“Oh, yes,” she moaned into her cell phone. “I’m wet … so wet, only for you …”
She had to roll her eyes at the good girl reference, but that was what Conrad Stetson liked because he was an old-fashioned kind of man—he needed the illusion that the woman he was being unfaithful to his wife with was monogamous to him.
So silly.
But Gin did rather miss the early days of their relationship. It had been heady stuff to draw him slowly, inexorably away from his marriage. She had reveled in how hard he’d fought the attraction to her, the shame he’d felt when they’d first kissed, the way he’d tried so valiantly not to call her, see her, seek her out. And for a week or two, she’d actually been interested in him, his attention a drug well worth bingeing on.
Once she’d fucked him a few times, though? Well, it was too much missionary, for one thing.
“Oh, yes, yes, yes … I’m coming, I’m coming …”
As she “orgasmed,” her stylist flushed from embarrassment but kept pinning her dark hair in place while a maid came in from the walk-in closet with a velvet tray in her hands. On it were two parures, one made of Burmese rubies by Cartier in the forties and the other a sapphire creation done in the late fifties by Van Cleef & Arpels. Both were her grandmother’s, one having been given to Big Virginia Elizabeth by her husband on the birth of Gin’s mother, and the other presented on her grandparents’ twentieth wedding anniversary.
She made a moaning noise; then hit mute and shook her head at the maid. “I want the Winston diamonds.”
“I believe Mrs. Baldwine is wearing them.”
As Gin pictured her sister-in-law, Chantal, with the hundred-plus carats of D flawless on, she smiled and spoke slowly, as if addressing a dolt. “Then take the diamonds my father bought my mother off that bitch’s neck and ears and bring them here to me.”
The maid blanched. “My … pleasure.”
Just before the woman stepped out of the bedroom, Gin called over, “Make sure you clean them first. I can’t stand that drugstore perfume she insists on wearing.”
“My pleasure.”
It was a bit of a stretch to refer to Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf as “drugstore,” but it certainly wasn’t Chanel. Honestly, though, what could you expect from a woman who hadn’t even made it through Sweet Briar?
Gin unmuted the phone. “Baby, I’ve got to go. I need to get ready. I’m so sorry you can’t be here, but you understand.”
Cue that Peanuts’ routine, where the adult’s voice turned muffled.
God, had he always had that thick of a Southern accent? Bradfords didn’t have any kind of dreadful garbled twang—only enough of a drawl to prove what side of the Mason-Dixon Line they were born and lived on and that they knew the difference between bourbon and whiskey.
The latter being beneath contempt.
“Bye, now,” she said, and hung up.
As she ended the call, she decided to end the relationship. Conrad had started talking about leaving his wife, and she didn’t want that. He had two children, for godsakes—what was he thinking. It was one thing to have some fun on the side, but children needed the illusion of two parents.
Plus, she’d already proven she had no business being a mother to anything. Not even a goldfish.
A half hour later, she was dressed in a Christian Dior gown made of U of C red and had that Harry Winston necklace laying heavy and cool on her collarbones. Her perfume was Coco by Chanel, a classic that she had decided she could carry off when she hit thirty. Her shoes were Loubou’s.
She was not wearing panties.
Samuel Theodore Lodge was coming to the dinner.
As she stepped out into the hall, she looked to the door opposite hers. Sixteen years ago to the day, she had given birth to the young girl who lived in there. And that had been about it for her involvement with Amelia. A baby nurse, followed by two full-time nannies, coupled with a sufficient passage of time, and they were now in prep-school territory.
So she didn’t even catch a glimpse of her daughter anymore.
Indeed, Amelia had not come home for spring break, and that had been good. But the summer was looming, and the girl’s return from Hotchkiss was not something anyone, even Amelia most likely, looked forward to.
Could you even send a sixteen-year-old off to summer camp?
Maybe they could just ship her over to Europe for a two-month tour. Victorians had done that a hundred years ago, before even airplanes and cars with air bags.
They could pay someone to be her chaperone.
And actually, the urge to keep the girl away from Easterly wasn’t because Gin didn’t love her daughter. It was just that the girl’s presence was too stark a condemnation of choices and actions and lies that were Gin’s own and no one else’s—and sometimes it was best not to look too closely at those things.