had been in a skiing accident in Colorado that winter and no one had seen who hit her. It was just yet another incident chalked up to the Saybrook curse. The press had had a field day with that, especially as it was common knowledge that Corinne’s father, Mason, was supposed to have been on the private plane that had crashed two years earlier, killing Poppy’s parents and the pilot. He’d canceled at the last minute to attend a work meeting. Two near misses for the Saybrook patriarch and his wife in as many years.
Penelope took Corinne’s hands.
“Darling.” She smoothed down Corinne’s hair, fussed with the lace straps on the dress, and then stood back. “It’s simply beautiful.”
Corinne nodded, tasting the waxy lipstick she’d just applied a few minutes ago. It wasn’t lost on her that her mother had said the dress was beautiful, not Corinne.
Bettina, Lhuillier’s tailor, smiled proudly. “The alterations are perfect,” she murmured.
Evan inspected the dress too. “Good. Fine,” she said in her nasal voice, her bluntly cut black hair falling across her sharp features.
Poppy shook her head. “You’re so hard to please.”
Evan shrugged, but Corinne knew it was just about the best compliment Evan could give. She was Poppy’s old roommate from boarding school; Corinne had never really clicked with her, but she was a shark in the Manhattan wedding industry, getting her way even if she had to step on a few pedicures along the way. Corinne appreciated that ferocity. Evan also kept all details about Corinne’s upcoming wedding a secret from rabid reporters and bloggers, even the anonymous masterminds behind the Blessed and the Cursed.
Bettina fluffed Corinne’s skirt and met her gaze in the mirror. “So. What is it like to be the bride in the wedding of the century?” Her thickly accented voice was rich with admiration.
A rehearsed smile snapped onto Corinne’s face. “Please. The century has only begun.”
“Yes, but Dixon Shackelford.” Bettina shuddered with delight.
Corinne pushed her dirty-blond hair behind her ears. She’d been with Dixon since their sophomore year at Yale. Well, except for that one summer just after graduation—but Corinne had always liked a story with a happy ending, and she’d neatly trimmed that interlude from her personal history. His mother was British, his father Texan, and Dixon himself was her mother’s dream come true—a blue blood on both continents, heir to the Shackelford Oil fortune, affable to a fault.
Bettina lifted Corinne’s veil from its dark-blue box on a nearby sideboard. “And now you’re going to be a princess!”
Corinne waved her hand. “There’s not much of a chance of that. His mother is the queen’s fourth cousin twice removed. Or something,” Corinne said, feeling she had to add the or something even though she knew precisely where Dixon’s mother fell on the royal family tree.
Bettina put her hands on her hips. “That makes you more of a princess than any of us. Now, let me see that ring again.”
Corinne held out her hand. Dixon had given her a large, canary-yellow diamond set in platinum—an homage to the Corona Diamond, the very first stone that her beloved grandfather, Alfred, had acquired when he fought in World War II. Before that, Alfred had owned a fledgling jewelry store in Boston, but the acquisition of the Corona had launched the business into a new stratosphere.