Chapter 280: Chapter 282: Dinner Night With Grandfather
She appreciated that he said it. The honesty of it....not performing uncomplicated joy, not pretending he wasn’t sitting inside something complicated, but leading with the true thing first.
"What else are you feeling," she said.
"I don’t think I’m going to answer that right now," he said. "Not because I won’t. Just because I need an hour first."
"Okay."
"Is that alright."
"Dad." She looked at the garden through the kitchen window. "You’re allowed to have feelings about things. That’s what I’ve been telling you."
"I know." A pause. "He came to see me."
She went still. "What."
"Yesterday. Damien. He came to my hotel." A pause. "He sat across from me in a lobby chair and told me he was going to ask you to marry him and he wanted me to know before he did it." Another pause. "He didn’t ask my permission. He was very clear that he wasn’t asking my permission."
"That sounds like him."
"He said he was telling me because you’d want me to know. Because it would matter to you that I heard it before it happened." A long pause. "He was right about that."
Aria looked at her ring.
Damien had gone to see Alexander yesterday. While she’d been at the hospital doing her half day, while she’d been going about her ordinary Friday, he’d been sitting across from her father in a hotel lobby telling him what was coming.
She was going to have feelings about that later. Large ones.
"He’s.....he’s not uncomplicated," Alexander said carefully. "As a man. He’s not easy or simple or without edges." A pause. "But he knows you. He genuinely knows you and he...." He stopped. "He looked at me across that table and the only thing in his face was you. That’s all that was there."
She pressed her lips together.
"That’s enough," Alexander said quietly. More to himself than to her. "That’s enough for my daughter."
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"Come to the estate tonight," she said. "We’re having dinner. Richard is hosting....well, Damien says he requested us, which apparently means he’s hosting.....and Mum is coming and I want you there."
A pause.
"You want me there," he said.
"Yes."
"At Richard Blackwood’s dinner table."
"Dad."
"I’m coming," he said. "I’m just noting that four months ago I was in Singapore and I didn’t know you existed and now I’m apparently having dinner at Richard Blackwood’s estate." A pause that sounded, almost, like the beginning of something that might eventually become a laugh. "Life is strange."
"It really is," she agreed.
"I’ll be there at seven."
"Six thirty. Richard keeps early hours."
"Six thirty," he said. "Aria." A pause. "I’m glad he asked. I’m glad you said yes." He paused one more time. "I’m glad you called me."
She swallowed.
"So am I," she said.
****
RICHARD’S POV
He heard the cars on the drive at quarter past six.
He was in the sitting room with the fire going because he was seventy three years old and he was cold and he didn’t require anyone’s opinion about it. He heard the cars and didn’t get up immediately. Let them come inside. Let Mrs Hartley do what Mrs Hartley did.
Then he stood up.
He’d met Aria Chen three times. The first time Damien had brought her for dinner, four months ago, and she’d sat across the table from him and answered his questions without flinching and asked him two in return that had told him more about who she was than any background check could have. The second time had been at the hospital, briefly, when he’d come to see for himself that she was alright and she’d been sitting up in bed reading a medical journal and had looked at him over the top of it and said you didn’t have to come. He’d told her he was aware of that. They’d understood each other perfectly.
The third time had been last weekend. Damien had brought her for Sunday lunch and Richard had put the ring on the desk between them that evening after she’d left and Damien had looked at it for a long time before picking it up.
He walked into the hallway.
Damien came in first. Then Aria beside him, and Richard looked at her immediately.....at her face, at the ease of her, at the ring on her left hand catching the hallway light. Then behind them, Mei Chen, who he’d met twice and liked enormously. And behind Mei.....
Richard looked at the fourth person.
Alexander Wei.
He’d known Wei was coming. Damien had told him, which had been the correct thing to do. Richard had had Wei’s file on his desk for four months.....he kept files on relevant people, always had, it was simply good practice...and he’d formed a view.
Wei looked at him across the hallway.
Richard looked back.
"Mr Wei," he said.
"Mr Blackwood." Even. Composed. The bearing of a man who had been in important rooms his whole life and knew how to stand in them.
Good, Richard thought. He’d have found it very difficult to respect a man who wasn’t.
"Come in," Richard said. "All of you. Mrs Hartley has opinions about cold food."
****
ARIA’S POV
Dinner at Richard’s table was an experience.
She’d known that from the first time. The food was extraordinary, the table was older than most buildings she’d been in, and Richard Blackwood sat at the head of it and asked questions that sounded conversational and were absolutely not.
Tonight he sat at the head with Damien to his right and Aria beside Damien, and across from them Mei and Alexander, and Mrs Hartley moved in and out with the quiet efficiency of someone who had been feeding important people for decades and found none of it remarkable.
Richard looked at the ring on Aria’s finger at some point during the first course.
Then he looked at Damien.
Then he picked up his fork and said nothing, which Aria had learned was Richard’s version of a complete sentence.
"He approves," Damien said quietly beside her.
"I could tell," she murmured back.
Alexander and Richard had been doing something across the table that she’d been watching with interest.....a careful, mutual assessment, the kind that happened between men who had both spent their lives reading rooms and were now reading each other. Not hostile. Just thorough.
Richard asked Alexander about Singapore at some point. Alexander answered. Richard asked a follow-up question that was more specific than the first, which meant he’d done his research, which meant he’d known exactly who was coming to his table tonight. Alexander registered this and answered the follow-up without missing a beat.
Richard nodded once.
Aria caught Damien’s eye.
He looked unbothered. Which meant he’d expected exactly this.
"He ran a file on him," she said under her breath.
"Obviously," Damien said.
"Did he run one on me."
"First week you came to the estate."
"What did it say."
"That you were extraordinary." He looked at her. "His word."
She looked at her plate.
She wasn’t going to be able to eat anything if he kept doing that.
