There was a notebook in Ivy's bottom drawer that no one had ever seen. She had kept it since she was nineteen, and it contained neither dreams nor feelings, only a ledger.
Yeses.
Grandma Ashford, née Eleanor Vance, children's-book illustrator, majority holder of the family trust: had laughed at Ivy's impression of the duchess and her fake pearls. Yes, small.
Victoria, the matriarch: had used the phrase "if you're still around at Christmas." Conditional yes, medium.
Julian: had asked, on the second evening, what she was reading. Ivy had said St. Augustine's Confessions, because no one says that, and he had looked at her for four full seconds longer than politeness required. Yes, small, but strange — and she circled it twice.
Because here was the flaw in the target, the hairline crack in the golden apple: Julian Ashford did not want to be married. Julian Ashford wanted to be interesting, and no one had ever let him be both.
Ivy's whole strategy rested on the arithmetic of families. Marriages at this altitude were not decided by the couple; they were ratified by committees. And committees, unlike men, could be courted for years. She was not running a seduction. She was running a hostile takeover, patiently, in evening dress.
On Sunday, at brunch, the crack widened.
"The Met gala," announced Grandma Eleanor, over the eggs, "is in three weeks. Julian is taking Camilla, obviously."
"Was I, though," said Julian, to his coffee. It was not a question, but it landed like one.
The table went quiet in the particular way of tables where nine figures of net worth pretend to be interested in eggs.
Ivy did not look up. She buttered her toast with the serenity of a woman whose invitation had already been mailed — and across the table, Victoria watched her not look up, and drew her own conclusions, and filed them in whatever drawer matriarchs keep such things.
Afterward, Julian caught her by the topiary.
"You didn't flinch," he said. "When Grandma did that."
"I never flinch before noon. It's a character flaw."
"Is it true," Julian asked, "that you read Augustine?"
"It's true that I told you I do." Ivy held his gaze. Honesty, at the right dosage, was the most audacious lie available. "The trick is that now I actually have to."
He laughed — the surprised laugh again, the only currency worth collecting — and Ivy smiled back with all the warmth of a sunny day, and thought, ledger open, my darling. Every yes you give me earns interest.
That night she added one line to the notebook, and underlined it:
He wants out of the story they wrote for him. I am extremely good at new stories.
Then she turned off the lamp, and in the dark she allowed herself — for exactly one minute, timed by the watch that had cost a month of rent — to remember that he had a tired, kind smile when it wasn't performing.
Minute over. Back to work.