Chapter 4: The Night Before the Coronation
The day before the party, Vanessa arrived at Whitmore House at noon with two assistants, a florist, and a woman whose only apparent job was to follow her around holding a clipboard.
She moved through every room giving instructions.
The white roses needed to be repositioned.
The silk linens had a crease on the east table that was unacceptable.
The champagne needed to be moved from the east cellar to the west cellar because the temperature differential was two degrees warmer and she had read somewhere that two degrees mattered.
Naomi carried out each instruction without comment.
By four in the afternoon, Vanessa had worked her way to the ballroom entrance, where she stopped and looked at Naomi directly for the first time since the termination notice.
"You're still here," Vanessa said.
"The party is tomorrow, Ms.
Sterling.
The staff works through the event."
"I thought I made your situation clear."
"You did." Naomi adjusted the position of a serving tray on the side table.
"The termination is effective the morning after the party.
I'm still employed until then."
Vanessa's assistant with the clipboard looked at the floor.
"I want you assigned to the kitchen tomorrow night," Vanessa said.
"Not the ballroom."
"That's a staffing decision for the house manager."
"I'm telling you directly."
"Then you'll need to speak with Mrs.
Hargrove.
She manages the floor assignments." Naomi met her eyes briefly.
"Will there be anything else, Ms.
Sterling?"
Vanessa stared at her for a long moment.
Then she turned and walked toward the east corridor, her heels sharp on the stone floor, the clipboard assistant hurrying behind her.
That evening, Naomi found Mrs.
Hargrove in the linen room.
"Ms.
Sterling requested I be reassigned to the kitchen tomorrow night," Naomi said.
Mrs.
Hargrove, a compact woman in her sixties who had managed the Whitmore household for eleven years, looked up from the stack of napkins she was counting.
"Did she."
"Yes."
"Ms.
Sterling does not make floor assignments." Mrs.
Hargrove set the napkins down.
"You'll be on the ballroom floor.
East side, near the main entrance.
I need someone steady there in case anything goes sideways with the catering timeline."
"Understood."
Mrs.
Hargrove looked at her for a moment.
"Dorothy called me this morning."
Naomi said nothing.
"She didn't tell me why.
She just said to make sure you were on the ballroom floor." Mrs.
Hargrove picked up the napkins again.
"Dorothy Whitmore has never once called me about a floor assignment in eleven years."
Naomi nodded once and left.
She spent the rest of the evening preparing.
She pressed her uniform.
She checked the east entrance layout and memorized where each serving station would be positioned.
She thought about the envelope in her coat pocket and about Ethan, who would stand at the front of that ballroom tomorrow night in a dinner jacket, believing he was celebrating the beginning of something.
At nine o'clock, she heard Ethan's voice in the hallway outside the staff corridor.
He was on the phone, speaking quietly, and she heard him say Vanessa's name the way a man says a name he is still trying to believe in.
She did not go out.
She sat on the edge of her bed and looked at the wall and thought about Margaret Hale, who used to say that the most important moment in any situation was not the moment things went wrong.
It was the moment before, when you still had a choice about how to stand.
May you like
Tomorrow night, Naomi intended to stand correctly.
What she had not planned for was that Vanessa had already made a plan of her own — and it did not involve waiting for the party to begin.
