My eyes traveled the room. I felt, at some level, like this must be a trick question. Penn was incredibly wealthy, but it probably wasn’t him. My eyes skittered around the massive space as I tried to figure out how the hell I should answer this.
“I don’t know. Everyone’s rich. Maybe…that woman?” I said with a hitch, making my statement an uncertain question. I gestured to an elderly woman a couple of rows over in a mink coat and diamonds.
“Hollywood,” Penn said grimly. “That’s Henrietta Groves, a very successful fifties film star. Charming but handsy. She probably has less than half the net worth of that couple.”
My eyes followed to where he was pointing out a man in a tailored black suit with a trim, graying beard and a woman, who I guessed was his wife, in a loose black dress. Her hair was pulled severely off of her face. They both looked disguised but nothing out of the norm.
“George and Alessandra Moretti. George’s family owned half the utilities in the country. Alessandra brought five chains of motels that crisscross middle America to the marriage. Together, they have money from generations and generations in America and Italy. You’d never know it, except that, once you see it, you can’t not see it.”
“What is it?” I asked, observing Alessandra.
She was sharply dressed and by all accounts sophisticated and in charge. But there was nothing to suggest they were as wealthy as Penn had claimed.
“Do you remember when you first came to this world? How did people treat you? Who did they think you were?”
I shrugged. “Camden thought I was some kind of California model. Most people knew right away that I wasn’t from here. I figured it was the hair.”
Penn’s smile lit up at that word, and he brushed aside a strand of the silver locks from my shoulder. Then it was quickly replaced by the mask he wore so well. “Yes, the hair definitely does it. But it’s how you carry yourself. The way you wear your clothes. The lilt to your speech. The innocence in your eyes. It’s all there, and it says you aren’t in control. You have no power. Which means you aren’t one of us.”
“That…makes sense,” I admitted reluctantly. It turned my stomach to think that everything about me gave away that I wasn’t from here. “But Page Six thought I was a New York elite.”
“What was different about that?” he demanded, latching on to my point. Ever the professor. “It wasn’t your hair or your dress or your shoes.”
“The confidence. The fact that I felt like I belonged there and wanted everyone to know it.”
“Yes, and no. You did belong there. And that’s all the difference.”
“I don’t—”
“You have to belong, Natalie. Not pretend to belong. Think about the people you know from here. Think about how they flit through life as if it were made for them, as if they owned it and nothing could stop them. You have to take that, bottle it up, and wear it like you did at Trinity. And then you have to wear it everywhere like perfume.”
Easier said than done.
But he had a point.
Katherine walked through life confident that, even though her father had lost all of her money, she would land on her feet. Because there was never a time when she had not landed on her feet. Even Lark, who hardly lived in this world anymore, still had that walk like she knew her place. Lewis’s sisters, Charlotte and Etta, devoured every room that they entered. No doors were barred. People listened, and they jumped and only ever asked how high.
Even Penn—no, especially Penn could command a room with one look of those sexy blue eyes. A quirk of his lips. A slip of his hands into his pockets. He commanded me like that, and I realized as I thought back that he always had. He’d known that he had me on that first look on the balcony in Paris seven years ago. That was Upper East Side confidence.
“You get it. You see it.” He nodded.
I flushed at his approval. I found I liked it.
“Now, observe tonight. Gain that confidence and belonging and own it. Then, the real work will begin,” he said as he guided me to our table.
Chapter 9
Natalie
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for attending this charity dinner to benefit the children’s art foundation. Due to unforeseen personal circumstances, we had to reschedule our guest speaker last minute. And I am pleased to introduce Mayor Leslie Kensington.”
Penn stilled next to me. I could feel the tension coming off of him in waves. His relationship with his mother was fraught at best. She wanted him to take over the family business and pick up where his father had left off since Court refused to do anything but drink and party. Leslie had been nothing but horrible to us when she found out we were first seeing each other. And though I’d had one positive interaction with her at Katherine’s wedding last month, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing her again. Especially not on her son’s arm.
“Did you know?” I whispered.
He shook his head once. “This complicates things.”
“Should we leave?”
He gritted his teeth. “It’ll be worse if we do. I didn’t want you to deal with this yet. Guess you’re getting a second lesson.”
I didn’t ask for him to clarify. It probably wasn’t going to be pleasant. Penn and I were just getting off the ground again. I was seeing past the bet. He was still struggling with the fact that I’d had a relationship with Lewis. Having his nosy and opinionated mother in the middle of that was probably the last thing he wanted. And I couldn’t disagree.
We finished our dinner and then listened to his mother in her element. She was an excellent speaker. It was clear why she had been elected time and time again. She had this fire that I frequently saw in her son when he was speaking about philosophy. Not that his mother would ever equate the two.
“We’re going to have to stop to say something to her,” Penn said when her speech had concluded.
“Okay. Are you going to be all right?” I asked him as we stood.
He placed his hand on the small of my back, guiding me through the tables toward his mother at the front of the room, as if he were going to his own execution. “I can handle my mother. For your lesson around this, it’s best to get that mask in place now. No concern for me. No concern for anything. You belong here. You own this room. Nothing she says to you or me can affect you in the least.”
“Do you think she’s going to be rude in front of other people?” I asked in disbelief.
“Mask,” he instructed. “Now.”
I schooled my features into a semblance of what I’d seen Katherine do. Not blank like Penn’s, but almost bored, the world at my feet, silver spoon in my mouth. I straightened my spine and felt a stillness take over my limbs even though I was still walking.
“Better,” Penn conceded on a sigh. “Terrifying. My mother won’t say anything purposely inflammatory, but you never know. It’s better to be on guard.”
We stepped around a crowd congratulating the mayor on the speech and offering larger donations to the organizer. Leslie’s eyes lifted from the short, balding man who she was speaking to. They widened a fraction in surprise when she saw her son. It wasn’t much, but even I noticed that she hadn’t expected him to be here either. I hoped that was a good thing for us.