The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  “Big company or start-up?” She looked intrigued.

  “More the latter. You’re perfect for it. You’re brilliant, Ruby Moon. You can do anything. You understand everything I talk to you about.” He was smiling at her, and as he said it, he slipped down on one knee in his shorts and new high-top white Converse that made him look like a little kid, which he almost was anyway. He was twenty-four years old and looked about fifteen. “Will you marry me, Ruby?” he asked her, with a hopeful look as she stared at him in disbelief, looking irritated.

  “Will you stop making fun of me. I thought you had a real job for me. That’s not funny. I need a job. I can’t live off my grandparents forever.”

  “I’m serious,” he said, remaining on one knee in front of her, as Tim and his assistant watched them with interest, wondering what he was doing. Tim had been reading about Zack’s new windfall. The whole world had been. As he spoke, Zack pulled something out of the pocket of his baggy shorts that had had too many washings and were clean but faded and torn. He pulled out a small gray leather box with a white satin ribbon around it and handed it to her.

  “What’s that?” She looked confused as she took it from him.

  “It’s for you. Open it.” She pulled off the ribbon cautiously and opened the box, and an enormous round object sparkled at her with such vehemence that it almost blinded her.

  “Holy crap, Zack, what is that?” He stood up then, took it out of the box, and put it on her finger.

  “It’s an engagement ring, you dummy. Haven’t you ever seen one before?”

  “Not like that.” She looked at him then and could see that he was serious, and her eyes opened even wider.

  “I realized last night that I love you. You’re the most fantastic woman I’ve ever met, and I want to marry you. That’s the job I meant. I want you to be my wife. It’s full-time.” He grinned at her and she laughed. “And the ring is thirty carats by the way. It was the biggest one they had in the store. I thought bigger might be too showy, but they can get a bigger one if you want.” He talked about it like a skateboard, or a television he had bought for her. But he looked pleased when he saw it on her finger. She was staring at it. It looked like a headlight from someone’s car. She was wearing a denim skirt and a sweater, and he looked like he was going to the park to walk his dog. They looked like kids, as she stared at the incredible stone on her hand.

  “Aren’t we too young to get married? I’m twenty-two and you’re twenty-four.”

  “I love you, Ruby,” he said simply, and then he kissed her for the first time, as the two shopkeepers smiled, and Ruby smiled when he stopped.

  “I love you too. I’ve always loved you, Zack. I thought we were just friends.”

  “We are friends, that’s the best part. We each get to be married to our best friend. Besides, it would be nice to have kids one day. Do you want kids?” She nodded. It was all happening so fast, just like his enormous success. Zack was someone who moved at full speed and didn’t like to waste time. But she did love him, and she liked the idea of being married to him. She’d never even had a serious boyfriend before. Maybe she had been in love with him all along. She wasn’t sure. But she was now. She looked at the ring then, and then back at him.

  “You don’t have to give me a big ring like that,” she said softly. “I would marry you with nothing.”

  “That’s why I love you,” he said, and kissed her again.

  Her grandparents stopped by the shop then to see how things were going, although they knew Ruby was always conscientious when she was there. They smiled when they saw Zack.

  “Are you buying antiques now, Zack?” Alex teased him as he rolled his chair in. Eleanor was right behind him and suddenly stared at her granddaughter’s left hand.

  “Good heavens, what’s that?”

  “It’s a diamond,” Zack said matter-of-factly. “I just asked Ruby to marry me.” He smiled and Ruby looked suddenly shy.

  “Did you now,” Alex said. “And what did she say?” Zack frowned then and looked puzzled as he turned to Ruby, no longer sure.

  “What did you say?” Zack asked her and she grinned and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

  “I said yes…or I was going to…”

  Zack beamed at her and turned to her grandfather. “She said yes.” Alex smiled at them, and Eleanor laughed as she shook her head.

  “Congratulations,” Alex said and shook his future grandson-in-law’s hand, while Eleanor took Ruby in her arms and hugged her.

  “And now we have a wedding to plan,” she said with delight. They were young, and Zack was a little odd, but it seemed right for them. And Ruby would be good for him, and he would be for her.

  Chapter 15

  Once she had gotten used to the idea, Ruby loved being engaged to Zack. She couldn’t think of anything better than being married to her best friend. She could say anything to him, she knew him better than anyone, they understood each other, and once they were engaged, Zack blossomed, and all he wanted to do was spoil her and make her happy. The engagement ring that looked like a headlight was only the beginning. He brought her presents constantly, talked about trips they would take, houses they would buy, things they were going to do. His genius had brought them an incredible fortune, which he couldn’t even fathom yet, and all he wanted to do was lavish it on her. The fact that Ruby didn’t expect it, or even want it, made it all the more fun. She was an unassuming, undemanding woman, which he loved about her. It made him want to spoil her even more.

  He assumed she’d move into his ugly student apartment with him until her grandmother gently suggested it might be too small, and Zack realized she was right. Besides, he had gotten his furniture at secondhand stores, and it embarrassed him to have Ruby live there. They realized that they needed a house or an apartment, but they couldn’t decide where. Zack wasn’t sure if he wanted to live in Palo Alto where he grew up, or San Francisco where she had. Ruby said they could always live with her grandparents for a while, in her room, until they figured it out. Zack liked that idea because he liked them so much and they were so nice to him. So once they figured that out, there was no rush to find a place to live and could focus on the wedding, which seemed more pressing to Zack.

  The wedding was likely to be awkward on his side. His parents didn’t speak to each other and refused to be in the same room, and he assumed his mother wouldn’t come. She never did. He had grown up with his dad, after the divorce. And his father didn’t have a house where they could get married. They consulted Ruby’s grandparents, who knew the finest homes in the city and had furnished many of them. They thought a hotel would be too commercial. Alex’s old home wasn’t an option. The hotel that it had been turned into had changed hands several times and had supposedly gone to rack and ruin, and was seedy now, and the furniture had been sold years before. The most recent owners were thinking of tearing it down. He’d never been inside it since he’d sold it, and didn’t want to see it again. He said it would make him too sad remembering what it had once been. But Eleanor cautiously suggested the Hamilton School which was what the Deveraux mansion had become. She hadn’t been back either, but she’d been told by several of her decorating clients that the school rented out for weddings, and with enough flowers and a good event decorator, it could look very pretty for an event. Seeing it again gave her some qualms, but at least the location had some meaning for them, especially since she and Alex had been married there. Ruby said she loved the idea. Zack was game for whatever they found. Neither he nor Ruby had an enormous number of friends, and they thought they would have about a hundred and fifty guests, maybe two hundred. The school appealed to both of them, for its historical ties to Ruby’s family.

  “Shall I make an appointment to see it?” Eleanor asked Zack and Ruby one night when they had dinner with them, and Ruby said she’d love to. They wanted to get married in the fall, and were thinking Oct
ober, which was when her grandparents had gotten married, too. Working out the wedding plans had suddenly superseded her search for a job, and she had decided to wait until the first of the year, after their honeymoon and the holidays before she got back to serious job hunting. They wanted to find a place they both loved for the wedding first.

  Eleanor was surprised by how easy it was when she called the school. She thought she’d have to explain who she was, and what they had in mind. They had an events coordinator who handled the frequent rentals. The woman told her it had become a very popular venue for weddings, and they even had a brochure, which they sent her in the mail. It listed the prices, the packages, the available spaces, and the rules. When Eleanor studied it, she saw that the ballroom was almost unchanged. They used it for all school assemblies, the brochure said. Weddings were confined to the reception floors. The upstairs bedrooms were all classrooms now, and didn’t lend themselves to parties. But the grand staircase could be used for the bride to make an entrance if they wished. It was strange for Eleanor to read the brochure, and bittersweet when she saw the historical photos on one page, showing one of the grand parties of the past, which Eleanor recognized instantly as her coming out ball, with all the footmen standing at attention in the front hall, holding trays of champagne as the guests arrived. It gave her a pang of nostalgia to see it.

  “Will it be too hard for you if they have the wedding there?” Alex asked her afterward, with a tender look.

  “I don’t think so. Bittersweet perhaps, and nostalgic certainly. But I think it would mean a lot to Ruby. She is fascinated by our history.” His wife smiled at him. “And I like the idea of her getting married in the same house we did, even if everything is changed, and it doesn’t belong to us anymore.” But many things were still the same. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Camille had no interest in any of it, and Ruby does and is very attached to our family history. Maybe that kind of thing skips a generation,” she mused.

  “They’re very different women,” Alex said quietly. “Ruby is much more like you. Camille wanted to forge her own path, and it led her to disaster.”

  “I think Ruby has always been afraid she’d be like her mother. She said that to me once. But she’s nothing like her. Ruby is as conservative as we are, and she loves all our old traditions.” Their daughter had been gone for twenty-two years, and losing her still made them sad. Ruby had been an enormous consolation to them, and a lovely, easy child. They had never had any problems with her. She had never rebelled against them, and had always been close to her grandparents.

  The day Eleanor and Ruby went to see the house, Zack decided to come with them. He was in awe of the beauty of the house the moment they walked in. So was Ruby. They held hands and gazed up at the high ceilings, the beautiful moldings, the wood paneling, the chandeliers, the grand staircase. It took Eleanor’s breath away for a moment too. It was a trip back in time for her. She hadn’t been there for fifty-one years, since she and Alex and her parents left it in 1930, when her parents moved to Lake Tahoe, and she and Alex to the little apartment in Chinatown. So much had happened since then.

  The event coordinator took them around and explained how the rooms could be set up, and Eleanor smiled as she explained. “We had dinner guests seated here,” Eleanor said dreamily, “and in an enormous tent outside. We tented the whole square,” she explained, and the woman smiled.

  “Have you rented here before? I’ve only worked here for four years.”

  “I used to live here,” Eleanor said quietly, “I grew up in this house. It was my family home. My husband and I were married here.” The event coordinator looked vastly impressed.

  “Then you know much more about the house than I do. We can set up the ballroom for dinner guests too. And of course you know we can’t use the original gardens. They were sold many years ago and there’s a home in that space now. But we have some pleasant paths where people can walk around on a warm night.”

  They walked through all of the reception rooms and Eleanor had to resist being flooded by memories in every room—her parents, Alex, Christmas dinners they had given, balls, her debut, her wedding. The rooms were filled with ghosts for her, but they were happy memories, and Ruby and Zack were deeply moved when they left.

  “Oh, Grandma, I love the house so much. Would it upset you too much if we rent it for the wedding?” She was concerned, and Zack was still floating from the beauty of visiting the Deveraux home.

  “No, I’d love it,” Eleanor said generously. “Your grandfather and I would be delighted if you get married where we did. I wish we still owned the house so we could really do it the way we used to. I noticed that the school requires you to end an event at midnight. Our wedding, and my debut, went on until breakfast the next morning.”

  “That sounds like fun.” Zack grinned. “Egg McMuffins for everyone!”

  “More like blinis and caviar.” Eleanor smiled at him.

  “Wow!”

  “I think you two can really have a fabulous wedding there,” Eleanor said, looking as excited as they were. In a way, it felt like going home. “Shall we do it?” Both young people nodded, and she told Alex all about it that night. She told him what had changed and what hadn’t. She had wanted to explore the upstairs but it wasn’t allowed. They had made changes, in order to institutionalize it a little for the school, but the alterations weren’t too extreme. She hadn’t been shocked by it, only touched by her flood of memories, mostly happy ones of the good years, not the end.

  She confirmed it with the event coordinator the next day, and Alex wrote a check for the deposit. Tim dropped it off at the Hamilton School on the way home. Zack and Ruby had chosen Saturday, October third, as their wedding day, two days before her grandparents’ anniversary. They had four months to plan the wedding, and Eleanor got busy with it. She had to call the florist, a caterer, look for a band the young people would want to dance to, a wedding cake baker. There were a myriad details to attend to, and it was a happy task. Eleanor had everything organized by the time they left for Lake Tahoe at the end of July.

  Before they left, Ruby came home one afternoon to meet with her grandmother. The enormous box was waiting in her bedroom. The exquisite Jeanne Lanvin wedding dress was still in its original box, with all the accessories that went with it. Eleanor had promised to show it to Ruby so she could decide if she wanted to wear it, or get another dress. She hadn’t made her mind up yet whether she wanted to wear a new dress or an old one. She wasn’t sure her grandmother’s dress would fit, or would look too dated. The dress was fifty-two years old, but the design that Eleanor and her mother had chosen had been timeless. She removed all the tissue paper around it and lifted it carefully out of the box, as Ruby stared at it, and then gasped as her grandmother held it up. She had never seen anything so beautiful in her life. Then she took out the veil, which looked as lovely as the day they had put it away. Wilson had packed it up the day Eleanor and Alex left on their honeymoon. She was glad now that they had not sold it when they sold everything else, including most of her mother’s fur coats and some evening gowns, in 1929. They had sold everything for almost nothing.

  Eleanor carefully undid the buttons and Ruby took her skirt and top off. Eleanor slipped the dress on her effortlessly. The dress was heavy, with the embroidery and the pearls, but it went on easily and was perfectly balanced so the person wearing it didn’t feel the weight. She fastened all the tiny buttons, and then Ruby turned to look at herself in the mirror and gasped again. The most beautiful bride she’d ever seen was staring at her in the mirror. Even the length was perfect, the arms, the tiny waist. Eleanor gently put the veil on her head and adjusted it, and told her she had kept the tiara that she had worn with it. It was one of the few pieces of jewelry she had left, but she hadn’t been able to part with it.

  “Oh, Grandma, can I wear it?” Ruby asked breathlessly, and Eleanor could almost imagine Madame Lanvin smiling at her, and
her own mother, and Wilson discreetly in the background. Eleanor knew that Wilson was still alive in Ireland at ninety-eight, and Houghton had passed on several years before.

  “Of course, you can wear it, my darling. Nothing would make me happier than to see you in that dress.” She hugged her granddaughter, wishing that things had been different, that Camille were still alive, and she had worn it too, instead of the way her life had turned out and ended so tragically. But things happened for a reason, and Ruby had been the greatest gift in her life and in Alex’s. Now she would be starting her life with Zack, in Eleanor’s wedding dress.

  She helped Ruby take the dress and veil off, and they folded it away carefully in its box. She was going to hang it and air it, when they got back from Lake Tahoe, but in the meantime, it was safely put away, waiting for the Big Day.

  When they left Eleanor’s room, it was as though they shared a special secret. Eleanor couldn’t wait to see Ruby in it on her wedding day, and Zack’s and Alex’s faces when she wore it.

  * * *

  —

  Ruby had to struggle not to tell Zack about the dress when she saw him an hour later. She wanted to keep it a secret until he saw it on their wedding day. He didn’t even know the dress existed. She hadn’t said anything since she didn’t know how it would work out or if she would want to wear it.

  They had been engaged for a month and after trying on the dress, Ruby really felt like a bride now. The wedding was falling into place. Everything had happened so quickly that the reality hadn’t sunk in yet. They had been friends until now, and they were getting married in three months. They hadn’t even slept with each other. It was hard to find the opportunity. She lived with her grandparents and he lived in an abysmal apartment an hour away in Palo Alto. He didn’t want the first time he made love to her to be among the secondhand remnants of his college life. And they hadn’t even looked for a place to live yet, since they were planning to stay at her grandparents’ for a while.