wasn’t about to burst. Her ankles didn’t feel like swollen lead. And the sweaty threat of losing last night’s dinner wasn’t lurking in the back of her throat.
Nina rolled to her back and used the moment to peer around the room, which she had barely noticed before, too busy dashing for the bathroom or sobbing into her pillow. The decor was hopelessly old-fashioned, like it hadn’t been touched since its pre-war days. Between the brass fixtures, mahogany four-poster, blush-colored carpets, and heavy, flower-sprigged drapes that matched the wallpaper, Nina rather felt as though she were trapped in a thirty-year-old soap opera.
“It will all have to change,” she muttered.
Strip the sprigged wallpaper and trash the matching drapes. Lighten everything with a fresh coat of white, including the box-molded ceilings. Yank the carpets and install new floors, maybe parquet. All but a few pieces of furniture could be donated, or perhaps put to use in one of her other family members’ equally over-decorated homes.
It would be fresh and minimalist, the hardwood furniture replaced with simple, luxurious pieces. And then there would be art. Beautiful, glorious art to take advantage of the high ceilings and natural light pouring in through the tall, original lead-paned windows.
She found she could imagine it all quite clearly.
She also found that she didn’t particularly care. For this place, no matter what she did to it, was unlikely ever to feel like home.
“You’re awake.”
And just like that, the rush of her first morning in three months without immediate nausea faded. Nina sat up and found her husband standing in the door to the suite, which she hadn’t even noticed had been opened. “I am, yes.”
Calvin looked the same as ever in a pair of creased chinos and rumpled button-up that made his slightly stocky body look shorter than normal. He said he had made use of their new joint bank account to hire a stylist, have several new suits made up, and trade his Third Avenue barber for someone at the Plaza, among other things. His graying hair was now a bit more chestnut, but other than that, Nina couldn’t see any discernible differences in his appearance. A stylist couldn’t stop crumbs, stains, and a predisposition toward wrinkles.
“Not sick this morning?” Calvin strode in, his tasseled loafers leaving heavy footprints in the carpet.
Nina shook her head. “No, thankfully. Yesterday was only in the morning too.”
Calvin nodded curtly. “So Cook said when I got in last night.”
Nina frowned. “Cook?” Even her grandmother didn’t call her staff simply by their positions.
Calvin shrugged. “Whatever her name is.”
“Marguerite has been really wonderful so far,” Nina replied. “And since you like her chicken parmesan so much, perhaps you can tell her.”
Calvin’s eyes narrowed, but Nina was careful not to betray any other sign of her disgust with the way her husband ate slabs of cheese-laden chicken he rather resembled at times. As he sat down on the edge of the bed, his beady gaze traveled over Nina’s body. He did that sometimes, with the same kind of attention some men used to check their cars for scratches.
Nina didn’t like it. At all. But when she had asked him what he was looking for, he had snapped at her so virulently that she never asked again. More and more, it seemed that something was boiling just under the surface of the husband she had initially considered so placid.
So, she tried again to strike a lighter tone. “Well. How was our ‘honeymoon,’ darling?”
It was meant as a joke. After their “honeymoon” in the Hamptons had gone awry when Nina’s morning sickness had taken over the entire thing, Calvin had scheduled an actual trip to France and England—for work, he said, despite the fact that he used her black Amex to book everything.
“Hilarious,” he said. “People kept asking me where the fuck my wife was.”
Nina frowned, confused. “You actually told people it was your honeymoon? You said this was a business trip to secure investors.”
“Well, originally I thought you would be going on it with me, so I didn’t think it would hurt to tell the hotels we were newlyweds. Which just made me look like a scammer when you decided not to show and embarrassed me all over again. Cost me a fortune to reschedule all of that, you know.”
His hand, which had been gesturing wildly as he spoke, settled on her shin with a clap over the blanket. Nina fought the urge to move her leg, but didn’t. She had a feeling it would make