“Oh, don’t be a silly, of course we don’t want to cancel it. Daddy would be terribly hurt if we didn’t have it at his house. And Mummy has her own reasons for wanting it there—mostly because Daddy didn’t in the beginning.” Faith wasn’t too sure about the first part of Stephanie’s statement. The one time she had met Julian Bullock at his home, which also served as his very exclusive antiques shop, she’d received the distinct impression that dinner at his house had been his daughter’s and his ex-wife’s idea—
totally. The second part of Stephanie’s remark confirmed this. Courtney Cabot Bullock, as she introduced herself, had positively purred while Julian put up a well-bred protest about the place being too small, then demolished his objections with one swipe of her paw: “It’s going to be an intimate dinner, darling. Only the wedding party.
The dining room table seats twenty, if I’m not mistaken.” She wasn’t.
“Besides, even if we did change our minds about anything, Daddy and Binky’s family have wedding insurance.”
Niki whispered in Faith’s ear, “We do that in my family, too, but we don’t bother with the pre-miums, just keep a loaded shotgun around.” Stephanie reached for a chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookie from a rack where a batch was cooling. Resisting the temptation to slap the back of her hand, Faith said, “We really are terribly busy, Stephanie.” The diversion was beginning to pall.
The young woman looked around in surprise.
“You don’t look very busy to me. Maybe we’d better run through the menus one more time, although Mummy wanted to be here for that.” Grabbing for an out, any out, Faith said, “Then let’s schedule a time to meet. Your mother called last week. She still hasn’t found the fabric she wants for the tablecloth. We could have a
Mrs. Bullock, who had been her husband’s business partner when they were married, handling the decorating end of things, still dabbled in the trade. None of Have Faith’s linens had met with her approval for either the rehearsal dinner or the reception. She had found a gold damask that picked up the colors of the bridesmaid’s simple sheaths for the round tables in the Wentworth dining room, but she was still searching for a print—“witty, but not too Provencal”—for the night before.
Niki stood up and pointedly removed the cookie racks, placing them out of Stephanie’s reach. “The menus you have are perfect, Stephanie. It’s going to be a wonderful wedding. Now, why don’t you run along and break in your shoes or something while Faith and I handle the food?” Niki didn’t believe in coddling the debutante.
She had told Faith months ago that since she never intended to work for Ms. Bullock, soon to be Mrs. Bancroft Wentworth III, she had nothing to lose.
The shoe remark hit home. “Mummy and I are having such a hard time finding shoes to match our gowns. You’re right: I need to concentrate on that. The food can wait until next week. I think I’ll give Mummy a call and see if she’s had any luck at Saks. If not, we can go out to Chestnut Hill and look some more.” Stephanie treated the firm’s phone as her own private line, and after a half-hour call at daytime rates to her maid of honor in San Francisco, Faith had declared the instrument for staff only. In the interests of moving her along today, though, she held out the receiver, dialing Courtney Bullock’s number herself.
Animal imagery seemed to come easily regarding the Bullock women. After meeting them, Faith had characterized Stephanie as the spoiled lapdog of the family and Courtney as the pit bull in pearls. In one of her soliloquies, Stephanie had waxed nostalgic about her grandparents’ house on Beacon Hill—Louisburg Square—where Mummy had grown up, before flying in the face of mater and pater’s advice to marry Julian. Courtney had come to that first meeting with the caterer armed with a leather wedding planner embossed with Stephanie’s name and the date of the wedding—then over a year away—Filofax, swatches, and even recipes. Faith was impressed: Here was a woman who knew what she wanted and usually got it. Surely her organizational acumen was being wasted on a mere slip of a girl, her daughter. After several more meetings, it became clear that Stephanie was Courtney’s jewel in the crown, her most perfect creation. Decorating a condo at the Four Seasons for a princess or locat-ing a King George tankard for the Museum of Fine Arts was naught compared with the job she’d devoted her life to— Stephanie. And Stephanie’s mother. She had not neglected her own complementary persona. Slim, with a flawless complexion and a pageboy the color of an Elsa Peretti gold necklace, Courtney worked almost as hard at being Courtney.
She was clearly delighted with her daughter’s match and wedding plans, the only discordant note being Binky’s insistence on red meat for the main course at the reception—no fish, no chicken.
Meat. Faith had been fascinated to watch Binky, hitherto easygoing to positive carpetlike propor-tions, lay down the law to the Bullock women.
She had wondered how long it would take after the nuptials for Binky to disappear and Bancroft to take charge. Courtney had tried staring him down, pleasantly—firmly—voicing her own preference for poached salmon, “so much more appealing to the eye than bloody slabs of prime rib.” Hoping to lighten the mood, Faith had jocularly suggested as a compromise the largest dish ever served at wedding receptions: hard-boiled eggs stuffed into fish, the fish into cooked chickens, the chickens into sheep, and the sheep into a camel, which is then roasted—a Bedouin custom and guaranteed to provide something for everyone. It was after the leaden silence greeting her remark that she realized for the first of many times that both mother and daughter had no sense of humor. None. None at all. When Binky laughed and suggested they go for it, Courtney had hastily declared beef it would be.
Stephanie hung up the phone and grabbed her Hermes Kelly bag. She had them in several colors. “It works out perfectly. Mummy has about twenty pairs to return.”
Niki had to turn around. The Cabot Bullocks were fast becoming her favorite sitcom, and it was getting harder and harder not to laugh in the bride’s presence.
Stephanie air-kissed Faith, bonding with the help, and was out the door, leaving traces of Joy, her signature fragrance, to mingle with the more plebeian aromas of freshly baked cookies and bread. Niki exploded. “I swear, Faith, we should be writing this all down.” She wiped a tear from her eye and stopped laughing. “But if they change the rehearsal dinner menu one more time, I’ll spit in Stephanie’s Perrier.”
It was Faith’s turn to laugh, and she did. Niki’s Greek temper was more than a match for these Boston Brahmins.
“Everyone’s accepted,” Faith told Pix. “They positively leapt at the chance to do something about their break- ins.” The two women had bumped into each other at the Shop ’n Save and had pulled their carriages to one side in front of the dairy section. Pix had reached for the Velveeta, while Faith had her hand on a log of Vermont goat cheese.
“When are you going to have this shindig, and can someone who hasn’t had her house robbed come? I could pass the punch and cookies.” Pix knew that Faith would no more consider inviting people to her house without serving food, even for an occasion such as this, than she would purchase dough in a cardboard tube—several varieties of which were tucked under Pix’s cheese.
“Tomorrow night at seven, and you can come, but don’t wear any jewelry.” Pix had some good jewelry inherited from various relatives, but her habitual adornment other than wedding and engagement rings was a Seiko watch with a sensible leather strap. Period. So long as Sam persisted in referring to pierced ears as “body mutilation,” Pix’s lobes remained unadorned.
Clip-ons hurt.
A bit piqued that Faith could think her so in-sensitive, Pix suggested tartly, “Why don’t I wear my mourning brooch? The one with the woven hair that belonged to Great-Aunt Hannah?”
“I’m glad you understand. Of course you can come. Coffee, not punch, but cookies. We don’t want to be fooling around with plates and forks while we’re working. I’m on my way to the church office to do the questionnaire after I finish here. I just needed a few things.”
“Do you want Samantha to come and take care of the kids?”
Faith had been so intent on other matters that she had neglected to plan for the probable interruptions—cute though they might appear—her children would present. It was this single-mindedness that had also caused her earlier jewelry remark to Pix.
“That’s a wonderful idea. Are you sure she doesn’t have plans?”
“Even if she does, I think she’d like to help. The kids have been terribly upset, you know. Danny wants us to get an alarm system. In fact, he’s been talking about it ever since he heard about Sarah.
Now before he leaves for school, he tells me to be sure the doors are locked and not to let strangers into the
