Meg Lambert divided up the spoils. One by one, she pressed the jewelry she'd torn off me into the hands of the other three women.
It almost made me laugh. "I come here to get married, and not only do I end up with three extra brides at my own wedding, now I'm supposed to be grateful to three benefactors too?"
Across the ballroom, a middle-aged woman dripping with jewels curled her lip.
"See that? This is what happens when a toad thinks it can eat swan meat."
"This gold-digger clawed her way into the Swanson family, and she's still got the nerve to throw a tantrum at her own wedding."
A relative beside her jumped in at once.
"Men, you know. They can't hold out against a woman who won't let go."
"She must've cried and screamed until Mr. Swanson agreed to marry her. And look, he wouldn't even go through the ceremony with her."
"If I were her, I'd have crawled off on my own by now. Save myself the humiliation."
Someone at another table laughed.
"Three women taking turns for her. That says Mr. Swanson really doesn't want to touch her."
"Maybe she's got some kind of disease."
Antony rubbed his temple, wearing the look of a man cleaning up my mess.
"Cecily, how do you have no sense of the bigger picture at all?"
"These three helped you get through your wedding today. By any measure, we owe them compensation."
I froze. "What are you saying?"
"My good buddy spoke your vows for you today. That was a lot to put you through." He was speaking to Charlotte. "So the master bedroom in my wedding home, you take it."
He handed the keys to the childhood friend. She grinned and elbowed Antony.
"Good boy. Daddy didn't dote on you for nothing."
Then she arched a brow at me on purpose.
"But I'll say this up front. I'll live in the master bedroom, sure, but don't go crawling into my blankets the way you did when you were little, sweetie."
Antony shot her a look and laughed. "Everything worth seeing, I saw ages ago. And now you play shy?"
"I'm warning you, once you're living at my place, keep your underwear on. Don't get carried away."
Something roared in my head.
"Antony, that home. We spent half a year running back and forth to settle on it."
"I watched over the renovation for ten months. I picked out every last tile myself."
"You give her the master bedroom, so where do I live?"
Antony frowned.
"Don't be so petty."
"There are plenty of rooms. What does it matter which one we take?"
Then he turned back to his sworn sister.
"There'll always be a room in this house for you. The south-facing one gets the best light. That'll be yours from now on."
"Cecily's always saying she can't stand the heat, isn't she?"
"The north side's cooler. It suits her better."
Something tightened in my chest, again and again.
That south-facing bedroom was the nursery I'd prepared for the children we'd have.
Every piece of furniture in it, I'd had custom-made myself.
And now, with one line about it being for my own good, he'd handed it to another woman.
Antony went on arranging things as if he hadn't seen my face at all.
"As for Secretary Pruitt, Cecily's Panamera is yours from now on."
"That way it's easier for you to drive me to and from work every day."
My fists clenched hard. That was the new car I'd only picked up yesterday.
When I collected it, Antony had held my hand and announced to everyone in the dealership,
"From now on, no one rides shotgun in this car but my wife."
I'd smiled and nodded back then.
And now he was letting another woman drive my car to ferry him to and from work.
I stared at him, hard.
"Antony, that car was your third-anniversary gift to me."
Antony looked utterly unbothered. "Be generous about it. You can still have the passenger seat."
I let out a cold laugh.
"In that case."
"This is a marriage I stopped wanting a long time ago."
And with that, I tore the white veil off my head and threw it on the floor.
