Page 34 of Under Her Protection

Charlotte's eyes lingered a beat past polite on Leo's jaw, which was the Langford full-spectrum assessment completing, and then she nodded once and reached for her glass. "Dominique chose well, I see."

"She always does."

"She does. Sit."

Vivienne did not sit. She took her armchair, the one that was hers, and Leo, without discussion, placed herself against the back wall by the door, her hands loose, her eye on the room. The Circle women had seen bodyguards come and go. It was no big deal for them to have Leo here.

Isabella's dark eyes, across the room, found Vivienne's, and Isabella lifted an eyebrow half a centimeter. Vivienne gave her nothing in return.

Sienna, who had never in her life respected a silence, leaned forward on the arm of her settee, swung her glass, and said, “This bodyguard. Are we allowed to talk to her?"

Leo, at the wall, answered before Vivienne could. "Madame is allowed to talk to whom she wishes."

"I was asking about her, not to her."

"Ask me. I am in the room."

Sienna laughed, delighted. "There you go, Charlotte. It speaks."

"Sienna." Vivienne’s voice was a warning.

"Relax, Viv. I like her."

"Sienna!”

"Cole. Have you been shot at in the last year?”

Leo, without hesitation: "Yes."

"Recently."

"Three months ago."

"Hit?”

"No."

"Good."

Sienna sat back, satisfied. Isabella, to Vivienne's left, smothered a laugh in a napkin. Charlotte watched the exchange without comment, which was a Langford approval.

Vivienne did not look at Leo.

She did not need to. She had watched Leo over a week, and she understood, by now, that Leo did not mind Sienna. Leo did not mind any of them, which was an unexpected grace.

They ate. They talked. Isabella held the room half the time, Charlotte held it the other half, and Sienna kept the pressure uneven. Vivienne listened, contributed, drank her Armagnac. She did not look at Leo once in an hour. She was conscious, through the whole hour, of the angle of Leo's shoulder at the wall.

Charlotte spoke, at some point, about a piece in the British press that had named her in connection with a vote she had cast thirteen years ago, a piece she had decided to let run because a statement, she said, would dignify it. Her grey eyes rested, when she said this, on Vivienne, and the rest did not need to be said. There was, in the Circle, a current running this year about certain women and certain old choices and certain men in rooms with longer memories than had previously been convenient. Vivienne acknowledged the look and did not respond to it. One did not respond to a Langford acknowledgment; one received it.

Isabella, for her part, tilted the conversation onto safer ground and kept it there. A designer in Milan. A friend's daughter who had refused to marry. An anecdote about Sienna's coach that even Sienna pretended she had not heard before. It was a practiced performance, in service of Vivienne, and Vivienne took it in.

Near the end of the main course the air shifted, the way it sometimes did in this building, and without being announced Seraphine Noir passed the velvet doorway. She did not come in. She paused at the threshold. Her black dress was the same black dress. Her dark eyes moved over the four Circle women at the table, rested a fraction longer on Vivienne, and crossed to Leo at the wall for the shortest measured beat. Leo, who had not been introduced to Seraphine and had not been warned about her, dropped her chin once in acknowledgement, which was the correct response, and which she had done without coaching. Seraphine's mouth moved in a thing that was almost, almost, a smile. Then she was gone.

No one spoke for a breath after the doorway was empty.

Sienna exhaled. "I hate when she does that."

"You do not," Isabella said.