S'more to Lose

by Beth Merlin

  I looked up at the stage. The cast was clearing off and just Perry and a few of the musicians stayed behind to act as his backup band. Alexander walked back to the microphone and thanked him for the incredible performance. He handed Perry a violin and the mic and stepped back offstage.

  Perry waited a few more seconds to finish catching his breath then stepped closer to the stand and slipped in microphone. “I’m so honored the Duke and Duchess of Sussex asked me to perform this evening. It’s an absolute dream come true to be standing here, so thank you.” Perry looked over to Victoria and Alexander.

  He continued, “I haven’t always been a Broadway guy. My musical roots and heart live a little closer to the jazz age. I hope everyone will indulge me a bit as I play some of my favorite standards for the happy couple.” Perry nodded to the pianist onstage beside him. “It’s been quite a while since I picked up a bow, so please excuse me if I’m a little rusty.”

  Perry put the violin to his chin and began playing the all-too-familiar first notes of Gershwin’s They Can’t Take That Away From Me. He looked out into the audience and I could feel his eyes searching for me. I closed mine and drifted back to Chinooka. I replayed the dozens of times I’d watched spellbound as Perry’s fingers danced over the strings of his violin, private concerts performed just for me. When he got too tired of playing, he’d throw one of his records onto the turntable and we’d dance in his cabin until the sun came up.

  I opened my eyes. Victoria and Alexander had taken to the dance floor and other couples were slowly moving to join them.

  Gideon stood up and said, “Shall we?”

  I accepted his hand and followed him out into the crowd. He pulled me close, wrapping his arms around me. I laid my head down on Gideon’s shoulder.

  “Have I told you how absolutely beautiful you look tonight?” Gideon whispered in my ear.

  I picked my head up. “You may have mentioned it once or twice.”

  “Well, let me just say it again. You look gorgeous.”

  “You look pretty dapper yourself,” I said, adjusting his bowtie. “I’m one lucky lady.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say it. After that performance, I might be the only person in this room who didn’t fall a little more in love with Perry Gillman tonight.”

  I looked up at the stage. Perry’d put down his violin and was singing the last few lines of the song staring straight at me.

  “No. Not the only one,” I said, laying my head back down on Gideon’s shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The after party raged on for several more hours with at least another half dozen international popstars taking the stage in celebration of Victoria and Alexander’s wedding. We were enjoying the performances so much Gideon and I barely left the dance floor. When the blisters on the backs of my heels couldn’t take it anymore, I asked Gideon if he’d mind taking a break. He grabbed each of us a cocktail from one of the corner bars and directed us out to the courtyard for some air.

  We breathed in the cool breeze.

  “This is better,” he said.

  “Have you ever seen so many royals in a mosh pit before?” I joked.

  He passed me his phone. “Never, which is why I snapped a few pictures of it.”

  I shook my head and passed the phone back to him. “Your parents get back to their hotel okay?”

  “I’m sure. They’re staying just up the road. Are you still able to join us for brunch tomorrow morning?”

  “I think so. I’m going to stop back at Victoria’s room at The Goring tonight and make sure her clothes are laid out properly for tomorrow and her going away breakfast. After that, I’m a free woman. Hard to believe, but my job here is done.”

  Gideon set down his drink. “Speaking of jobs, I have some news I’ve been waiting to talk to you about. I gave my notice at Highclere last week. I’m moving to South Gloucestershire to run Badgley Hall full-time.”

  “That’s great. It’s everything you’ve been working toward, right?’

  Gideon turned from me. “I used to believe that. Now it feels more like a big anchor around my neck.”

  I took two steps toward him and placed my hand on his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  He turned to face me. “I can’t convince you to come with me, can I? I’ll turn one of those musty staterooms into the most incredible studio for you to do your work. Hell, you can have a whole wing of the house if you want it.”

  “G. Malone’s in New York. My whole life is in New York. Jordana’s positive that after all the press from the wedding, we’ll finally be able to take the company public. We talked about this, Gid. I can’t just abandon all that to play duchess in South Gloucestershire.”

  “Countess,” he corrected.

  I cocked my head to the side. “You know what I mean. Anyway, I thought once you had the estate up and running you’d be able to spend more time in New York. Isn’t that what we talked about?”

  “Realistically, I’m not sure how long it’s going to take to get Badgley Hall not just operational but also profitable.”

  Linney came outside to find us and let us know Victoria and Alexander were getting ready to cut the cake.

  Gideon took my hand. “Tonight’s been wonderful. Let’s not ruin it. We’ll talk more about this later.”

  “Gideon, my mind’s not going to change.”

  “Are you both coming?” Linney yelled back to us.

  We picked up our cocktails and hurried back inside where the cake cutting ceremony was already underway. Alexander was slowly feeding a piece to Victoria while the remaining guests picked up their champagne flutes to toast the happy couple once again. I spotted Perry at the bar at the far end of the room nursing a drink. A few minutes later, Annabelle found him. What at first looked like a small quarrel quickly flared into a larger argument, ending with Perry slamming his glass down on the bar and Annabelle storming off in tears. Fortunately, with all the activity centered on the cake cutting, nobody else in the room seemed to notice.

  Alexander picked up the microphone and invited everyone to join him and Victoria outside for fireworks. As the room slowly emptied out, I glanced back over my shoulder. Perry was still seated at the bar, staring into the courtyard sipping on his whiskey neat. The moon was shining through the window, casting the most hypnotizing light across his bearded face.

  I thought back to when he played The Fiddler at Camp Chinooka. The show had opened with Perry suspended at the top of the amphitheater, the moonlight pouring down like a spotlight. He danced and played his way up the aisles and stairs, finally settling atop the stage to observe everything below. We were a million miles from that night, but the look in his eyes was the same, cool and concentrated like he was trying to work out a problem with no obvious solution.

  I followed Gideon out to the palace garden, which was set up like an old-fashioned carnival with booths and antique food carts. We stopped for two boxes of popcorn and a cone of cotton candy. Plaid blankets were laid out all along the grass and guests were being directed to different corners of the garden for the best views of the show. Gideon took my hand and we settled down together on a blanket on the far side of the lawn.

  After the first few fireworks lit up the sky, Gideon pulled me close and kissed me harder and more urgently than ever before. Maybe to make me change my mind about South Gloucestershire? Or maybe in the hopes I’d forget we had that conversation at all? Either way, it didn’t matter. I kissed him back equally hard, so he’d know I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to be with him. We’d figure out how to make it work.

  Gideon pulled me into his arms and wrapped them tightly around me. I leaned back into his chest and we watched the rest of the show. When it was over, we walked the lanes of the carnival. We stopped to play a few games and after several attempts, Gideon proudly knocked down a tower of clear milk bottles and won me a big stuffed teddy bear.

  It was almost 3 a.m. and most of the guests were starting to leave. I looked at my phone and saw a text
from Jordana reminding me that the representative from Cartier would be at Victoria’s room at The Goring by 5 a.m. to collect the jewels from the wedding gown.

  “Shoot, I have to get going,” I said to Gideon.

  “Victoria’s still here. You have plenty of time to make sure she has what she needs for the morning.”

  “The Cartier people are coming to collect the stones from the dress at five. Since I basically signed my life away so we could borrow them, I better get going or you’ll be visiting me in the Tower of London.”

  He shook his head. “You never did make it over there, did you?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It hasn’t been in use as a prison since the 1940s.”

  “Next time I’m here, we’ll make sure to take the proper tour,” I said, kissing him on the cheek.

  “I have some goodbyes to make and I want to make sure Linney gets off okay. Should I just meet you back at The Savoy?” he asked.

  “I already let them know this morning that a certain Mr. Napoleon Cheshire would likely be paying another call and to let him up if he did.”

  A smile crept across his face. “Brilliant.”

  I rushed back to The Goring and laid out Victoria’s dress for the going away breakfast and a few other options Jamie and I had whipped up as gifts for her to take along on her honeymoon to the Maldives. I slipped out of my Valentino, hung it back on the hanger, and changed into leggings and my favorite and most comfortably worn-in Camp Chinooka Staff T-shirt. At four in the morning, I didn’t have to worry about too many people seeing me in such a non-glamourous outfit. After I was changed, I zipped the dress into a garment bag and placed it next to the rest of my bags to take back with me to The Savoy. I was glad that I’d decided to purchase the gown instead of borrowing it from the vintage store. This dress was going into my personal archives. One day, if I was fortunate enough to have a daughter, I’d show her what I wore when I attended the royal wedding on the arm of Viscount Satterley.

  I went into the bathroom, pulled off my fake eyelashes, and washed my face. I took out the beautiful chandelier earrings Cartier had lent me along with the jewels and put them back into their box for return. I looked in the mirror and thought to myself, “Okay Cinderella, time to turn back into a pumpkin.”

  I heard a knock on the door and checked my watch. It was a good thing I’d hurried back to the hotel because the Cartier rep was about forty-five minutes early. I yelled out I was coming and wrapped my hair into a bun as I walked to the door. I unlocked the chain and opened it to find Perry standing there. His bowtie was unknotted and casually draped over his shoulders. The top two buttons of his dress shirt were undone and he was carrying his evening coat over his arm. His normally tamed curly hair was more disheveled than I was used to, waves sticking out in different directions.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I needed to talk to you. Alone,” he said.

  “Jesus, Perry, I’m expecting someone from Cartier any minute now and Gemma warned there might be press staked out on this floor.” I poked my head out of the door frame and looked down the hallway in both directions. “Someone could see us talking. You better come inside.”

  He stepped into the room and I quickly shut the door behind him.

  “How’d you even know where to find me?”

  Perry laid his blazer down on the bed. “I heard Gemma talking to Victoria about her plans for the morning. She said you were here pulling some things together for her.”

  “I’m just about done. As soon as Cartier shows up, I’m leaving to meet Gideon at The Savoy.” I handed him back his jacket.

  Perry rubbed the stubble on his face. “Can I take a seat? I just need a moment.” He motioned toward the bed.

  I nodded reluctantly and he sat down.

  I took two steps toward him. “Perry, what do you want? Why are you here? Really?”

  “I miss you. I know I don’t have any right to say that to you. And I know I made a million mistakes. But, there it is,” he said, looking up at me.

  I shook my head and sat down beside him. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for some sort of explanation for what happened with us? Every day I would think today’s the day my phone’s going to ring or Perry’s gonna show up at my door to tell me he had some sort of temporary lapse in sanity. Anything that might help me understand how you could walk away from four years of our life together and never even look back.”

  “The first thing I did when I came back to London was go to my father’s grave and make him a promise that if I couldn’t get the show off the ground in one year, I’d return and audition with New York Philharmonic like he wanted me to. I planned on coming back to be with you and to marry you. But then, everything clicked. I put my head down and finished writing the show. This thing that I’d been dancing around and toying with for four years came together in just a few months.”

  Perry stood and walked to the window at the far side of the room then leaned back against the sill. The light from the nearby buildings was streaming in, framing his perfect silhouette.

  He took a deep breath and continued, “I somehow managed to convince myself none of it would’ve happened if I’d stayed in New York.”

  I took a few steps toward him. “So, it’s my fault. I was the person holding you back from your full potential. Is that it?”

  “Do you know what is to have the person you admired most in the world, the person you spent your whole life trying to be like, die thinking you’ve made nothing of yourself?” He crossed the room and pulled me into his arms. “But I was wrong, Gigi. I’m telling you I was wrong. I’m not who I am despite you. I am who I am because of you. It was your face I saw when I was writing those duets between Elizabeth and Dudley. You are in every melody of that show. You’re in every moment, every measure.”

  His words hung in the air as I looked at his beautiful face. He’d always be my Perry. The man who, four years ago, helped pull me out of the depths and put me back on a course to myself. I loved him. I might always. But, we were over. I’d known it as soon as I sat down in Her Majesty’s Theater all those months ago, just like Annabelle had known it when she watched him perform tonight. Jamie was right. Elizabeth had been the other woman all along. With the ambition and passion that so consumed Perry, there wasn’t room for anyone else now and there might never be. I couldn’t take that chance again. I’d barely survived the fallout the first time.

  “Please, Gigi. Please forgive me,” he said, choking back sobs.

  He pulled out the same ring he’d proposed to me with all those months ago and got down on one knee. He held it up to me, his hands trembling and his body unsteady.

  “I’ll be back in New York in a few months. We’ll start over again. Let me show you I can be the man you believed I was. Please, darling.”

  I looked down into his big brown eyes. “It’s too hard. I used to think it had to be that hard. I thought it was the constant push and pull, the give and take that brought out the best in each of us. I don’t believe that anymore.”

  He stood up and opened up my clenched fist, took the ring out of the box, and placed it into the palm of my left hand. “I hurt you. I know I did. But if you let me, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it right. I love you. I never stopped loving you. Marry me. Say you will? It’ll be different this time. I’ll be different.”

  I closed my eyes and let his words wash over me like a rogue wave that appears without warning, crushing everything in its wake. “What about Annabelle?’

  “It’s done. I told her I was in love with somebody else.”

  “And what happens when the world finds out that person’s me? Victoria’s friend. Annabelle’s friend. They’ll assume we’ve been sneaking around behind their backs this whole time.”

  “We’ll figure that part out. I don’t even care. Let the world think whatever it wants. We know the truth.”

  “It’s not that simple. None of this is that simple. I’m in a
relationship with somebody else.”

  “Gideon’s a good guy. I won’t say otherwise. But what you two have, it isn’t what we had.”

  I unfurled my fingers and looked down at the ring still nestled in my palm. It was still beautiful, the diamond as brilliant as ever. But, it was also still the symbol of every promise Perry had made and broken—along with my heart. I closed my eyes and extended my hand back toward him. “I can’t accept this.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “What does it matter anymore?” I stroked Perry’s cheek and brushed my hand over his full lips. “Go to New York. Make your mark on Broadway. Conquer everything you ever set out to.”

  “If this is really what you want, then why are you crying?”

  I brushed the tears from my face. “I didn’t realize I was.”

  “I can’t change your mind, can I?” he whispered.

  “You could. That’s exactly why I can’t let you,” I answered.

  He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest where I stayed until I finished shedding every last tear for Perry Gillman and the hurt of this last year. When I was done, I pulled away, wiped my face, and walked to the door. I opened it up planning to let him leave. Instead, we stood together in the entranceway and lingered, knowing we might never be this intimate again.

  Before he turned to leave, I stood up on my tiptoes and leaned into him. With my heart and voice breaking, I sang his favorite Gershwin lyric into his ear. “The way you changed my life…”

  A small, knowing smile crept across his face before he kissed me on the forehead, turned, and walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  After Cartier came, took full inventory, and reclaimed about six million dollars’ worth of jewels, I finally was able to go back to my hotel for the night. Gideon was up waiting for me when I walked in.