“Right. Of course.” Eloise nods. Polly’s just trying to help.
“Thought you might want to peek at one of the boxes, though. Just to make sure they’re the right ones.”
“That’s kind of you.”
Polly’s fingers are stacked with rings—big, bulbous pieces topped with faux sapphires and emeralds—so opening the box’s cardboard lid is slow going. She gets it eventually, though, and when she does, and Eloise peers past the tissue paper inside, she worries she might vomit.
“Those are crème,” she says.
“Are they?” Polly looks on the side of the box, which is unmarked. “No, dear, I’m almost certain they’re white.”
“Polly—”
“It’s Patty. Patricia.”
“Patty.” Eloise reaches into the box and plucks out a votive. With her other hand, she digs into her purse for an old receipt. “This is white,” she says, holding the paper up. Then, she holds the votive at eye level, so the old bird can see it clearly; so she can appreciate how loathsome and filthy and entirely un-white it looks. “These candles are fucking crème. In fact, those are the same fucking crème candles that we returned to you an hour ago.”
Patty clears her throat and smooths her chiffon. “I really don’t see the need for that sort of language.”
“I need you to tell me you see the difference.”
Eloise leans across the counter, still holding the votive in one hand and the receipt in the other. She thrusts them forward, and Patty recoils.
“Do you want them or not?”
“Tell me you see a fucking difference.”
“There’s a difference!” Patty screams, and Eloise backs off. Once Patty’s confident that she’s escaped harm, she sighs. “My word.”
“I’ll take all three thousand,” Eloise says, putting the receipt—and the candle—in her purse. Crème candles are better than no candles, she decides, and at this point, the universe hasn’t given her much of a choice. “I’ll pull my car round back.”
*
When she arrives back at Horwood Hall, Jane is in the front garden, staring helplessly at her roses.
“I was so hoping they’d bloom before the wedding,” she says, and Eloise slams the Range Rover’s door.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Jane.” Eloise keeps her sunglasses on.
Jane sighs and turns her back to the budless bush. “Did you find your candles?”
“More or less. Look, I need you to do me a favor.”
The color fades from Jane’s face, and, panicked, she reaches down to pick up an errant leaf that has floated down from the wych elm that looms over the house’s driveway. “Oh?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.” Jane’s voice cracks. “Anything.”
“I need you to distract Katie.”
“The wedding planner?”
“Yes. Her.” A car passes by and honks. Jane and Eloise both wave, and Eloise continues. “I need you to keep her occupied and in another room while I bring these candles inside and have them set up.”
Jane folds the leaf in half. “I can’t imagine why you—”
“Jane?”
“Yes, dear?”
“This is very important to me.”
And it is. Because what sort of authority would Eloise maintain if Katie were to see her setting up the very candles that not two hours ago Eloise asked her to return? She knows, though, that she can’t explain that to her mother-in-law. Rather, she has to say that it’s important and leave it at that. Any nuance that she tries to convey will be lost on Jane, who she suspects doesn’t understand the necessity of saving face.
“Well, if it’s important to you…” She slips the leaf into the pocket of her gardening coat.
“It is.”
“I suppose I’ll see what I can do, then?”
“Thank you.”
Eloise watches Jane slink back inside, then sneaks around to the back side of the main house, where preparations for the rehearsal dinner are under way. On the lawn dividing the house from the family’s old stables, men in uniforms work to erect three bars and twenty-two high-top cocktail tables. Eloise walks up to the one closest to her and, noticing how uneven the table’s linen cloth is, straightens it. Beyond the stables is the estate’s abandoned barn, a gorgeous, half-dilapidated thing that, tomorrow night, will be transformed into the wedding’s marquee. Using it had been her idea. After an afternoon of touring Sherborne’s dingy pubs and stale event halls in search of a suitable reception location, she floated the idea of the barn to Ollie over negronis on his parents’ back patio.
“It could be really gorgeous,” she’d said, watching the sunset throw shadows across the barn’s splintered roof.
“It’s filled with hay. We’d have to have it swept out.” He added: “And there aren’t any lights in there. Someone would have to find a way to hang lights from the ceiling.”
Now, looking past the cocktail tables toward the barn, she thinks: Should I check on the chandeliers?
Her planning, though, is interrupted; Ollie sneaks up behind her, wraps his arms around her waist, and kisses her cheek.
“Hiya,” he says.
She smiles and bats his hands away, just as he’s starting to work his fingers up her shirt.
“Hiya.”
“Looks beautiful.”
She puts her hands on her hips and flexes her back. “It’s getting there. Did you check in with the caterers like I asked?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“Enough canapés to feed us until Christmas. Was Candlegate solved? You know you’ve got that poor American girl crying.”
“You’re kidding.”
Ollie grins. “I’m not. Mum’s making her some tea right now.”
Eloise nods, satisfied with Jane’s distractive abilities. Then, remembering the larger issue of the votives, she sighs. “It wasn’t solved,” she says. “The goddamned store in Sherborne only had crème candles.”
“Think we should call off the wedding?”
“You think I’m being crazy.”
“I think you’re being detail oriented.”
“That’s a euphemism for crazy.”
“You’re not crazy.” He brushes his hair away from his eyes and kisses her forehead. “Come on inside, though. We’ve got to leave for the church in an hour, and the Admiral’s made gin and tonics. A little fortification before we practice our waltz down the aisle.”
She turns back toward the lawn, and the stables, and the barn. Two of the cocktail tables are off center, and the last bar still needs to be constructed. Also: she hasn’t seen a single lily yet.
“Sounds lovely,” she says.
“Hey, you.” Ollie pokes her shoulder. “You okay with all of this?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You can tell me if you’re not, you know. I’m liable to go nuts and perch on top of the abbey with a machine gun, but you can tell me.”