He was standing over her in the white tie formal he had been wearing. “Are you awake?”
Jane squinted, unable to believe what she was seeing. “No. I’m still asleep and dreaming.”
“How are you feeling?”
Feeling? Was she sick? She looked around her bedroom and saw her wedding dress draped over the back of a chair. Her shoes were neatly paired beneath it. She should be wearing them. She was about to be married. Jane sat up abruptly. Too abruptly, because the background headache she was feeling was suddenly in the forefront. “What happened?” she asked.
“You fainted,” Bill said. “Just as you were starting down the aisle.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, then said with mock displeasure, “I’ve taken quite a ribbing about your drinking yourself unconscious to get out of marrying me.”
“Drinking?” Jane was mystified. “All I had was a little champagne, and that was … when was it… this morning?” She looked at the clock. “Oh my God …”
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “The guests have left for the evening. Most of them will be back tomorrow if you still want to get married.”
She lowered herself back down in the bed. “Bill, something knocked me out cold.”
He agreed with her and supplied her with any number of plausible excuses. The wedding preparations had been too rushed. She was trying to do too much, taking over his household while traveling to her job in Connecticut. His absence in the morning had put her under a great strain. Anyone might have fainted.
“Bill, it wasn’t the tension and it wasn’t the champagne. It was a drug, like the injection you get from a dentist. You start counting backwards and the next thing you know, you’re waking up.”
“We’ll screen our guests tomorrow to make sure there aren’t any dentists,” he said with a laugh, then kissed her cheek again.
“Tomorrow?” She was suddenly shocked by the idea. “Will I be okay by tomorrow?”
“Well, maybe a slight hangover, but the doctor says you’re in great shape.”
“The doctor?” She had no recollection of any doctor.
“I couldn’t just leave you there, lying in the aisle. We brought you downstairs and called the doctor. His expert opinion was that we should let you sleep it off.”
Jane thought of what the moment must have been like. Her collapsing in the aisle, the turmoil among the guests, the men carrying her down the stairs. Her first opportunity to shine as William Andrews’s new hostess and she had turned it into a fiasco. And then the doctor’s verdict, that she was drunk! At that moment she would have welcomed a diagnosis of stroke or brain disease.
“Bill, I’m so sorry,” she said. But she knew she hadn’t been drunk. Yes, she had taken a few flutes of champagne. It may have been on her breath to provide a ready diagnosis. But wine couldn’t have hit her like that. She had been fine until she drank the cup of coffee just before going up to the ceremony.
She sat bolt upright. “The coffee. There must have been something in the coffee.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He tried to ease her back down onto the pillow.
She looked around quickly. “Where’s the cup? There was some left in the cup.”
“I don’t see any cup,” Bill answered. “It’s probably in the dishwasher or on the caterer’s truck. But it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you’re all right.”
She started out of the bed. “It matters to me.” His hand restrained her. “Bill, I wasn’t drunk and I’m not hungover. Mrs. McCarty told he that she had been distracted when she was bringing up the coffee. She had to handle other things. She probably put the cup down.”
“And you think someone put something into it. Jane, that would be a terribly sick joke.”
“It isn’t a joke. Someone doesn’t want us married. Someone rigged that damn dance floor to close over my head, and someone put something into my coffee. Don’t you see …”
He was losing patience. He had been terribly frightened when his bride collapsed in front of his eyes, then mortally embarrassed by the verdict that she had fallen into a drunken stupor. Now she was raving about plots to prevent their marriage. “Jane, I want you to get a good night’s sleep. Put all this aside and we’ll talk about it in the morning.” He stood up abruptly and left her room.
Jane was the first one down in the morning, and she sat in the breakfast room even as the sunrise was beginning to paint color onto the skyline. Mrs. McCarty brought her coffee and then sat across from her. “How are you feeling, dear? You have to take better care of yourself.” She was truly concerned.
“You remember the coffee you brought up to me yesterday, just before the … ceremony began?” She couldn’t say “wedding.” There had been no wedding.
The housekeeper nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“You said you were delayed. Did you ever put the cup down on a table or something?”
“On the piano bar,” she answered. “One of the women needed a safety pin. And also on the library table. His Honor forgot to bring a Bible. That’s what took me so long. If I didn’t know you were waiting, I’d have gone back to the kitchen for a hot cup.”
Jane allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. The drink she had taken only minutes before her collapse had been available to anyone in the apartment. To Cassie and Craig, who had probably put the burr under her saddle. To the imperious Ann Packard, who was holding on to control of Bill’s affairs with all her might. To the executives who wanted William Andrews’s talents all to themselves. To Kim Annuzio, who might have both professional and romantic designs on Bill. To Robert Leavitt, who probably resented her delving into the mysteries surrounding Kay Parker’s death. There were lots of suspects who would hate to see her have any more control over the man who sustained them all.
Bill sat across from her. “You look great,” he began.
“I feel fine.”
“Fine enough for a wedding? Because if you’re not, I can have the guests called. We can put this off to a future date.”
Jane thought of all the people who might want to keep her and Bill apart. “I think I’m up to it,” she said with an enthusiastic smile.
“We’ll keep it short and simple, in the living room, and with whatever food the caterer can come up with on short notice.”
“I’ll have to wear the same dress,” she said.
“No one will notice,” Andrews answered. “They only saw it for a second.”