a hundred acres and newly open to the public to pay for its upkeep. Tonight, the path to the house was lit with what had to be three hundred candles set inside hurricane jars, and the trees lining the gravel driveway were hung with fairy lights.
“Impressive, eh?” Nick said as we inched ever closer to the drop-off. “They filmed that new Pride and Prejudice here.”
It smelled like pine inside the high-ceilinged foyer, where half of Annabelle’s staff was taking coats and hats in full livery. In the corner, near the two fully decorated Christmas trees—the source of the smell—two men in Elizabethan gear were playing the lute. Her golden retriever was wearing a bowler hat.
“Nicky!” Annabelle cooed, sidling up to us in a snug red velvet halter sheath, her expansive blond locks falling loose and feathered around her shoulders like a vintage Farrah Fawcett poster. Reflexively I ran a hand down my own body, over the stomach that was soft and kneadable from hormones and a long deferral of gym time. I hated that I cared, and also that I hadn’t thought to care until now. I’d spent months before my wedding being reminded that my appearance was part of my job, and therefore fodder for dissection, but I’d had a weird relationship to my body in the last few weeks—as if I’d been afraid to do anything with it, lest I provoke it into betraying me again.
“Happy New Year, Annie,” Nick said, kissing both her cheeks politely.
“And it’s so brilliant to see you, Bex,” Annabelle said, turning to me. “We missed you last year. I had to work overtime to keep a smile on this one’s face.” She nudged Nick affectionately.
“Your house is…beyond,” I said, staring up at the Gothic arches in the hall ceiling, some forty feet above my head. It was rare that Nick and I found ourselves in a house that was more awe inspiring than his grandmother’s. “It must have been hard to leave it for Dubai.”
“Honestly, the upkeep is a grind,” she said conspiratorially, as if she dusted the gargoyle carvings herself. “And terribly expensive. But I’ve had so much fun curating it since we’ve returned. We’ve added costumed Tudor docents, and calligraphy workshops, and the National Portrait Gallery is sponsoring an Elizabeth of Bohemia exhibit in our Long Gallery right now that is splendid, if you want to peek. And having the film, of course, was tremendous. I’ve also remanicured the lawns so we can charge admission to the public.” She put her hand to her heart. “We’re so fortunate,” she added. “It’s imperative to give back. Anyway, please go have fun! There’s croquet on the back lawn, and an actual game of whist in the parlor. Isn’t it marvelous?”
With a peck on Nick’s cheek and a squeeze of my hand, she floated off to see her other guests, as a gloved waiter deposited some kind of signature cocktail in my hand. It smelled like warm spiced cider, but had been generously augmented with rum. If I had to be unhappy, at least I could be unhappy with a drink in my hand.
Nick turned to me and raised his brows. “I don’t know if I’ve fully prepared you for this lot,” he said. “You’re going to want to drink that fairly quickly.”
We pushed through a crush of formally dressed partygoers into a wood-paneled library, complete with a roaring fire and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Almost immediately, a nearby cluster of pasty men in suits stopped arguing and parted to receive Nick as if they’d been waiting for him to complete the picture all night.
“And, right on cue,” Nick said under his breath, before extending a hand to one of them. “Baxter, hello.”
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, eh, old boy?” said Baxter, clubbing Nick’s back with a meaty hand. He seemed like he’d started his New Year’s drinking early and was too blotto to pretend to care about me. “We were talking about Doris Tuesday’s latest,” he said. “Mixing up Manchester United and Manchester City? Ghastly. Seems like Tuesday’s got a case of the Mondays.”
The three other men guffawed as if they’d never heard anything funnier, and I watched as Aggressive Pleasantness settled over Nick’s features like a fog rolling in over the ocean.
“When it’s your turn, do us a favor and tell the PM to get stuffed from time to time, okay, old bean?” Baxter said. “And if you could put in a good word and get us all antique country piles of