myself,” Waverly said through tight jaws.
“Good luck telling Julia’s parents to butt out of your life,” Ben said as they entered the half-mile-long, oak-tree-lined drive along the James River that led to The Farm.
“I plan to do just that,” Waverly said. “Tonight.”
Ben grinned as the elegant Southern mansion came into view. “This I have to see.”
11
“You’re late.”
“Hello, Ham,” Ben said, shaking hands with his mother’s second husband.
Randolph Cornelius Hamilton, III, met them in the wild-rose-wallpapered foyer of The Farm with a bourbon in hand. His glazed eyes and slurred voice suggested he’d already had a few.
Waverly cleared his throat nervously and said, “Good evening, Senator. There was an incident—”
Ben watched as Ham waved away his future son-in-law’s offered hand. Waverly accepted the dismissal without protest. Ben couldn’t imagine Waverly confronting the senator about supporting Julia. But he had a feeling it would liven up the party if he did.
“I know about the kid getting his throat cut,” Ham said. “Terrible!” He turned and headed down the oak-pegged central hallway, obviously expecting the two of them to follow.
Ham glanced at Ben over his shoulder and said, “I would think you could have arranged to do your paperwork on Monday. Everyone’s been waiting in the parlor for half an hour to go in to dinner.”
Ben exchanged a chagrined look with Waverly. The rich and powerful didn’t believe that the rules applied to them. Don’t want to hang around and do your job? Just leave. It can wait until you’re good and ready to do it.
The wedding being held tomorrow at Hamilton Farm, home to Hamiltons since Virginia was a colony, was the Washington society event of the season. The expected crowd of several hundred included the exceedingly rich and the oh-so-powerful. Julia had acceded to Waverly’s request to keep the wedding party small, so there were only four male and four female members of the wedding party.
“I assume that the ‘everyone’ waiting in the parlor includes Mother,” Ben said.
“And your father,” the senator added ominously.
Ben grimaced. He’d tried to talk Waverly out of making Foster Benedict part of the wedding festivities. Waverly had argued that since both his parents were dead, he wanted Ben’s dad to participate in the wedding as one of his groomsmen.
Even when Ben had pointed out the problems of having both his mother and father under the same roof for an extended period of time, Waverly had remained adamant. Ben could count on one hand the number of times his parents had sat down at the same dinner table in the twenty years since their divorce. This made four.
His mother was a lady in every situation. His father was a former officer and a gentleman. They’d loved each other passionately. Which meant they’d hurt each other horribly.
And the love and the pain were ongoing.
It was like watching an impending train wreck and knowing there was nothing you could do to prevent it. At the same time, you couldn’t take your eyes away.
“They’re here!” Ham announced as he entered the parlor with Ben and Waverly.
Ben took one look at the tableau—his father on one side of the room, his mother on the other—and could almost feel the tension arcing between them.
The furniture was Victorian, which meant spindly and uncomfortably stuffed with horsehair, and there was little of it in the parlor. The twelve-foot windows were draped elegantly with pale-rose-colored silk, and the walls bore an ivy-patterned rice paper above and forest-green wainscoting below.
The other two groomsmen were standing near a sideboard that held a wide selection of crystal liquor decanters. His mother, his half sister Julia and Julia’s three bridesmaids and maid of honor were arranged on the settee and wing chairs. His father and stepmother stood alone near the only apparent warmth in the room—the crackling fire in the white-marble-faced fireplace.
His mother immediately stood, adjusted her expensive, yet elegantly simple, black off-the-shoulder evening gown around her and said, “Shall we go in to dinner?”
“Abigail?” Ham said, holding out his arm to his wife.
Ben’s mother crossed and laid her hand on Ham’s arm. “Hello, Ben,” she said as she moved past him. “I’m so glad you were able to make it.”
Ben heard a world of censure in his mother’s voice. Apparently, she’d spent more discomfiting time in his father’s company than she’d wanted to.
“Julia?” Waverly said, holding out his arm to his fiancée.
Julia crossed to Waverly and tucked her arm around his. “You got here just in time to avoid World War III,” Ben heard her murmur as she kissed her fiancé tenderly on the lips.
Ben could understand how Waverly had fallen in love with Julia. She was as beautiful as his mother must have been at the same age. She had perfect teeth that she displayed in a perpetual smile and cornflower-blue eyes that gazed adoringly at his friend pretty much all the time. Her sun-streaked blond hair proved, even more than the healthy glow of her flawless skin, how much time Julia spent outdoors horseback riding and playing tennis and sailing.
Most of all, for a girl who’d been given everything she could want from the day she was born, Julia was surprisingly kind and thoughtful of others.
Ben watched as each of the groomsmen held out an arm to one of the bridesmaids. Rhett winked at him as he passed by, then turned his charming smile toward the young woman he was escorting.
He looked for his eldest brother, then recalled that Nash was off on some troubleshooting mission for the president and had said he might or might not make it to the wedding tomorrow. Ben thought of Carter, as he often did, now that he was no longer fighting overseas himself, and prayed that his younger brother was safe and well in Iraq.
Ben held out his arm to the maid of honor, one of Julia’s very young friends, who lifted her chin proudly as she put her arm through his.
“Hello, Paige,” Ben said with a smile meant to melt some of the ice he could see in her eyes and in her spine.
“Hello, Mr. Benedict,” the girl replied with frost in her voice.
“Please call me Ben.”
“I’m being polite to you for Julia’s sake,” the girl said haughtily. “But I don’t like you. Or your friend.”
“If you think Julia’s making a mistake marrying Waverly, why did you agree to be her maid of honor?”
“It is when one’s friends are being foolish that those friends need one the most.”
Despite the speech without contractions, or maybe because of it, Paige Carrington seemed even younger than the nineteen years old Ben knew she was. He felt too old and jaded to be a part of this wedding party, but he’d
