The elderly man in the tuxedo was my grandfather, Alistair, and the estate was his. What Marguerite did not know, what she had never bothered to learn in the two years she spent treating me as beneath her son, was that my family had money of its own, quiet money, the kind that does not announce itself. She had assumed the modest venue she cancelled was the ceiling of what my side could manage, and that saving Sebastian twelve thousand dollars made her the practical hero of the day. My grandfather had offered his estate for the reception a year earlier, and I had declined, because I wanted to pay for my own wedding and not begin a marriage owing anyone. His offer had always stayed open. The one phone call I made after Marguerite laughed at me was to him.
He had the garden ready in under an hour because his staff had, at his instruction, been quietly prepared as a contingency the entire time, precisely because he had met Marguerite once and did not trust her. He is a careful man. He froze her not with wealth but with recognition, because the last time she had seen him was at an engagement dinner where she had lectured a soft-spoken older gentleman in an off-the-rack blazer about how young couples overspend, never asking his name, never imagining he was anyone. He let her. He found it instructive.
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