done yet with this epic day. It was the reason she was leaving so soon after her speech, instead of staying to take questions and talk policy.
In some ways, her father was right. Her next task was more important than the speech had been, if less public.
It was certainly as nerve-racking. She didn’t fear that she was going to float away like an escaped balloon this time. More that she might, suddenly and with no warning, be violently popped. Be left with nothing to show for herself but a sad handful of broken latex.
She had tried to tell her father the party was not the place to do this. That an ambush would not go over well. But, as he had pointed out—reasonably, she had to admit—they really had no choice. Philip Gregory was attending the party, and what they needed to do—their last resort—was to charm Philip Gregory.
Charm.
Not something Marie possessed a lot of, despite her ongoing efforts.
Charm. Grace. Classical beauty. All the things that someone in her position was expected to have, Marie lacked. Her mother had had those things.
Instead, Marie was cursed with a surfeit of other qualities, things like anxiety and an overabundance of caution.
Which probably explained why she was in the bathroom at the United Nations changing into her party dress.
Mr. Benz had tried to insist that they had time to return to the hotel for her to change, and that plan might have worked if it had merely been a regular party. A party on land. But the boat was leaving at seven o’clock sharp, and even though anyone else would probably wait for her if “her people” asked, tonight’s hostess most decidedly would not. She had only invited Marie because it would look odd if she didn’t.
Marie, ever conscientious, had done her homework. A session with Google Maps had informed her that it was a twenty-minute drive down and around FDR Drive from the UN buildings to the marina. And while Mr. Benz, who so very much did not want to stand by while she changed in a restroom at the United Nations, might be technically correct—they might be able to get up to the Plaza and back down to catch the boat—that was cutting it too close for her liking.
Marie didn’t have room in her life for might. She hated being late at the best of times—being late only confirmed the worst stereotypes about people like her—and this wasn’t the best of times. This was important. This was work. This was duty.
“You should have had Verene make the trip with you.” Mr. Benz’s tone, as Marie emerged from the bathroom as polished and pulled together as she was going to get on her own steam, would have sounded neutral to outsiders. Marie, however, heard the nuance. She heard the slightly clipped consonants that signaled his disapproval.
She might be somewhat sheltered—she would admit to that—but even she knew that traveling with someone whose sole job was to pin her hair and steam the wrinkles out of her clothes was not a good look when one was trying to be casually charming. High-profile American people did not have these sorts of visible assistants. The Kardashians, for example, probably had armies of people spraying and fluffing them behind the scenes, but the key was that they made it look effortless. Americans enjoyed pretending they lived in a classless society, one where social mobility was as easy as a walk to the corner store. But she couldn’t explain that to Mr. Benz, who refused on principle to even attempt to understand the ways of Americans, much less bend to them.
“There was no need to pay for another person to make the trip,” she said with artificial cheer, falling back on the economic argument she’d made at home. And it was true. She was here to try to shore up the economy at home, not leech off it.
Mr. Benz sniffed. He preferred to pretend that they still lived in a world where the family did not need to concern itself with things so pedestrian, so crass, as money.
“Regardless, I’m perfectly capable of dressing myself.”
Which might not actually be true, judging by how much trouble the back of her dress had given her. It laced up corset-style, and the pink ribbons it was threaded with weren’t long enough for her to reach around and tie herself. This had been a poor choice, but of course she hadn’t thought through the sartorial details the way Verene would have.