The Family Table
By the time the bride kissed the groom, Aoife had already stopped one uncle from livestreaming the vows, relocated a sobbing flower girl to a chair beside her grandmother, and discovered that champagne satin showed stress sweat with the honesty of a tax audit.
The ceremony itself had gone almost beautifully, which was to say nobody had fainted, objected, or set the historic candlesticks on fire. Charlotte had cried exactly the correct amount. Declan had looked at her as if every expensive thing in the room had become irrelevant. The string quartet had found the emotional centre of the music without making it sound like a pharmaceutical advert. Even Mrs Fairchild had managed to dab one eye without weaponising the tissue.
Aoife stood at the end of the bridesmaid line with her bouquet held low, smiling for photographs she had no business appearing in, while the photographer called out arrangements with the confidence of a man who had never met a family system he could not worsen.
“Bride’s side! Lovely. Groom’s side! Wonderful. Now immediate family only.”
Aoife took one discreet step back.
Charlotte’s hand shot out and caught her wrist.
“Stay,” the bride whispered.
“I am absolutely not immediate family.”
“You are today.”
“That’s not how genealogy works.”
“It is how surviving my mother works.”
The photographer lifted his camera. “Perfect. Everyone closer.”
Aoife felt the soft trap close.
She smiled.
Not her real smile. The professional one. The one that said she was delighted, relaxed, and not mentally calculating how many generations of Fairchilds might later discover an unfamiliar Irish woman tucked into their wedding album like a clerical error in lipstick.
Cian stood two people away, beside Declan, his hands folded in front of him and his expression pitched somewhere between patience and a man considering escape through a stained-glass window. He had changed into a dark suit, properly cut but worn as if formality was something he tolerated for his brother rather than believed in. The clean white shirt made the coffee incident feel private, which was absurd. Nothing about spilled coffee in a hotel corridor qualified as intimacy.
Still, when the photographer said, “Everyone look here,” Aoife felt Cian glance at her before he looked at the camera.
The shutter clicked.
There. Evidence.
That was the trouble with photographs. They made lies look organized.
After the family set, after the bridal party set, after the shot where everyone pretended to laugh at nothing because apparently modern romance required dental records, Aoife released Charlotte’s bouquet to a junior coordinator and stepped toward the side door.
Freedom was six feet away.
“Aoife, darling.”
Mrs Fairchild’s voice caught her by the spine.
Aoife turned with the calm of a woman who had not just considered hiding inside a floral arch.
“Yes?”
“Family photographs are finished, but we’re taking a few informal ones in the library before cocktail hour. You must join us.”
“I should check the ballroom.”
“Nonsense. Staff will manage.”
Aoife’s smile did not move. Inside, several small parts of her began to laugh.
Staff will manage.
Staff was her. Staff was Niamh downstairs with a clipboard and a moral injury. Staff was Maeve the florist rearranging flowers that had been bullied across international borders. Staff was the chef, the servers, the porter quietly replacing a shattered glass before anyone’s silk shoe found it. Staff was the invisible scaffolding holding this entire lovely, expensive, emotionally unstable day upright.
But Aoife was in satin now, and satin confused people who had never had to choose between being seen and being paid.
“Mrs Fairchild,” she said, lowering her voice. “That’s kind, but I truly need to work.”
The older woman studied her. “Charlotte told me you’ve been very helpful.”
“That’s the job.”
“Today you’re a guest.”
The word was neat. Polished. Dangerous.
Guest meant visible. Guest meant seated. Guest meant fed before midnight. Guest meant someone might ask where she had gone to school, who her people were, whether her family still lived in Ireland, whether she summered anywhere, as if summer were a verb owned by certain tax brackets.
Guest meant she could not retreat to the service corridor where she knew the language of problems.
Cian appeared beside them with the timing of either a rescue or a fresh complication.
“Mother,” he said.
Not stepmother, Aoife noticed. Mother. Chosen for peace or habit or because weddings punished accuracy.
Mrs Fairchild smiled up at him. “Cian. I was just telling Aoife she must join the family in the library.”
“She can’t.”
Aoife turned her head slowly.
There were ways to be helped by a man that did not make a woman want to stab him with a bouquet pin. That had not been one of them.
Mrs Fairchild’s brows rose. “Can’t she?”
“She has a ballroom to check.”
“I believe the hotel has employees.”
“And I believe Charlotte hired Aoife because the employees require command.”
The smile on Mrs Fairchild’s face became very small and very sharp. “How marvellous, to hear such faith in hierarchy from you.”
Cian did not flinch. “I’ve always believed in people who know what they’re doing.”
It was not an apology for his earlier command. It was not quite defence, either. It was a statement laid on the floor between them, solid enough to step on.
Aoife hated that she appreciated it.
“Five minutes,” Mrs Fairchild said. “In the library. Then she may return to saving us from ourselves.”
“I can spare three,” Aoife said.
Mrs Fairchild looked amused despite herself. “You negotiate like a solicitor.”
“I grew up with sisters.”
“Three minutes, then.”
The older woman moved away in a drift of silk and authority.
Aoife waited until she was out of hearing range before she turned on Cian.
“She can’t?”
His mouth tightened. “You were trying to escape.”
“I was trying to work.”
“You were also trying to escape.”
“Both can be professionally true.”
“I gave you an exit.”
“You gave me a father.”
“A what?”
“A man deciding in public what a woman can and cannot do. Very traditional. Should we fetch you a newspaper and a chair by the fire?”
A flash of surprise crossed his face, followed by something like embarrassment. He looked away, jaw working once.
“You’re right,” he said.
Aoife had been ready for defence. She had a whole drawer of responses for defence. Men defended themselves like dogs guarding stolen sausages. But Cian simply accepted the hit, which left her standing there with all her sharpened tools and nowhere to put them.
“I shouldn’t have said it like that,” he added.
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“I was trying to help.”
“I know.”
“That doesn’t make it less annoying.”
“No.”
This time she nearly smiled.
He glanced toward the ballroom. Through the open doors, guests were beginning to drift toward cocktail hour, wrapped in perfume, wool coats, and the warm buzz that followed a ceremony safely completed. A small boy in a miniature suit slid across the polished floor on his knees until a horrified woman caught him by the collar. Somewhere near the bar, an aunt had already begun telling a story too loudly.
“Three minutes in the library,” Cian said. “Then I’ll cause a distraction.”
“What kind?”
“I’ll say the candlesticks look Protestant.”
Aoife did laugh then, quick and unwilling.
“There he is,” she said.
“Who?”
“The man Charlotte said was good in a crisis.”
His expression closed before she could read what the compliment had touched.
“I’m good at moving heavy things,” he said.
“So are forklifts. Don’t undersell yourself.”
Niamh appeared at Aoife’s elbow like a judgmental fairy in black trousers. “Ballroom is clean. Seating chart is intact. Table nine is already unhappy, but they came in that way. Also, your left shoe is bleeding.”
Aoife looked down.
A thin red line had appeared above her heel where the borrowed shoe had bitten through skin.
“That’s not bleeding,” she said. “That’s Boston welcoming me.”
Cian’s gaze dropped to her foot.
“Sit down.”
Aoife pointed at him. “Careful.”
He held up both hands. “Recommendation. Not command.”
“Better.”
Niamh looked between them with naked interest.
Aoife gave her the kind of stare that ended careers.
“Do not,” she said.
“I said nothing.”
“Your face wrote a novella.”
“It’s a gift.”
“Use it downstairs.”
Niamh handed her a tiny blister plaster from the emergency kit and vanished with a grin.
Aoife was forced to sit on a narrow bench outside the ballroom while Cian turned politely away so she could deal with the shoe. That irritated her too, because the courtesy was correct. She preferred her annoyances poorly behaved. They were easier to file.
The shoe came off with a small wet sting. Aoife hissed under her breath and pressed the plaster over the raw skin.
“You have done this before,” Cian said, still turned away.
“Been maimed by occasion wear? Many times.”
“Saved a wedding by becoming part of it.”
“No.”
The honesty slipped out before she dressed it.
He looked back then, not at her foot, but at her face.
Aoife put the shoe on again. “I’ve fixed a lot of things. Not this.”
“Why did you say yes?”
She stood too quickly and regretted it when the heel protested.
“Because Charlotte needed me.”
“That’s not the same as owing her.”
“Spoken like a man who has never been the only useful woman in a room.”
His face changed. Not offended. Winded, maybe. As if the sentence had found something older than the morning.
“My mother was,” he said.
Aoife stopped.
There were moments in conversation when a door opened where a wall had been. You could ignore it. Most people did. Politeness was built on ignoring doors.
But there was something in the way he said mother. Not Mrs Fairchild. Not the elegant woman currently arranging bodies in the library like flowers. Another mother. The Donegal one. The one Charlotte had described in passing, a name Aoife had not retained because the schedule had been screaming at her.
“She raised you?” Aoife asked.
“She raised everyone who came near her, whether they asked or not.”
“That sounds familiar.”
A faint smile touched his mouth and left. “She used to say being needed was a poor substitute for being loved, but women took what currency was accepted.”
The sentence was too good and too painful to have been invented on the spot.
Aoife looked away first.
The corridor had become busier. Guests passed in clusters. A bridesmaid with a wine glass already in hand waved at Aoife as if they had been friends for years. Someone called for more canapés. Somewhere a baby began crying with excellent projection.
“Your mother sounds clever,” Aoife said.
“She was.”
Was.
There it was, small and enormous.
“I’m sorry,” Aoife said.
He nodded once.
No performance. No invitation for sympathy. Just the acceptance of a condolence placed carefully between them.
Before the silence could become too alive, Declan appeared at the end of the corridor, beaming, flushed, newly married, and unmistakably terrified of his own happiness.
“There you are,” he said to Cian. “Dad’s asking for you.”
Cian’s whole body adjusted. Not visibly to most people, perhaps, but Aoife noticed. Shoulders bracing. Attention narrowing. The useful son returning to duty.
“Where is he?”
“Library. Mam has him near the fire. He wants the chair moved. Or the candlesticks moved. Or possibly the entire hotel shifted six inches left. Hard to say.”
“I’ll go.”
Declan caught Aoife’s hands before she could escape. “Aoife. You saved us.”
“Several people contributed. Including aggressive floristry.”
“No, seriously.” His eyes shone with the reckless sincerity of a groom two glasses of adrenaline deep. “Charlotte told me. About Gemma. About the dress. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Stay for dinner.”
“No.”
The answer left her mouth so fast both brothers blinked.
Aoife softened it with a smile. “I mean, that’s very kind, but I’m working.”
“You’ve worked enough.”
“Not how weddings function, sadly.”
“Charlotte wants you there.”
“Charlotte wants the day not to collapse. I’m part of that infrastructure, not the guest list.”
Declan frowned. “You’re in the photographs now. Bit late to be infrastructure.”
Aoife could feel Cian watching her, quiet as a held breath.
“Three minutes in the library,” she said. “That’s the treaty.”
Declan looked at his brother. “You negotiated this?”
“I was present when negotiations occurred.”
“Miracle.”
The library smelled of old paper, leather, fire smoke, and expensive restraint. The hotel had staged it for photographs with trays of champagne and small plates balanced on side tables, but the room had good bones underneath the event dressing: dark shelves, green-shaded lamps, a marble fireplace, tall windows looking out at the winter-white street. The Fairchild family filled it as if they owned not only the room but the air’s right to circulate.
Aoife saw the groom’s father immediately.
Patrick Fairchild sat in a wingback chair near the fire, his left side held stiffly, one hand resting on a cane, his face handsome in the damaged way of men who had once taken command for granted and now resented the body for requiring negotiation. His eyes, however, were keen. Sharper than his speech, Aoife guessed before he opened his mouth.
Cian went to him first.
No fuss. No announcement. He crouched beside the chair and listened while Patrick spoke in a low, rough voice. Whatever was said, Cian nodded, adjusted the angle of the chair slightly away from the heat, moved a small table within reach of Patrick’s right hand, and replaced the champagne flute with a glass of water.
Tiny acts.
Quiet care.
The sort no one photographed because it did not sparkle.
Aoife looked away because watching felt invasive, and because something in her chest had gone soft where she had not approved softness.
Charlotte pulled her into a group near the window. There were cousins, half-siblings, elegant women, several men with identical financial-sector haircuts, and a teenage girl who looked at Aoife’s dress and whispered, “Iconic,” with such solemnity that Aoife nearly curtsied.
Then came the questions.
Where in Galway was she from?
Had she and Charlotte met at university?
Was she staying in Boston long?
Did she know the O’Malleys of Salthill?
Aoife lied lightly and precisely, using just enough truth to keep the fabric from tearing. She was from Mayo originally, yes, but had spent time in Galway. No, not university with Charlotte; a charity gala connection, which sounded vague because all wealthy friendships sounded vague. Boston was home for now. Ireland was home too. No, she did not know the O’Malleys of Salthill, but she wished them nothing but happiness.
The teenage girl snorted into her lemonade.
Aoife liked her immediately.
Mrs Fairchild watched from beside the mantel.
Aoife felt the scrutiny without returning it. She had learned young that some women tested you because someone had tested them first and never stopped. Mrs Fairchild’s gaze did not feel merely snobbish. It felt worried. Protective in a way that wore cruelty because cruelty had better shoes.
“Charlotte says you plan events,” said a man with silver hair and the relaxed confidence of someone who had never carried a chair in his life.
“I do.”
“Weddings mostly?”
“Weddings. Corporate events. Fundraisers. Once, a retirement party for a police dog.”
The teenage girl made a choking sound.
The silver-haired man smiled politely. “And do you enjoy it?”
“Enjoy is a strong word. I respect it.”
“What an interesting distinction.”
“It’s honest. Weddings are beautiful, but they’re also logistics wearing perfume.”
Cian, across the room, looked over at that.
The man chuckled. “You should put that on a business card.”
“I’m trying to stay employable.”
A server passed with champagne. Aoife took a glass because refusing would draw more attention, then did not drink because empty stomachs and borrowed identities were a foolish pairing.
Patrick Fairchild’s voice cut across the room, rough but amused.
“She’s the one with sense, then.”
The room quieted.
Aoife turned.
Patrick was looking straight at her. So was everyone else.
Cian remained crouched beside his father’s chair, one hand resting on the arm, not possessive, not infantilizing, simply there in case balance or breath became an issue.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Aoife said.
Patrick’s mouth pulled to one side. “You Irish?”
A dangerous question in a room committed to pretending she was one thing and not another.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Mayo.”
“Good.”
Several Fairchilds laughed, though not all seemed to know why.
Patrick lifted his glass of water in a small salute. “Donegal mother,” he said, nodding toward Cian. “Boston father. Ruined the lad entirely.”
“I’d say he was damaged before geography got involved,” Aoife replied.
The silence before laughter was only half a second, but she felt Cian’s eyes on her through all of it.
Patrick laughed first.
It came rough, uneven, dragged from a body that had made laughter harder work than it should be. But it was real, and because it was real, the room followed.
Cian looked down at the carpet, and for the first time all day, Aoife saw him undone. Not much. A tiny crack. His father laughing had reached somewhere all the clean shirts and crisis competence could not protect.
Mrs Fairchild noticed too.
Her face changed so quickly Aoife almost missed it. The elegant guard slipped, and beneath it was a woman exhausted by fear. Fear for a husband. Fear for sons who had never fit neatly into one family frame. Fear that a wedding meant to join people might expose how badly they had been patched together.
Then the guard returned.
“Dinner begins in forty minutes,” Mrs Fairchild announced. “We should let the bride and groom breathe.”
Aoife seized the opening. “And I should check the ballroom.”
Charlotte squeezed her hand. “You’ll sit with us.”
“I won’t.”
“Aoife.”
“Bride,” Aoife said softly. “Let me do my job. That’s the gift I know how to give.”
Charlotte’s face gentled, and that was almost worse than argument.
“All right,” she said. “But you eat.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
Cian walked her to the library door. Not because she needed escorting. Because, Aoife suspected, he needed one quiet hallway before returning to the emotional architecture of his family.
Outside, the corridor was cooler. The wedding noise became muffled behind the door.
“You won my father,” he said.
“I didn’t know there was a competition.”
“There usually is.”
“Prize?”
“Permanent obligation.”
“Ah. Irish family rules, then.”
He leaned one shoulder against the wall. For a man in a tailored suit, he still somehow looked like he belonged beside a broken gate in bad weather, assessing what needed fixing before anyone else noticed the hinge.
“You handled them well,” he said.
“I handled them for three minutes.”
“Still.”
Aoife looked at him. “You sound surprised.”
“I sound impressed.”
That was worse than that’ll do.
Impressed had weight. Impressed came too close to seen.
She reached for humour because humour was a door with a lock. “Careful now. Another compliment and I’ll invoice separately.”
“I thought you did that after.”
The echo of their earlier exchange settled between them.
After.
“What happens now?” he asked.
“Cocktail hour. Dinner. Speeches. Cake. Dancing. Someone loses an earring. Someone cries in a bathroom. Your cousin requests a song that should be illegal. I keep the machinery moving until the bride and groom escape.”
“And you?”
“What about me?”
“When do you escape?”
Aoife adjusted the bracelet Charlotte had insisted she wear, a slim borrowed thing that flashed at her wrist. “After the last vendor is paid, the gifts are secured, the drunk uncle is redirected, the cake knife is found, the mother of the bride has thanked me like she didn’t terrorize me for nine months, and my assistant stops looking like she might unionize.”
“So never.”
“Now you understand weddings.”
He smiled faintly, but it did not last.
“You should eat,” he said.
“Charlotte already tried that.”
“Charlotte’s kind. I’m stubborn.”
“I’ve met stubborn. Stubborn raised me.”
“Then it’ll recognize the family resemblance.”
There was a beat.
Something had shifted, not dramatically, not enough for music. But the air between them had begun keeping receipts. A cloth handed over. A defended boundary. A corrected mistake. A father’s laugh. A question asked twice.
When do you escape?
Aoife did not want to answer because the truth was shabby.
She did not escape. She finished. She cleaned up. She went home after midnight to her small apartment in East Boston, took off the shoes that had punished her, ate toast standing at the sink, and told herself this was independence. She called her sister on Sundays if neither of them was too tired. She sent money when nephews needed school things. She built beautiful days for other people and kept her own life manageable enough to survive.
It was not tragic.
She refused to make it tragic.
It was ordinary.
Ordinary loneliness wore sensible shoes and paid invoices on time.
The ballroom doors opened downstairs, releasing a wave of applause. Cocktail hour was shifting. Time pulled at her like a child at a sleeve.
“I have to go,” she said.
“I know.”
“You should go back to your family.”
“I know that too.”
Neither moved for one ridiculous second.
Then Niamh’s voice crackled through the hidden earpiece. “Aoife, table twelve is asking whether the salmon is sustainably anxious or just regular salmon.”
Aoife closed her eyes. “Copy.”
Cian’s mouth twitched.
“Sustainably anxious?”
“Boston is a rich ecosystem.”
She started toward the stairs, but he spoke before she reached the corner.
“Aoife.”
She turned.
He had one hand in his pocket, the other loose at his side, and his expression had returned to its usual guarded steadiness. But his voice was softer.
“There’s a staff meal behind the kitchen at seven. I checked.”
“You checked?”
“You weren’t going to.”
It should have annoyed her.
It did annoy her.
It also landed, warm and practical, right where Charlotte’s earlier sentence had bruised.
I’m sorry nobody ever does this for you.
Aoife lifted her chin. “Are you always this invasive with sandwiches?”
“Only in emergencies.”
“And am I an emergency?”
“No,” Cian said. “You’re the emergency plan. Apparently someone should maintain it.”
The words were too simple to defend against.
So Aoife did what she always did when something threatened to matter.
She made a joke and kept moving.
“Seven, then,” she said. “If the salmon doesn’t unionize first.”
She turned down the stairs before he could see her smile.
By the time she reached the ballroom, the wedding had begun its next transformation. The ceremony hush was gone, replaced by clinking glasses, perfume, laughter, and the soft roar of people settling into celebration now that sacred things had been survived. Staff moved through the room like choreography. The candlesticks glowed along the east windows, unlit but catching light from the sconces exactly as if they had always belonged there.
Cian had placed them well.
Aoife hated that too.
She found Niamh near table twelve, arguing with a guest in a velvet jacket about fish feelings.
“No salmon is emotionally evaluated before service,” Niamh was saying. “But I can ask the chef whether it died fulfilled.”
Aoife stepped in. “Everything all right?”
The guest looked Aoife up and down. Satin confused him, as it had confused everyone. “Are you staff?”
Aoife smiled.
“Yes,” she said. “And a bridesmaid. It’s a growth industry.”
Niamh coughed into her clipboard.
The man blinked, decided she was either too important or too strange to challenge, and sat down.
Small victory. No confetti required.
Aoife spent the next hour where she understood herself best: between problems. A missing vegan meal. A microphone producing feedback like a haunted kettle. Two cousins rearranging place cards because of a disagreement from 2018. A child under table six building a fort out of napkins. The groom’s aunt asking whether the band knew anything “less modern” and then requesting a song from 1997.
Through it all, the dress moved around her like a borrowed version of grace.
Guests kept greeting her as if she belonged. Staff kept looking to her because she did. The two truths crossed and tangled until Aoife no longer knew which lie was safer.
At 6:58, Niamh appeared with her coat over one arm and murder in her eyes.
“If you don’t eat, I’m telling your sister.”
“You don’t have Ciara’s number.”
“I have initiative.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“Kitchen. Now.”
Aoife checked the room. Charlotte was laughing with Declan at the head table. Mrs Fairchild was speaking to Patrick, one hand resting briefly on the back of his chair. Cian stood behind them, listening to a cousin, but his gaze lifted as if he had felt Aoife look.
He nodded once toward the service door.
Of course he had noticed the time.
Aoife rolled her eyes so he could see it.
His smile answered, small and private.
Dangerous man, she thought.
Not because he was charming. Charm she could resist. Charm was a party trick with teeth. Dangerous because he noticed need and moved quietly toward it. Dangerous because he corrected himself. Dangerous because he seemed to understand that care was not an announcement but a chair moved closer, a glass of water placed within reach, a staff meal checked without applause.
Aoife went through the service door before the thought could grow roots.
The kitchen was heat, noise, stainless steel, and blessed reality. No satin illusions here. Chefs shouted. Plates moved. Someone cursed lovingly at a tray of potatoes. Niamh steered Aoife to a narrow staff table near the back where a covered plate waited.
Sandwich. Crisps. Pickle. A small bowl of soup.
Nothing fancy.
Everything holy.
Aoife sat.
For the first time since dawn, no one was looking at her.
She took one bite of the sandwich and nearly made an embarrassing sound.
Niamh sat across from her, watching with satisfaction. “There. Human again.”
“Don’t overstate.”
“You’re smiling at bread.”
“Bread has never betrayed me.”
“Bold claim from an Irishwoman.”
Aoife kicked her under the table, gently.
The service door opened.
Cian came in carrying two cups of tea.
Niamh looked at him, looked at Aoife, and stood so quickly her chair scraped.
“I have suddenly remembered a professional obligation elsewhere.”
“Niamh,” Aoife warned.
“Several obligations. Possibly urgent. Definitely far away.”
She vanished into the kitchen traffic with the subtlety of a marching band.
Cian set one cup in front of Aoife.
“Tea,” he said.
“I identified it from context.”
“Milk. No sugar.”
Aoife stared at the cup.
She had taken coffee all morning. She had not told him how she drank tea. But she had told Niamh, maybe, in the corridor. Or he had guessed because most Irish people had opinions about tea before politics. Or he had noticed some tiny thing she had not meant to reveal.
Milk. No sugar.
Exactly right.
“You’re very sure of yourself,” she said.
“No. I’m very hopeful.”
That made her look up.
Cian sat across from her, not too close, his own tea between his hands. In the kitchen light, away from the library’s polish and the ballroom’s gold, he looked tired again. Not old. Not weak. Just honestly worn. A man who had carried enough invisible furniture for one day.
For once, Aoife did not reach for the next task.
She picked up the tea.
The first sip was hot and strong and correct.
“Dangerous,” she said.
“The tea?”
“The accuracy.”
He looked down at his cup. “My mother believed tea was an x-ray of character.”
“Harsh woman.”
“Fair.”
“What would mine say?”
“That you don’t trust sweet things you didn’t earn.”
Aoife’s hand stilled around the cup.
Outside the kitchen, a burst of applause rose from the ballroom. Someone had begun a speech. Laughter followed, big and warm and safely distant.
Aoife set the cup down. “You always do that?”
“What?”
“Say one honest thing like you’re putting a nail in a wall.”
His gaze lifted to hers.
“No,” he said. “Only when the wall needs holding.”
It should have been too much. Too direct. Too early in a day built from lies and satin. But it was not a declaration. It was not even flirtation in any easy sense. It was simply Cian, saying what he had noticed and letting her decide whether to hate him for it.
Aoife should have hated him a little.
Instead, she took another sip of tea.
“Eat your sandwich, Fairchild,” she said.
“I didn’t bring one.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
He smiled. “I’ve been told.”
She cut hers in half with the plastic knife and pushed one piece across the table before she could think better of it.
Cian looked at the sandwich, then at her.
“Terms and conditions?” he asked.
“Yes. No personal questions, no speeches, no eye contact during emotional music, and if anyone asks, I did not share with a guest because that violates at least six class systems.”
He took the sandwich.
“Reasonable.”
They ate in the corner of the kitchen while the wedding roared on without them, two useful people briefly removed from circulation. It lasted four minutes, maybe five. Nothing happened. No hands touched. No secrets were spilled. No promise was made.
But when Aoife stood to return to the ballroom, the ache in her heel had eased, the tea had steadied her, and the borrowed bracelet at her wrist no longer felt quite like a costume.
At the service door, Cian reached past her, not touching, and pushed it open.
The sound of the wedding came back in a bright wave.
“Ready?” he asked.
Aoife looked out at the lights, the tables, the family she had been borrowed into and the work she had not finished.
“No,” she said.
His expression softened.
“Good,” he said. “Neither am I.”
Then they stepped back into the celebration together.