The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 803

At two o'clock Patricia lifted a glass of champagne on the rose lawn and said, "To Tiffany. Partner of Halcyon."

"To Tiffany!" Cordelia cried, and drank hers in one go.

Patricia's own glass trembled as she lifted it, and a little champagne slopped over her fingers. "This wind," she laughed. "It goes right through you."

A reporter from the Westmere Gazette and his photographer stood on the grass in front of the white table under the awning. Pauline had always called the paper herself on any day the house meant to be admired. For sixty years the Gazette had printed every Tiffany party on this lawn, and never once a Tiffany who lived behind the garage. The wet grass smelled freshly cut. Two bottles sweated in a silver bucket of ice.

Behind the hedge at the bottom of the lawn, Alex sat on an upturned bucket, mending a broken garden chair that nobody had asked him to mend.

Nobody noticed him. That was the nice thing about being the idiot.

"Miss Tiffany," the reporter said, pencil ready. "You've just come back from Halcyon's laboratory. How did it go?"

"Beautifully," Patricia said, glowing in a fresh garden dress. "I made a winter. It's the best thing I've ever done. You could see it on the judges' faces. One of them closed her eyes."

"And your cousin was there too, we hear? Serena Tiffany? The one who was blind?"

"Poor Serena." Patricia sighed. "She tried. She really did. She cried all through the hour. It was very sad. Ms. Vale was very kind to her."

"She walked home an hour ago," Cordelia put in, "blown about by the wind, with that useless husband of hers. Didn't even wait for the results. That's how you know."

"Ms. Vale was there herself?"

"Natasha Vale and I," Patricia said warmly, "got to know each other very well this morning."

At the bottom of the lawn, Alex's hammer paused for a moment. Then it went on.

"And what's in your famous Garden, Miss Tiffany?" the reporter asked. "Everyone in the capital wants to know."

"Patience," Patricia said, smiling for the camera, "and talent."

"And luck?" the reporter asked.

"I don't need luck, darling," Patricia said sweetly. "Luck is for people with one case."

The photographer's flash went off with a soft pop. Cordelia clapped, and the ice clinked in the silver bucket.

"Isn't she wonderful?" Cordelia told the reporter, refilling her own glass. "She's going to be director by tonight, you know. Mother's signing the chair over at dinner. Write that down. Director. Of the whole house."

"Mother," Patricia said, laughing. "Not before the letter."

"The letter's just a formality, darling." Pauline sat at the head of the white table in grey, a small white card under her hand, smiling the pleasant smile she used for guests. "Halcyon chooses one house. There is only one house on this coast that matters, and it's this one."

"And if they choose the other Miss Tiffany?" the reporter asked.

The table laughed.

"Serena doesn't have a house, dear," Pauline said gently. "She has a garage."

"And a husband with a hammer," Cordelia giggled, pointing her glass down the lawn.

A cold little breeze came up off the sea and lifted the awning. The reporter turned to look down the garden.

"That's the Tenth Prince?" the reporter asked, interested. "The one the palace sent you?"

"That's him," Patricia said, laughing. "Write it down, it's the best story on the coast. A prince of the blood, and he eats whatever's left on our plates. He says thank you to the furniture. He clapped at breakfast yesterday when I told him he'd be thrown out of the gate. Clapped! He thought it was a toast. Serena picked that over Lord Julian Pryce in front of the whole coast, and now she sleeps in a garage with him, and she thinks a black envelope is going to save her."

"The palace sent him to us," Pauline said pleasantly. "We keep him the way you keep a gift you didn't ask for."

"In the garage!" Cordelia said, and laughed so hard she spilled her champagne.

"And tonight?" the reporter asked. "What happens tonight?"

A bee hummed in the wet roses. "Tonight Grandmother signs the director's chair over to me at dinner," Patricia said, "and at nine o'clock my cousin Preston opens the front gate and holds it. It's going to rain. I asked." She lifted her glass. "You should stay. It'll make a lovely picture."

There had been a cook at the castle when he was small, a huge woman with flour on her arms, who used to say one old saying to the pots every time the house got above itself. Pride goes before a fall. And then she always banged a lid down and added her own line. And the fall goes before the washing up.

Alex tested the chair with one hand. It held.

Twenty years, he thought. He hadn't decided that. Natasha's judges had, with their eyes shut. All he had done was hold one bench, and sit on it in the dark, and wait.

At five minutes past three, a broad, silent man came across the wet lawn with two black envelopes: Mr. Moss's driver, from Harland.

The whole table went still.

He stopped at the awning and bowed. One for each nose, he said quietly. The results of this morning's contest.

"Thank you," Pauline said, and held out her hand. "I'll take them. I'm her mother."

The courier hesitated. Then he gave her the first one. Its silver ink said Patricia Tiffany. The other, he said, was for Miss Serena Tiffany, at the back.

"Behind the garage," Cordelia said helpfully. "Follow the smell of failure. You can't miss it."

At the hedge he passed the man mending the chair, and his head dipped, the smallest bow, the kind a man gives to the one who signs his wages. Alex shook his head once, very slightly, and the courier walked on.

Pauline stood up and smiled for the camera.

"Shall we, darling?" she said to Patricia.

"Read it out, Mother," Patricia said, bright and breathless. "Read it to everyone."

Pauline broke the seal and began to read, smooth and pleasant.

"Halcyon Group thanks Miss Patricia Tiffany for her work this morning." She smiled up at the cameras. "Halcyon has chosen one partner on this coast for the next twenty years. All its hotels, all its rooms, all its fragrance."

"Yes," Patricia whispered.

"Halcyon names as that partner," Pauline read on, "the independent nose—"

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