By six thirty p.m., Jules had given up poking at her hair. Vivian had told her it would look better down anyway.
As usual, she was right: it looked better, although it wasn’t distinctive. Jules wished she had the guts just to do what Vivian did, go for one iconic hairstyle and never change it. It would make things so much simpler. The problem was you had to be an actual icon first.
She hissed at herself, fluffed her hair with her fingers, grabbed her clutch, and hurried downstairs. Not a moment too soon. When she hit the bottom step, she heard Vivian’s bedroom door open and close, followed by her footsteps heading down the hardwoods of the hallway.
“Julia?” she called.
“I’m down here,” Jules said.
“Are you ready for dinner?”
Dinner with the Chislehursts. Even more surprising than all the rest of this Christmas was the fact that people named Chislehurst actually existed. “Yes. And Jimmy’s outside with the car.”
Vivian came down the stairs. She wore a basic black sheath, but over it she wore a laser-cut black leather jacket that Jules recognized from the most recent Akris collection. She’d also put on bold red lipstick and towering red stilettos to match.
Damn. Someday Jules hoped to pull off that effortless confidence.
For now, she aimed for presentable in the black slacks she’d worn yesterday, dressed up with a purple crepe blouse and a chunky necklace. She straightened as Vivian gave her the once-over.
After a moment, Vivian nodded briskly and headed for the coat closet. She withdrew a wool swing coat that somehow managed to pull her ensemble together even better. Meanwhile, Jules was just glad her green peacoat didn’t have any stains on it from traveling.
She took in a deep breath and followed Vivian down the front steps. The day had been fair and warmer than yesterday, so at least there wasn’t any ice to navigate in high heels.
“Who’s going to be at this dinner?” she asked as they drove off. “Uh, the Schumanns won’t be there, will they?”
Vivian’s lips quirked in a half smile. “No. Herr Schumann and his heinous hausfrau will not be in attendance tonight.”
Jules longed to laugh but didn’t dare.
“It’s a much smaller gathering, and you won’t be seated next to me. Try not to disgrace either of us. Or Du Jour.”
Jules nodded, still biting her lip to keep from grinning. Vivian seemed to have regained her spunk in the last hour. She had more color in her cheeks, though Jules couldn’t be sure how much of that was credited to the best makeup in the world.
“What?” Vivian asked, not looking at Jules.
Jules twitched. “Nothing,” she said quickly. “You look nice.”
“As opposed to death warmed over. Yes, I do.”
Jules smiled again and bit her lip again. She did more lip biting around Vivian than she’d done in her whole life before Du Jour, she was pretty sure.
“Is something wrong?” Vivian asked.
“No,” Jules said, but a giggle escaped her.
“I never noticed before that you snickered this much.” Vivian did not sound pleased about it.
“Sorry,” Jules said, giggled again, and swallowed to get herself under control. “You know, you said funny things, so I laughed.” She shrugged helplessly.
“I’m well-known for my sense of humor.” Vivian rolled her eyes.
“Well, no,” Jules admitted, “but—”
“Why don’t you save your voice for the party?” Vivian suggested.
Jules took the not-so-subtle hint and sulked until Jimmy pulled up in front of a fancy London house that was bigger than Vivian’s.
She’d never understand why Vivian had to be unpleasant even when there was no need for it. She’d deliberately said something funny; Jules had laughed; Vivian had made Jules feel stupid for laughing at something funny she’d deliberately said. And she’d flown Jules all the way over here on Christmas with no explanation, talked to her like she was an idiot, and hadn’t even eaten more than a few bites of the melon Jules had meticulously sliced for her this afternoon, even though she needed the calories.
By the time a real live honest-to-God butler held the door open for them both, Jules had worked herself into an impressive snit and was very glad she wasn’t sitting next to Vivian at dinner. But she still had to stand by Vivian’s side during the premeal mingling. Lady Chislehurst had kissed Vivian’s cheeks, thanked her effusively for coming, then turned the two of them loose on the ten other people hanging around in the parlor.
Vivian did most of the introductions. At least these people seemed a little friendlier and more laid-back. They weren’t all out to cut each other’s throats, for one thing.
Jules got her fair share of strange looks, though. This wasn’t a meeting of publishing heavies after all. It was a purely social gathering, and there was no excuse for Vivian to have an assistant at her side.
Vivian made no effort to explain, saying simply, “This is my assistant, Julia,” leaving it at that while she went on to further pleasantries.
Still irritated, Jules tried to not even look at Vivian. She focused instead on the new people she was meeting, most of whom seemed a lot nicer than Vivian. It would probably be much more fun to work for them.
So she shook hands, smiled and made small talk, and did her best to pretend that Vivian wasn’t there, except as a voice to her right that introduced her to people out of thin air.
The dinner gong (the Chislehursts had a dinner gong?) rang at eight sharp. The party drifted toward the dining room. To Jules’s astonishment, Vivian took hold of her arm.
“Stop sulking,” she muttered.
Jules couldn’t deny it, but she could protest. “I was being nice, wasn’t I?”
“Oh yes,” Vivian said and stuck her nose into the air as she headed for the dining room, letting go of Jules’s arm. “You just might nice us all to death.”
“What?” Jules touched her arm as she followed Vivian. Was her elbow tingling?
“For God’s sake, laugh if you have to and spare me the cold shoulder. Now, do your job.”
Jules’s head spun as she took her seat between two sweet old matrons, one of whom had already shown dangerous signs of talking about her three small dogs.
Do your job? But Jules had been doing her job. She’d been sweet as pie to everybody but Vivian, who didn’t count because Jules was here to schmooze with other people, not with her. They weren’t even sitting together. And Jules doubted anybody else would have noticed she’d been pissed off. So the “cold shoulder” remark must have meant…
Had it bothered Vivian personally?
The question gnawed at Jules all through dinner, and she was grateful that she didn’t have to do much more than make sympathetic noises about the stock exchange and exclaim over toy poodles with the old woman sitting across the table.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Breed standards. So important.”
The old woman tilted her head. “It’s lovely to meet a young person who understands. Especially an American!”
Best not to mention Jules’s knowledge of dog breeding was limited to watching Best In Show. “It’s a lost art, ma’am.”
The old woman beamed.
Jules and Vivian stayed for the whole meal this time. Jules was glad because the food was delicious, although Vivian had made clear she wasn’t the best judge of such things. And she needed time to get her bearings. By the time the butler helped Vivian into her coat, Jules, bolstered by good food and coffee, felt marginally more in control of herself.
Vivian didn’t even wait for the door to close behind them before she said, “I despise passive-aggressiveness.”
“Um…”
Vivian headed down the steps toward the car, where Jimmy waited to open the door for her. Jules hurried after her. “That sort of attitude is precisely what I don’t need. How many times do I have to tell you? If a problem arises, you don’t wait for someone to fix it for you. You deal with it.”
“Deal with it? Wait.” Jules stopped dead on the last step and stared at her in utter disbelief. “Are you saying you want me to tell you when I’m upset with you?”
Because that couldn’t be right. No way. Vivian didn’t want to know when Jules was upset about the weather, much less anything important.
“I want never to have this discussion again.” Vivian looked impatiently at her. “That’s what I want. There’s no time for childishness.” Then she slid into the car.
Jules got in at the other door, welcoming the warmth and softness of the seats. It almost made up for her utter confusion. She’d just lost all the equanimity she’d managed to build up during dinner.
But she should have expected as much. Childishness? Easy for Vivian to say when everyone worked on the assumption that she’d fire them for expressing discontentment.
Jules glanced at Vivian, who was making a great show of looking in her handbag. Jimmy pulled away from the curb.
“Uh, sorry,” Jules said.
“Mm,” Vivian said without looking up.
“I’ll try and be more…direct.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And you won’t get mad at me?” Jules pressed because it seemed important to clear that up.
Vivian whisked a small mirror from her bag and peered into it. She prodded the skin beneath her eye. “The facialist wasn’t too bad.”
“Vivian—”
She snapped the mirror shut. “What did I just say?”
It was clearly a rhetorical question. Jules was too stunned to answer anyway, and they were silent for the rest of the ride home.
Well, mostly silent. As Jimmy pulled up to the curb, Vivian asked, “So how much of that Christmas pudding ended up on your hips?” She gave Jules an arch look.
Oh. A test as to how she could handle Vivian being a jerk? Jules lifted her chin and remembered how the red jumpsuit clung to her curves. “My hips, uh, look so good I can pretend I didn’t even hear you say that.”
Vivian lowered her eyes to half-mast and seemed bored.
“Oh, come on,” Jules protested. “That was okay, right? I’ve never tried to clap back at you before!” As if she had witty comebacks lined up to prove she could give as good as she got.
“Well,” Vivian sighed, “I guess you can’t be good at everything.”