Your Wife Knows My Name

“If I go downstairs with you, you’re introducing me.” I had Renwick by the tie, so he had to look at me. “By my name. Not as somebody you’re thinking about doing business with.”

“I invited you to dinner.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. “You’re dressed for dinner. What business would we be doing?”

“Apparently a woman has to wear sequins before a man hears the question,” I teased.

“You’re not wearing sequins,” he pointed out, grinning.

“I could go home and get some.”

He laughed against my cheek and pulled me in, and his shirt was warm under my hands. The whole drive over I had argued with myself about how much shoulder this dress showed, then walked into his bedroom and wanted him to stop admiring it long enough to take it off. He did that to my good decisions.

“Tamsin.” He leaned back far enough to see my face. “My father knows why you’re here. Belden knows. Nobody’s going to hand you a tray.”

“That’s not the same as saying it,” I pressed.

“Then I’ll say it.”

He took his glasses off and set them on the dressing table. The gray at his temples showed more under this lamp than it ever did in my dining room, and so did the shoulders, the broad soft kind a woman can lean into without deciding to.

“And Lisette?”

His hands went still at my waist. “What about her?”

“Does she know I’m coming?”

“She doesn’t live here.”

I let go of the tie and smoothed the crooked bit while he watched me do it, not helping, not answering either.

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“She knows I’m seeing somebody. We’ve talked about it.”

“Does she know my name?”

“Not from me.” He touched my chin, light enough that I could have turned away. “I am not walking you into a room to embarrass you.”

The man before him had a gift for sentences with a door in the back. Ask him about our future and he would discover my apartment needed a shelf. I helped him pick the wood. When he married somebody else, the shelves stayed with me.

Renwick just waited. At Winrow House somebody is always halfway through answering for me before I finish asking what they want for dinner, and here was a man standing in his own bedroom with nothing to do but wait for me.

“I want to come down as the woman you’re with,” I told him. “I don’t want to spend the whole meal wondering if I’m allowed to touch your hand.”

“You can touch my hand.”

“Renwick,” I warned.

“I know. All of it.” He looked down at the tie I’d fixed. “I want you here, and I want them to know you’re here with me. Is that plain enough?”

“It’ll do till we get downstairs,” I relented, faintly amused.

He held out his hand like he was asking me to dance. I took it and kissed him before he could turn me toward the door, and when the back of my dress brushed the wardrobe he made a pleased little sound against my mouth.

“We could order something up here,” he murmured, not entirely joking.

“You could go downstairs and explain that to your father.”

“My father would understand.”

“I’m sure he would. I’m the one who’d have to walk down those stairs afterwards.”

He rested his forehead against mine. Soap under the clean shirt. Reading glasses open on the dressing table, a pair of socks that had missed the basket, an expensive watch beside them that interested me less than the socks.

Then he opened a drawer and came out with a narrow box.

“Oh, don’t you do that,” I groaned.

“Do what?”

“Find jewelry while I’m in the middle of asking you something.”

“I bought it before you asked.” Faintly offended, he put the box in my hand instead of opening it for me. “You can like it and still be difficult.”

“Good. I was worried,” I deadpanned.

A fine gold bracelet, flat and curved at the center, no stones. I turned it to the lamp, and he watched my face like a man who knew he couldn’t send it back to the kitchen.

“You kept catching that long one on a chair. At the benefit. You took it off and put it in your bag twice.”

Against my wrist the gold went warm. I checked myself in the wardrobe glass, finger waves still flat and smooth, which was more than I could say for my resolve.

I remembered that benefit differently. Corbett put me in the chair beside Renwick. My brother wanted somebody in that family to take a fresh look at his loan, and I wanted an introduction to a backer for the room next door, and I had already been watching Renwick across other people’s tables for most of the night. Corbett didn’t have to talk me into the man. Only into letting him move the chair.

Renwick still believed we landed beside each other by luck. The old place card was in my handbag, tucked behind a reservation slip I should have thrown away months ago.

“It’s lovely,” I admitted.

“Can I put it on you?”

I gave him my wrist. The clasp beat him until he put his glasses back on, and I laughed so hard he had to start over.

“You could help,” he grumbled.

“I’m enjoying being the one who watches for once,” I cooed.

“Keep enjoying it. I’m nearly there.”

The bell rang downstairs as the clasp caught. He kissed the inside of my wrist and let it go.

“Come on.” I picked up my bag. “Before they start without us.”

At the foot of the stairs Belden was fighting a coat onto a hanger without dragging the sleeve across the floor, his father’s long fingers and none of his father’s patience, brown curls standing high, a silver cuff at one ear.

“You want some help?” I asked.

“I want whoever designed these to explain themselves.” He got the shoulder on and grinned at me. “Hi. Tamsin, right?”

“Right.”

“Belden. Dad told me you were coming.” His eyes went to my wrist, then to his father. “Oh, you found it.”

“I knew where it was.”

“You asked me where it was.”

“I asked whether you’d seen a box.”

“Which was exactly where you left it,” Belden muttered. He hung the coat and stepped out of my way. “I’m not getting involved. There’s wine in the sitting room.”

“Do I need wine?”

“I’m having some.”

Renwick dropped a hand on his son’s shoulder as he passed, and Belden ducked out from under it without moving an inch away from him. Plenty of grown sons go stiff when their fathers get affectionate in front of company. This one just ducked.

Prentice Ames was at the sitting-room window with a phone to his ear, navy suit sitting neat on a heavy body, silver hair cut close. He lifted one finger at his son and turned toward the glass.

“Bring it with you,” he told the phone. “No, there’s plenty. Come and eat.”

Then he put it away and came at me with both hands out. I gave him one.

“Tamsin. Good to see you somewhere you don’t have to feed everybody.”

“Thank you for having me.”

“My son’s having you. I’m just enjoying it.” He tipped his head at Renwick. “See how simple it is to invite somebody?”

“We managed, Dad.”

“Apparently. You look well, Tamsin. I hope nobody asked you to bring anything.”

“I checked before I left the house.”

He laughed, and I liked him for asking. Renwick had turned down my dessert and ordered dinner from a restaurant that wasn’t mine, and I had been pleased enough about that to call Thalia and tell her while I was putting my earrings in.

Belden came back with a glass. “Dad, are you opening the red or am I?”

“You can open a bottle.”

“I can. I’m asking which one.”

“The one on the sideboard.”

“There are bottles all over the sideboard,” Belden huffed.

Prentice leaned toward me, grimly amused. “He used to be a delightful child.”

“I’m standing right here, Granddad,” Belden protested.

“I see you. Your father used to ask me what he could do to help.”

“And now I know better.” Renwick lifted the glass out of Belden’s hand before it could land on the windowsill. “Coaster, please.”

The bell rang again. Belden looked at the hall, then at his father.

“I’ll get it.”

Renwick was pouring my wine when a woman’s voice carried in from the hall.

“You don’t have to take it, baby. I can hang it up myself.”

“I’ve got it, Mom.”

The bottle tipped back up. Renwick kept hold of it.

Lisette came in wearing dark green under an open black coat, locs gathered at the nape and falling between her shoulders, tall, deep brown, a face I already knew from the family photograph still sitting on Renwick’s bookcase. I had decided that photograph meant he wasn’t a man who erased women. I had been pleased with myself for noticing it.

She stopped beside Belden, who had gotten the coat off her without winning the argument.

“Hello, Tamsin.”

I looked at Renwick. “Your wife knows my name.”

“Hello, Lisette,” he managed, very quietly.

She gave him one short look and came toward me. “Yes, I do. Have we made you uncomfortable?”

“I’m trying to work out what I was invited to,” I hedged.

Renwick set the bottle down. “Dinner. The same dinner we were talking about upstairs.”

“I wasn’t talking about dinner with your wife upstairs,” I snapped.

“Mom, did Granddad call you?” Belden asked.

“He told me you were all eating here.” She touched her son’s sleeve. “I should have asked you.”

“You don’t need my permission.”

“I wasn’t asking for permission, baby,” she soothed.

Prentice moved a chair so she could get by. “Nobody needs permission to eat. Renwick, get your wife a glass.”

“She can ask for one,” Renwick bristled.

“I’d like water.” Lisette kept it pleasant enough. “And you two can stop talking to each other through me.”

Belden took the bottle from his father and left the room. My own coat was in the hall by the stairs. I could get to it without asking anybody to move.

“Did you know she was coming?” I asked Renwick.

“No.”

“Ren,” Lisette began.

“I didn’t. You could have called.”

“And you could have told Tamsin who else might sit at your table.”

“That’s easy to say now you’re standing in it,” he shot back.

“It was easy to say before,” Lisette returned evenly.

“Please.” They both stopped, which was more attention than I wanted with Prentice watching. “I’m not standing between y’all while you finish something you should have finished without me.”

Lisette nodded once. “You’re right.”

I had come ready for a wife who would be furious. I had not come ready for one who let me finish a sentence. Renwick reached for my hand and I let him have it, in front of her, without knowing yet what I was handing him.

“We live separately. That hasn’t changed.”

“I know.”

“And I want you here.”

“You’ve told me that part,” I sighed.

“Then stay and have dinner.”

Belden came back with water for his mother and looked at the wine waiting beside me. “You still want that?”

“Yes, please.”

I took a swallow while nobody had an opinion. It was good wine, which was irritating. I did not want to like one more thing in this house while I was deciding whether to walk out of it.

Lisette set her glass down. “Would you rather I went?”

Renwick opened his mouth.

“I asked Tamsin.”

“No. I’d rather somebody told me how you know who I am.”

“Your brother and I have talked. He told me about Winrow House.”

“Corbett?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t mention that to me.”

Prentice picked up his glass. “Corbett’s proud of his sister. He ought to talk about you.”

“I didn’t say he oughtn’t.” I kept my eyes on Lisette. “Was this about his loan?”

Her eyes went to Prentice and back. “Some of it. It’s not a conversation I’ll finish for him.”

Renwick grabbed at that. “Good. Then let’s not have it now.”

“You don’t get to decide that either.” I took my hand back. The bracelet slid toward my palm and I pushed it up again. “I’m asking what my brother talked about with your wife, and I would like to hear the answer.”

Prentice looked past us into the hall. “Ask him yourself. He’s coming.”

“Here?” I blurted.

“I invited him. He was nearby.”

I put the wine down. Corbett had asked what I was wearing before I left my apartment. He wanted a picture of me dressed for dinner, and I sent him one, and he told me Renwick was a lucky man. He did not say a word about being on his way to the same house.

Prentice was already turning toward the dining room. “He can tell you when he gets here. Come sit down. Food’s getting cold.”

Renwick stayed beside me while the others went through. “I didn’t arrange this.”

“Which part?”

“Lisette. Corbett. Any of it.”

“You arranged me.”

He started to answer and didn’t. I could still take him upstairs and have this out where nobody could hear. He would sit on the bed and take his glasses off, and I would get to be the woman he was worried about instead of the woman everybody downstairs was waiting on.

I picked up my bag and walked into the dining room.

There was a card with my name on it beside Renwick’s, black ink, and the same black ink smudged on the side of Belden’s hand. Lisette stood behind the chair next to mine with her own card between two fingers.

“Mind if I sit here?”

Renwick spoke up from the doorway. “I was going to sit there.”

“You can sit across.” She looked at me. “If you’d rather I didn’t, I’ll move.”

I pulled my chair out. “Sit.”

Renwick picked up his card. Belden slid the extra plate away before his father could set it down on the silverware, and Prentice took his seat at the end and lifted the lid off a dish. Lemon and roasted garlic came across the table, and my stomach answered before I could stop it. I had let myself get hungry for a dinner I thought somebody planned with me in mind.

The front door opened before anybody touched the food.

Corbett filled the doorway with a bakery box against his chest, bright blue sweater pulling tight across his shoulders when he shifted it, beard trimmed close enough to show the crooked front tooth when he smiled.

“Tam.” He tried the smile on me. “You look nice.”

“You saw the picture,” I reminded him coolly.

“I did.”

His eyes went to Lisette. She laid her card beside her water glass and didn’t give him a word.

“Come on in.” Prentice was warm as any host. “Your sister’s been asking about you.”

Corbett set the box on the sideboard. The empty chair was across from mine, close enough to reach the dish in my hands, and I held it until he sat down before I passed it over.

“Good. Because I’m asking you now.”