Danielle Steel - Remembrance

“Are you all right?” Serena was looking at him strangely. “Are you ill?”

“No … I… I'm sorry … I don't know … I just… I think it's just excitement. Seeing Brad back, meeting you, Greg getting married, graduating last week.” He wiped his brow with a white linen handkerchief and sat back beside her. “Now, where were we?” But all he could think of was that face, those eyes. It was almost as though they bore through him. He had never seen a woman as lovely as this.

But Serena was looking at him gently, her face riveted with concern and unspoken understanding. “Please …” She faltered for only a moment. “You're upset about me, aren't you? Is it so great a shock? Am I so different really?” She sounded almost consumed with distress and guilt.

But Teddy nodded slowly. “Yes, you are. But not in the way you think. Serena,” he sighed and reached for her hand. What the hell. Brad wouldn't kill him. “You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and if you weren't my brother's wife, I'd ask you to marry me right this minute!” For a moment she thought he was joking, and then she saw something almost heartbreaking in his eyes. Her own eyes widened in surprise as she looked at him.

“Making time with my wife, little brother?” B.J. opened the door of the elegant limousine and hopped inside with a casual look of unconcern which belied the faint tremor he had felt while he busied himself outside. Teddy had always been the best-looking of the brothers, and he was certainly more her age, but that was crazy thinking and he knew it. Serena was his wife, she loved him, and she was having his child.

But Teddy only laughed and shook his head as he ran a hand through his hair. “I think you just saved me from making a total ass of myself, Brad.”

“Want me to get out so you can try again?”

“No!” Teddy and Serena said it in unison, and with that they looked at each other, and both of them began to laugh, like hysterical children, and the uncomfortable moment was broken. They laughed half the way home, suddenly began teasing each other and Brad, and the friendship began in earnest that morning.

Teddy gave them a brief rundown of what the wedding would be like, what was expected of them, and who was coming to the rehearsal dinner. Brad already knew that he was going to be the best man, and Teddy was an usher. In addition there were to be ten other ushers, eleven bridesmaids and a maid of honor, two children as ring bearer and flower girl, and the ceremony was to be at St. James Church on Madison Avenue, with an enormous reception at the Plaza Hotel, immediately thereafter. It was expected to be a grandiose affair and the Athertons were spending a fortune.

The rehearsal dinner, on the other hand, was being given at their father's club, the Knickerbocker, and there were to be a mere forty-five guests, in black tie, for a formal dinner.

“Oh, Christ.” Brad groaned aloud. “When's that again?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And tonight? Can we have some time to ourselves, or do we have to perform some other tribal dance with the whole troupe?”

“Mother's planning a small family dinner. Just Mother and Dad, Greg and I, and of course Pattie.” A flicker of worry showed in Teddy's eyes.

“That ought to be cozy.” The last time Pattie had seen Serena she had called her a whore, and he had broken their engagement, and not even a year had gone by since then.

A moment later they pulled up in front of the awning of their building, and the doorman rushed forward to open the door, as Jimmie stepped out to take over.

“Is Mother upstairs?” Brad wanted the meeting over with. His eyes bored into Teddy's, as if trying to take support and energy from his younger brother to help protect and buffer his wife.

“Not yet. She won't be home till three. We'll have the place to ourselves, while Serena gets acquainted.” It was a kind of blessing. Serena meekly followed her husband and brother-in-law inside, into a richly paneled, tapestry-hung lobby, with high ceilings and marble floors, immense plants, and a chandelier worthy of Versailles twinkling down at them.

Brad and Ted whisked her into the elevator and up to the top floor, where the hallway led to a single apartment, the penthouse overlooking Central Park, where all three boys had grown up, and which sent a little shiver of excitement down Brad's spine now as Teddy unlocked the door and stood aside for them to enter. Two maids in black uniforms with lace aprons and caps were frantically dusting the main hallway. It was paneled in extraordinarily beautiful Japanese screens, the floors were a harlequin black and white marble, and here again was a beautiful chandelier, but this one much more so than the one in the lobby. It was a Waterford piece, over two hundred years old, and a work of art in itself, which matched the elaborate sconces along the walls. The whole entrance reminded Serena of a brilliantly lit ballroom. The maids were quick to welcome Brad home, and they went off to report to the cook that he was back, and he promised to go out to the kitchen to see her in a minute. But first he wanted to show Serena the apartment where he had grown up.

In its own way it reminded her of the palazzo. It was smaller of course, and it was after all an apartment, yet it had a grandiose quality to it more typical of a house, and the way it was decorated looked not unlike the assorted homes in which she had grown up. There were delicately shaded Aubusson rugs, damask drapes, and rich brocades, a grand piano in the library, as well as three walls of rare books, and in the dining room there was an impressive collection of family portraits. The living room was subtle and lovely and very French. There were two Renoirs and a Monet, a great deal of Louis XV, rivers of white silk and gray damask, accented with a little dusty rose, and vast quantities of gilt and marble. It was certainly not a “little apartment” by anyone's standards, and its main virtue in Serena's mind was that it gave her the impression she had already seen it before. It was just like all the palazzi she had known as a child. It was in better condition, and there were some very fine things, some even lovelier than what she had seen in Venice, and yet it had that familiar ring that one finds in Paris and London and New York and Rome, Munich or Barcelona or Lisbon or Madrid, the look of a vastly expensive home filled with priceless things, the rich gilts of Louis XV, the needlepoint scenes of Aubusson, the shapes and the colors and the smells that all looked so familiar. It was almost as though she wanted to sigh in relief and say, “It's all right, I've already been here.” Teddy had noticed the look of relief on her face and immediately teased her.

“What did you expect? Lions and tigers and a woman with a whip and a chair?”

But Serena laughed at him. “Not quite, but …” There was teasing in her face as well.

“Close, huh? Well, you're in luck. We only feed the Christians to the lions on Tuesday. You're two days late.”

“It's a beautiful place.”

Brad was looking around him as though seeing it for the first time, and he smiled at them both. “You know, I'd forgotten how nice it all is.” It had been ten months since he'd been home on leave, and that had been so hectic mat he'd never noticed his home the whole time he was there.

“Welcome home, Big Brother.”

“Thanks, kid.” He squeezed his younger brother's shoulder, and put an arm gently around his wife. “You all right, sweetheart? Not too tired?” Just the way he said it warned Teddy of something.

“Something wrong?” He looked at them both worriedly and Brad shook his head with a smile, but there was a look in his eyes that Teddy had never seen there before, a look of tenderness and pride and excitement. “What's up? Or am I being nosy?”