Chapter 6 - The Whispering Gallery
By three in the morning, the rain had stopped, leaving Manhattan rinsed clean beneath a cold, clear moon that turned the Hudson into a sheet of hammered lead.
I lay in the center of the oversized bed in the master suite—not my separate bedroom down the hall, but Ethan’s room, beneath the heavy grey linen duvet that smelled of him.
Ethan was asleep beside me, his breathing deep, slow, and rhythmic. One of his long arms was thrown over my waist, his palm resting flat against the bare skin of my stomach, his fingers twitching slightly as he dreamed. The harsh, defensive lines of his face had vanished in sleep; he looked younger, like the boy who used to sit three rows ahead of me in advanced calculus, staring out the window at the Westchester hills with an expression of quiet longing.
I couldn't sleep.
My mind was a chaotic gallery of images: Ethan’s hand breaking the lavender wax; Victoria’s emerald necklace gleaming in the ballroom; the taste of Ethan’s mouth against mine in the back of the car; the shocking revelation of Mia’s complicity.
I carefully lifted Ethan’s arm, slipping out from beneath the covers with the quiet, practiced grace of someone who had spent years sneaking into greenhouses before dawn. I pulled on his heavy navy cashmere robe, tying the belt tightly around my waist, and walked barefoot through the dark loft toward the terrace.
The air outside was freezing—forty degrees, carrying the sharp, clean bite of coming winter.
I leaned against the iron railing, wrapping my arms around myself, looking south toward the tip of Manhattan where the financial towers stood like silent glass monoliths against the bay.
"You're going to catch pneumonia," a voice said from the darkness behind me.
I didn't turn around. I knew the sound of his footsteps now—the quiet, balanced tread of a man who moved without wasted motion.
Ethan walked to the railing, wearing only his grey flannel trousers, his bare chest pale in the moonlight. He didn't ask why I was out there. He simply stepped behind me, pulling me back against him, wrapping his arms around my shoulders so his heat enveloped me like a wool blanket.
"I'm thinking about Victoria," I admitted, leaning my head back against his collarbone.
"Don't," he muttered, his chin resting on the top of my head. "She's already irrelevant."
"She isn't irrelevant, Ethan. Women like that don't take public humiliation and go quietly back to London. She has pride. And she has your father."
Ethan went still. "What about my father?"
"At the gala," I said, remembering the brief, venomous look William Whitmore had cast our way before we left the ballroom. "He was talking to her by the terrace doors while you were getting our coats. They weren't looking at the art, Ethan. They were looking at us."
Ethan sighed, a long, low exhalation that ruffled my hair. "My father is sixty-eight years old, Claire. His influence on Wall Street is fifty percent memory and fifty percent leverage. He can't touch Whitmore Capital now. The voting shares are registered with the SEC. The filings were completed at midnight."
"Are you sure?"
"I spent six years auditing the grandfather trust," he said, his voice flat with absolute certainty. "There isn't a loophole. There isn't an escape clause. The only way those shares could revert to the general partnership is if the marriage is proven to be fraudulent within the first ninety days of execution."
I turned within the circle of his arms, looking up at him. The cold moonlight highlighted the sharp angle of his jaw, the dark stubble shadowing his chin, the intense, unwavering focus of his eyes.
"And how does one prove a marriage is fraudulent?" I whispered.
Ethan looked down at me. His hands moved from my shoulders down to my waist, his thumbs hooking into the belt of the cashmere robe, pulling me an inch closer until our breath mingled in the frosty air.
"By proving that the parties never intended to consummate the union," he murmured, his voice dropping into that dark, dangerous register that made my knees feel weak. "By demonstrating that they maintain separate residences, separate finances, and separate lives."
"We maintained separate rooms until three hours ago," I pointed out, my voice barely louder than the wind.
May you like
Ethan’s lips curved into a faint, wicked smile.
"Then we had better make sure our domestic arrangements are thoroughly documented," he said, before bending his head to kiss me again, his cold lips warming against mine as the city slept four hundred feet below our feet.
