My Accidental Billionaire Husband (Katia and Julian) novel Chapter 286

We Want to Get to Know Him

~ Delia –

Mother was in the morning room when I arrived.

She was at her writing desk with her reading glasses on and a stack of correspondence in front of het-the kind of correspondence that constituted my mother’s social life, the invitations and responses and thank-you notes and follow-ups that kept the Kensington name circulating in the right rooms. She looked up when I came in and immediately took her glasses off, which meant she could see from my face that I had not come for a casual visit.

“Sit down,” she said.

I sat.

“Katia’s husband has arrived,” I said.

Mama set her glasses down on the desk. “I saw the broadcast. Jude Wolfe.” She said the name carefully, the way she said names she was assessing. “British. Motorsport.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Does he have money?” Mama asked.

The directness of it—no preamble, no pretense of asking about Katia’s well-being or the state of the marriage or any of the things a mother might theoretically want to know-landed in the room with the frankness that had always defirred Martha Kensington’s approach to the world.

“He does,” I said. “But not more than my husband.”

Mama nodded once. The nod of a woman filing information.

“So,” she said. “What are you here for?”

I looked at my hands for a moment. Then I looked back up at her.

“I think we should have a family dinner,” I said. “Invite Katia. And her husband. A chance for the family to meet Jude Wolfe properly.”

Mama was quiet.

She turned slightly in her chair, looking toward the window where the garden was doing its early afternoon thing—the gardeners moving along the far hedge, the stillness of a well-maintained property on a grey day. She had the expression she wore when she was calculating something she was not yet ready to say out loud.

“Delia,” she said finally.

“What?”

“Do you remember what you told me after the last dinner?” she said. “You said we should never invite Katia again. Those were your exact words. You said the evening was a disaster and that inviting her only gave her a platform to-”

“I know what I said,” I said.

“And now you want to invite her.”

“The situation has changed,” I said. “She has a husband now. The world knows about it. It would look strange if the family did not make any effort to meet him.”

Mama looked at me with the careful, assessing gaze she reserved for situations she did not entirely believe.

“There is something else,” she said.

“There is not,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment longer. Then she turned back to the window.

“Even if I wanted to,” she said, “I am not sure Katia would come. Her behavior at the last dinner, Delia. Standing up at my table and saying what she said. In front of David. In front of Christopher.” She paused. “And then there is the other matter.”

“What other matter?” I said.

Mama’s jaw tightened slightly.

“Celeste Windsor,” she said. “She is no longer inviting me to the high teas.”

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