A Rooster at the Altar, a Debt at the Docks

Still grinning, the man in the front pew set down his glass and came up to the altar. He caught the rooster under its wings. For a second I thought he meant to help me get the cord off. Instead, he lifted the rooster until its beak was inches from my mouth. “Come on,” he said. “Give your husband a kiss.” I jerked my head back. He pushed the rooster closer, and his cuff link caught me in the mouth. “Put it down.” I looked past him at Hester. “If you go through with this, Scott won’t be able to protect you from what comes next.” Hester set down the microphone and walked over to the table where my parents’ wedding gifts had been laid out. She looked back to make sure I was watching. Then she swept her arm across it. Two porcelain vases hit the marble first. One left a scatter of pale green shards at the priest’s feet. A carved jade bowl struck the floor a second later and split apart. I caught Hester by the wrist before she could reach the rest. “Stop.” My mother had wrapped the jade herself. I’d recognized the way she tucked the loose end of the ribbon under the bow when I opened it that morning. My parents had sent pieces from their own collection so I’d have something of theirs with me even if they couldn’t be there. Hester looked down at my grip, then up at my face. She twisted free and shoved the rest off the table. A glass decanter shattered, the lid of an inlaid box split down the middle, and a white jade bracelet snapped in two. One of the guests lifted his shoes to let the fragments slide under his pew. “All this fuss over a table full of junk.” Hester brushed a sliver of wood off her sleeve. “No money, no friends in this room, and you’re threatening me?” She turned to the men in the front row. “If she won’t finish the ceremony, help her.” The man put the rooster back on the floor and held his wineglass low enough for it to dip its beak. A guest laughed. Then the man lifted the same glass toward my mouth while another caught me by the elbow. I wrenched my arm free and knocked the glass aside. Wine splashed down the front of my gown. I’d grown up on a guarded estate, away from the men who came to see my parents on business. I’d been taught how to keep my temper when someone wanted me to lose it. I’d had plenty of practice. I’d never needed this much. I looked at the pieces of jade on the floor and raised my hand. “Touch her and see what happens.” I knew Scott’s voice before I turned. My fingers closed into a fist, and I lowered it. He came up the aisle in the tuxedo he’d worn to our last fitting, his bow tie still loose around his collar. He looked at me long enough to make sure I’d heard him. Then he walked past me. Hester was holding her wrist against her chest. “Let me see,” he said, taking her hand in both of his. His voice was so gentle that for a second I thought of all the times I’d heard him use it with me. Her eyes filled. “She grabbed me, Mr. Delgado. She was about to hit me when you came in.” Scott ran his thumb over the faint marks on her wrist. He hadn’t looked at the broken gifts or the wine running down my dress. He didn’t ask why there was a rooster tethered to my arm. “Elise,” he said, “who the hell told you you could put your hands on her?” I worked a fingernail into the knot and pulled until it gave. I slipped my wrist free, and the rooster ran under the nearest pew with the red cord trailing behind it. “Look at the floor, Scott. She broke everything my parents sent. Then she had two of your guests try to force a drink down my throat.” My voice was shaking, and I was past caring who heard it. “You’re my fiancé. She’s your secretary. You could at least ask me what happened before you take her side.” “Your fiancé,” he repeated. He glanced at the priest, who’d finally shut his book. “You really thought I’d go through with it? There’s no wedding. You can put that book away.” I’d watched Scott sit across from men who wanted his father’s shipping contracts and let them talk until they gave away what they’d come for. With Hester, he hadn’t even asked a question. “My father promised you a wedding because your family did mine a favor years ago,” Scott said. “You heard about it and figured it was your way in. Did it ever occur to you that I might have a say?” “Scott runs the docks,” a man behind me said. “He could marry anyone in Riverton. She ought to look in a mirror.” “People spend their whole lives trying to get a seat at his father’s table,” someone answered. “This one thought she could just put on a dress and walk right up.” I opened my mouth. Scott reached into his jacket and took out a velvet ring box. I recognized it. I’d seen it on his dresser the week before and assumed he was saving it for the ceremony. He dropped to one knee in front of Hester. The chapel erupted. Hester covered her mouth with both hands. Scott opened the box and waited for her to lower them. “I’m sorry I put you through this,” he said. “My father wanted this wedding. I went along with it because I thought I owed him that much.” He kept her hand in his. “You’re the one I love, Hester. You always have been. Marry me. Whatever you want, it’s yours. And nobody’s going to make you go through anything like this again.” Hester looked at me before she answered. She let me see the smile she’d been hiding behind her hands. “Yes.” She held out her left hand. Scott slid the diamond onto her finger, and she turned it toward the light. “You’re so good to me, Scott.” I stood beside the wreckage of my parents’ gifts while the guests applauded. I didn’t realize how hard I’d clenched my hands until my nails broke the skin.

My parents had raised me to protect the family and stand up for myself. Right then, those two things pulled me in opposite directions. The rooster had arrived with a cord already tied to its leg. The woman who brought it had known exactly what to do. And Scott had walked in with a ring in his pocket. None of it had happened by accident. If my parents heard how the Delgados had used a wedding arranged between our families, Scott’s father would have to answer for it right alongside his son. Hester held her hand out to admire the diamond. Then she crossed the few feet between us and slapped me. The sound carried all the way to the back of the chapel. My cheek stung. Hester flexed her fingers once before she spoke. “Know your place, Elise. Get out. This is my wedding now.” I looked at the hand she’d hit me with. I could have hit her back before Scott got between us. I wanted to. Before I left home, my parents had made me promise to keep our name out of any dispute with the Delgados. If I invoked it in front of those guests, whatever I did next would be taken as my family’s answer. “Fine,” I said. “Then we’re done.” Scott’s smile faded. He’d just put a ring on another woman’s finger, and he still looked offended to hear me say it was over. I pulled off my veil. Two pins hit the marble. I grabbed my clutch from beside the bouquet and headed for the aisle. “Stop,” Scott said. “Did I say you could go?” I turned back. “What else could you possibly want, Mr. Delgado?” He walked up to me until I had to tilt my head to look him in the eye. “An apology. To Hester.” “For what?” “For humiliating her in public. She cried for days over what you did.” He took Hester’s hand and turned it palm up. “And she hurt herself slapping you. I expect you to apologize for that, too.” I looked down at her palm. It was a little pink. My own cheek was still throbbing. “She’s my woman now,” he said. “You’ll show her some respect.” A laugh escaped me before I could help it. “You want me to apologize because she hit me?” I shook my head. “When did I ever humiliate her?” “Three months ago,” Hester said. “At your engagement party. I spilled a little wine on you by accident, and you had me thrown out in front of everyone. Then you made me pay for the dress.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She tucked herself against Scott’s chest and dabbed at one eye with the knuckle just above her new ring. He put an arm around her. I remembered exactly how much wine there’d been. The party had given my family cover for a handoff. Two crews had reached a private agreement over who could move freight through which terminals. The signed copy named the men behind the companies they used as fronts. A courier had slipped a memory card with a scan of the agreement into the lining of my clutch. I was supposed to pass it along before dinner. Hester had come straight at me with a full glass of red wine. I’d stepped back, and she’d followed, close enough to tip the glass down the front of my dress. The clutch stayed dry. What caught my bodyguard’s attention was the way Hester reached for it afterward, offering to hold it while I cleaned up. My bodyguard had come as a distant cousin. She took Hester into an empty coatroom, asked who’d sent her over, and escorted her out when she couldn’t get a straight answer. Nobody sent Hester a bill. That part she’d made up. “You had her dragged out like she was nothing,” Scott said. “Today you get to find out what that feels like. A hundred times over.” I looked from him to Hester. She’d been sent home from a party, so he’d left me standing at the altar while she made a spectacle of me. He’d come back just in time to put a ring on her finger. I took a breath. “Neither of you is getting an apology from me.” The color went out of Scott’s face. “You’ll apologize,” he said. “Then you’ll pay her ten million dollars for what you put her through.” Hester went still against his shoulder. I wondered if he’d told her about the number beforehand. “And if I don’t?” “Then you won’t leave Riverton in one piece.” Several of his father’s men got up from the back pews. Two moved into the aisle behind Scott. One let his eyes drift down to where the wine had soaked through the front of my gown. He smiled when he caught me looking. Scott watched my face. He expected me to hear ten million and start bargaining. His men were there to make sure I understood what would happen if I said I couldn’t pay. I could have moved ten million before the guests sat down to dinner. I almost smiled at how pleased he looked with himself. “Fine,” I said. “Ten million. I’ll pay.” Scott blinked. Hester lifted her head off his shoulder. I touched my cheek, then looked down at the broken porcelain and jade still scattered beside the altar. “Now let’s talk about what you owe me. She slapped me in front of your guests and destroyed the gifts my parents sent.” I met Scott’s eyes. “I want an apology and compensation. Which of you would like to go first?”

Hester laughed and nudged a piece of porcelain with the tip of her heel. “You should be grateful I even bothered to slap you myself. And this?” She swept a hand toward the floor. The diamond Scott had just given her caught the light. “How much were you hoping to get out of us for a table full of junk?” “Pick up the piece by your shoe, Hester. Look at the glaze.” She kept her foot where it was. “That was a Song dynasty celadon vase. The white jade bracelet under the table is broken in two. Every piece came from my parents’ collection. Some of them had survived nearly a thousand years before you got your hands on them.” “Bring in an appraiser,” I said. “I’d like everyone who watched you break it to hear what it’s worth.” The man who’d held the rooster bent forward again. This time, two more guests leaned out of their pews to look. “Song dynasty,” she repeated. “You expect us to believe a woman like you has a house full of Chinese antiques?” My phone rang inside my clutch. It was my mother. She and my father had stayed away because half the guests would have recognized them. We’d agreed she’d call after the vows. By now, I was supposed to be next door in the ballroom, waiting for Scott to make a toast. “Elise, sweetheart.” My mother sounded as if she were smiling. “How did it go? Is Scott treating you well?” I looked down at the wine drying on my gown. “He called off the wedding and proposed to Hester. She slapped me and broke the gifts you sent. Now they want an apology and ten million dollars.” “What?” I heard a chair scrape on the other end. Then my father took the phone. “Elise, tell me exactly what happened. I’ll send someone to get you right now.” Scott snatched the phone before I could answer and switched it to speaker. “So you’re her father.” He held the phone at chest height, where everyone around him could hear. “Let me save you the trouble of calling my old man. Whatever favor you did for my grandfather, it doesn’t buy your daughter a place in this family. I wouldn’t marry her if you begged me.” My father let him finish. When he spoke, his voice was so level that I could hear every word over the noise in the chapel. “You called off an agreement our families made when you were a child. Did Richard give you his permission to do that?” Scott’s mouth tightened at the sound of his father’s first name. “Richard Delgado spent his life learning when to speak and when to listen,” my father continued. “Put him on. He’s the one who gave me his word.” “You watch how you talk about my father,” Scott snapped. “You couldn’t even show up for your own daughter’s wedding, and now you think you can tell us how to run our family?” “Look around, Scott,” Hester said. “Where would he sit? Half the people in here probably spend more on dinner than he makes in a month.” She took the phone out of Scott’s hand. He let her. “Listen, old man. You’ve got thirty minutes to get here with ten million dollars. You’re going to get down on your knees in front of Scott and his father and beg their forgiveness.” She paused to look at me. Behind her, one of the men who’d blocked the aisle shifted closer. “If you’re late, I’ll let the men here decide how to keep your daughter entertained. Consider that a promise from the future Mrs. Delgado.” There was a short silence. I knew my father well enough to know what it cost him to wait before answering. “Tell Richard to wait for my people,” he said. “When they get there, he can decide how much of this he wants to answer for.” Hester’s smile faltered. She looked at Scott, as if he might explain why a man she’d just threatened hadn’t even asked her to spare his daughter. “Fine,” she snapped. “Let’s see how long you keep talking like that.” She ended the call and threw the phone back at me. I caught it against my ribs. “You heard me, Elise. Thirty minutes. After that, whatever happens is on you.” My father was at the estate. Even if his pilot already had the jet on the runway, he was an hour away. Whoever he meant to send would have to be close. I put the phone back in my clutch. “You picked yourself a hell of a bride, Scott. If I were you, I’d start praying Richard picks up when my father calls.” For half a second, Scott looked past me toward the doors. Then he saw his men still standing there and turned back. “Give it a rest, Elise. I’d love to see who’s coming to get you.” “Nobody’s coming,” Hester said. For the next few minutes, the organist’s bench stayed empty and nobody went next door for dinner. Then voices rose outside. One of Scott’s men put a hand out to stop whoever was coming in. A second later, he dropped it and stepped back. The doors opened. A middle-aged man in a dark suit walked into the chapel with armed officers on either side of him. I recognized him before the people in the back pews began to stand. Scott straightened his jacket. For a moment, he seemed to think the man had come to speak to him. The man walked right past him and came straight to me.