The Reception at Villa Ashford

Villa Ashford is two miles up the lake from the cathedral. The road curves through olive groves and stone walls and ends at a gate that costs more than the houses on either side of it. The villa itself is a nineteenth-century building that has been gutted twice and rebuilt once and now contains a ballroom, a wine cellar that holds thirty thousand bottles, and a dock that extends forty meters into the lake.

The dock is mine. The cellar is mine. The ballroom is half mine.

Roman knows about the ballroom. He has not yet connected it to the dock.

He will.

The cars pull up the long drive in a line. Black, then black, then black. The families spill out into the gravel courtyard, and the photographers circle them like fish. I am the third person out of the third car. Roman is ahead of me, already shaking hands with his uncle, already inclining his head to Benedetta, already becoming the don again.

He has been the don for seven years. He does not know how to be anything else in public. I have been the only daughter of Don Luigi Moretti for twenty-three years, and I have been watching men like Roman Ashford perform for my entire life. The handshakes. The nods. The way the jaw sets when the camera is on. The way the eyes go flat when the camera is off. I have seen it all. I have catalogued it all. The catalog is in my black clutch, in the second envelope, beside the PI files.

I am not in love with this man. I have not decided whether I am going to be.

I have decided I am going to marry him back.

---

The ballroom is white linen and silver cutlery and three hundred small candles in glass holders that throw shadows like long fingers across the walls. The chairs are covered in cream. The flowers are white peonies. There is a string quartet on the small stage at the far end of the room, playing something Italian and slow.

The families take their seats. They sit on opposite sides of the long table. They have been sitting on opposite sides of long tables for forty-one years. Today they sit politely and pretend not to notice the wall of peonies between them.

Roman takes the head of the table. I sit at his right hand. Benedetta sits at his left. My father is across from me, two seats down, beside Roman's uncle. Giulia is beside me.

The first toast is Roman's uncle. He stands. He raises his glass.

"To the families," he says. "To the truce. To the bride and groom."

"To the truce," the room says.

The second toast is my father. He stands. He raises his glass. He looks at Roman, not at me.

"To the alliance," he says. "To the future. To the contracts that bind us."

"To the contracts," the room says.

I do not raise my glass. I drink when I want to. I drink water.

Roman notices. His eyes flick to my glass. They flick to my face. They do not move again for the rest of the toast.

The dinner is six courses. Risotto with saffron from the lake. Branzino baked in salt. Veal in a butter sauce. Truffles shaved at the table. A wedding cake that is three tiers of white fondant and silver leaf, which I did not order and which I am not going to cut.

Roman cuts it. He sets a slice on my plate. He sets a slice on his. He does not eat his. He watches me eat mine.

I eat.

---

The toasts go on. Eleven of them. I count. There are jokes I do not laugh at. Compliments I do not thank anyone for. One toast from Matteo so obscene that Benedetta puts her glass down and stares at her son until he apologizes.

I have not spoken. I have not been asked to speak. The bride is decorative at these tables. The bride is the contract.

At the seventh toast, Roman leans toward me.

"You have not raised your glass," he says, in Italian, very quietly.

"I have not had anything worth raising it for," I say, in Italian.

He looks at me. The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile. The ghost of one. The same ghost from the sacristy.

"After dinner," he says, "we will talk."

"Yes," I say. "We will."

He leans back.

Benedetta leans forward.

"Caterina," she says, in English, for the room. "Tell us about your grandmother. We have heard so much. Roman's grandfather spoke of her often."

The room goes quiet.

I set my fork down.

"Eleonora," I say, "was a woman who understood that empires are not built on contracts. They are built on the people who are not asked to sign them."

Benedetta looks at me. She has not blinked. She is wearing black, even at the wedding of her son. She has been in mourning for her husband for seven years and she considers it a personal slight that the world has not noticed.

"An interesting answer," she says.

"It was an interesting question."

Roman puts his hand on the table between us. He does not look at me. He does not look at his mother. He looks straight ahead, at the candles, at the peonies, at the long wall of men on the other side of the table who are pretending not to listen.

The dinner continues.

---

By eleven, the ballroom is half-empty. The older men have gone to the smoking room. The women have gone to the salon. The young men are at the bar, drinking things they will regret in the morning.

I excuse myself. I tell Giulia I am going to the lake. She squeezes my wrist. She does not ask why. She is the only person in this villa who has ever trusted me to be alone.

I take the stone stairs down from the villa. They are wide and worn in the middle by two centuries of feet. The lake is below them. The dock is below them. The dock that is in my name.

I take off my shoes. The stone is cold under my feet. The air is colder. The lake is black except where the dock lights touch it.

I sit down on the edge of the dock. I put my feet over the side. The black gown pools on the wood around me. The veil is folded on the stone at the top of the stairs.

I am alone. I have been alone for nine minutes.

Then Roman comes down the stairs.

---

I hear him before I see him. He is not quiet. He is not trying to be quiet. He is a man who does not need to be quiet because there is no one at the villa tonight who would stop him.

He is in shirtsleeves. The jacket is gone. The collar is open two buttons now, not one. He has been drinking. Not much. Roman Ashford does not drink much. But enough.

He has my veil over his arm. He does not explain how he got it.

He walks to the end of the dock. He sits down beside me. He does not ask permission. He does not look at me. He looks at the lake.

We sit for a long moment.

"I have read the deed three times," he says, in Italian.

"I know."

"I have spoken to my lawyer. The transfer is clean. The notary is legitimate. The registry stamp is genuine. The will is valid."

"Yes."

"Your grandmother left you the casino."

"And the dock. And the shipping lane."

He is quiet for a moment. The lake is very still.

"How long have you known."

"Since the spring. Since Eleonora died."

"Did she tell you she was rewriting it."

"No. She told my lawyer. He told me. He told me the day after the funeral."

"Did your father know."

"No."

"Did anyone know."

"No. Eleonora was the only one. And my lawyer. And the notaries. And the PI I have been paying since I was nineteen to make sure my father did not sell the casino before I came of age."

Roman looks at me.

He looks at me for a long time. It is the first time today he has looked at me without looking past me.

"You have a private investigator," he says.

"I have a private investigator."

"On me."

"On the family. On the dock contracts. On the shipping lane. On the casino's actual revenue, which my father has been underreporting to your family for years."

He does not blink.

"How much," he says, "is my family losing."

"Fourteen percent of the dock contracts. Twenty-two percent of the casino's annual revenue. The casino has been underreporting the cash flow for a decade. I have the records."

He is quiet for another long moment.

He sets the veil on the dock between us.

"Why did you not tell me before the altar," he says.

"Because I needed you to marry me first."

He looks at the lake.

"That is not a kind answer," he says.

"It is not a kind marriage."

He almost smiles. He does not smile. The corner of his mouth moves.

"You are twenty-three years old," he says.

"Yes."

"You have been planning this since you were nineteen."

"Since I was sixteen."

"What were you doing when you were sixteen."

"I was in Como. I was at the house with Eleonora. I was learning which of my father's men were skimming from the casino. I was learning which of your family's lawyers were double-booked. I was learning that the only way out of the marriage my father had signed me into was to own more than the man I was being married to."

He does not say anything for a long time.

Then he says:

"You have been planning this wedding day for seven years."

"Yes."

"And you have been planning the marriage for the next forty."

"Yes."

He looks at me.

He looks at me, and the look is the look from the sacristy, the look that is not tender and not grateful and not afraid. It is the look of a man who has realized, on his wedding night, on a dock that is in his new wife's name, that he has married a woman who has been outplaying him since before she was old enough to vote.

He does not know what to do with that.

I do not know what to do with that.

The lake is very still.

---

He picks up the veil.

He does not hand it to me. He folds it again. He sets it on his knee.

"You will need this," he says, "for the photographs tomorrow. My mother will ask."

"Your mother will not ask. Your mother has not asked about me once tonight. Your mother is at the salon, telling your uncle that I am a transaction, not a wife."

He looks at the veil. He looks at me.

"My mother," he says, very carefully, "is a difficult woman."

"Your mother is an Ashford."

"Yes."

"So am I now."

He is quiet for a moment.

"You are a Moretti," he says. "You will always be a Moretti."

"I am an Ashford today. Legally. By every registry that matters. I have your name on my identification. I have your ring on my finger. I am an Ashford."

"And a Moretti."

"And a Moretti. And the owner of your casino. And the owner of your dock. And the owner of forty percent of your shipping lane."

He looks at me.

The corner of his mouth moves.

"Caterina," he says. "Adesso giochiamo."

"Now we play," I say.

He sets the veil on the dock between us. He leans back on his hands. The lake is black and the dock is wood and the villa is above us and inside the villa, Benedetta is telling her brother that I am a transaction, and my father is drinking at the bar with Roman's uncle, and Giulia is looking for me, and the photographer from the cathedral is outside the villa with a long lens and is taking photographs of us on the dock, which will be on the front page of the Como paper on Monday, which will say that the new bride and groom were seen at midnight on the dock of the villa, alone, in the dark, and which will not mention that we were sitting three feet apart, and that neither of us had touched the other.

He does not know about the photographer. I do.

I do not tell him. I do not need to.

---

He leans forward. He puts his hand on the dock between us. Not on me. On the dock. His fingers are an inch from mine.

"I am going to ask you something," he says. "Once. I will not ask it again."

"Ask."

"Was this marriage a contract."

"It is still a contract."

"Was the deed a contract."

"It was the alternative to a contract."

He looks at me.

"Was there ever any other reason you married me," he says.

I look at the lake.

The lake is very still.

The water against the pylons is even.

There is a moon behind the clouds that is making a path on the surface that I cannot see.

"Yes," I say.

He does not ask what.

I do not tell him.

He moves his hand one inch to the left.

His fingers touch mine.

The dock is cold. The water is colder. His hand is warm.

I do not move.

He does not move.

We sit like that for a long time. The villa is lit above us. The lake is black below us. The photographer is on the road. The peonies are wilting on the table. The bride's dress is pooling on the dock around me. The groom's jacket is upstairs on the back of a chair. The deed is in his jacket pocket. It has been there since the sacristy. He has not taken it out.

He is not going to sign it tonight.

He is going to sign it tomorrow.

I am going to let him.

We sit at the end of the dock until the moon comes out from behind the clouds. The path on the lake appears, silver and broken, leading to the far shore where the Italian line of the Alps cuts the sky in half.

His hand is still on mine. I am still on his dock. He is still at the end of my pier.

The truce is still holding.

---