The New Addition
Adrian Beaumont was thirty-two years old, legally married, and surrounded by what the press liked to call an unusually extensive family.
He did not consider it extensive.
“There aren’t that many of them,” he told Marcus Vance one evening from the private suite above his office at Beaumont Group’s Manhattan headquarters. “The women who have been with me the longest have been around for nearly ten years. Even the most recent have been here for several. Why does everything become less interesting with time? What exactly is the relationship between time and women?”
Marcus had worked for Adrian since before Adrian had been old enough to ask such questions with a straight face. He knew that most of them required neither an answer nor visible interest.
He glanced at his watch. “Where will you be staying tonight?”
Adrian fell silent.
He had not returned to Helena at the main house the night before. He had not visited Vivienne’s villa the night before that, nor Katherine’s, Nina’s, Brooke’s, or Madison’s for quite some time. Appearing without warning at any one of their doors now would invite questions about where he had been on all the other nights.
He could, of course, remind them that he was chairman and chief executive officer of Beaumont Group, principal beneficiary of the family trust, and nominal head of the Beaumont family.
He could also stay where he was and avoid the questions.
“Go home, Marcus,” he said. “I’ll stay here.”
Thus Adrian Beaumont, master of a multibillion-dollar empire, spent another perfectly comfortable night alone in his private office suite—because returning to any one of his six homes required more courage than he presently possessed.
The following afternoon, the women of the Beaumont family were gathered in the sunroom of the main house, demonstrating feminine virtue.
At least, that was what the photographer from the Beaumont Family Foundation had been told.
The foundation’s annual charity auction was approaching, and Eleanor Beaumont, Adrian’s stepmother and the woman who had raised him, had insisted on preserving one of the family’s oldest traditions. The women of the household would personally embroider a selection of linens and infant blankets to be auctioned for the benefit of local hospitals.
Nobody had asked how old the tradition actually was. Eleanor tended to describe anything she had enjoyed twice as a tradition.
Sunlight poured through the tall windows. Silver tea services gleamed on the side tables. Beyond the glass lay the lawns, the rose garden, and the distant roofs of the private villas arranged across the estate.
Helena Beaumont—Adrian’s only legal wife and the undisputed head of the household—sat at the center of the group. Around her sat the five other women in Adrian’s life, each holding a hoop of fabric as though needlework were the natural occupation of the very rich.
Vivienne Laurent looked particularly convincing. She had chosen a silk dress that complemented the thread and arranged herself where the afternoon light caught her profile. Dr. Katherine Reed was examining a historical embroidery pattern with the concentration of a scholar deciphering a newly discovered manuscript. Nina Bell worked quietly on the edge of a baby blanket while keeping one eye on the monitor beside her, where her infant daughter slept. Brooke Hayes and Madison Cole were smiling for the camera while conducting a private war over the same skein of gold thread.
“That one is mine,” Brooke whispered without moving her smile.
“You already took the red,” Madison whispered back.
“Red doesn’t match my design.”
“You don’t have a design.”
Vivienne extended one elegant hand. “If neither of you can decide, give the gold to me.”
Helena looked up from her embroidery. “Do all of you have too much free time?”
The room became instantly silent.
Brooke lowered her head. Madison released the gold thread. Vivienne returned her attention to her hoop. For the next thirty seconds, every woman in the room embodied patience, grace, charity, and several other virtues that photographed beautifully.
The photographer took the final picture. The foundation staff thanked them. Olivia Grant, Helena’s chief household administrator, escorted the visitors from the room and closed the doors behind them.
Helena waited until the footsteps disappeared down the corridor. Then she dropped her embroidery onto the table and sighed.
“All right. You can stop pretending. I’m bored too.”
Five pieces of needlework were abandoned at once.
Brooke sucked a wounded finger. Madison began untangling green silk from her bracelet. Katherine removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Nina put her own work down more carefully than the others, mostly because someone would eventually have to repair what they had done. Vivienne held up her embroidery and contemplated the four stitches she had completed in forty minutes.
“A stitch in time saves nine,” she said. “Therefore, if we avoid the first stitch, we save all ten.”
“Vivienne,” Helena said, “that is not what the expression means.”
“Expressions should be allowed to evolve.”
Helena looked around the room. Brooke had already reached for the pastries. Madison was pouring herself more tea. Vivienne had placed her embroidery under a magazine as though concealing a body. Katherine appeared to be calculating whether Vivienne’s argument could be disproved mathematically.
The longer one knew these women, Helena reflected, the more shameless they became in private.
Nina glanced at the abandoned hoops. “If none of us finishes anything, what will the foundation auction?”
“The professional embroiderers will finish it,” Vivienne said. “That is why they are professionals.”
“And what exactly did we contribute?”
“Our names.”
Vivienne selected a pastry.
“That is generally the most valuable part.”
Brooke, who had been inspecting the red mark on her finger as though it might qualify her for compensation, suddenly looked at Helena. “Is Adrian coming home tonight?”
The question changed the atmosphere. Not dramatically—nobody stopped eating—but enough to turn six faces in Helena’s direction.
“I don’t know,” Helena said. “Vivienne, how long has it been since he stayed with you?”
Vivienne began counting on her fingers.
She reached ten, frowned, and started again from the first finger.
Helena waited.
Vivienne continued counting.
“Please stop displaying your mathematical abilities,” Helena said at last. “Approximately how long?”
“I can’t count that far.”
Nina looked concerned. “Perhaps he really is overworked.”
“He has always been overworked,” Vivienne said. “It never prevented him from finding his way to a bedroom before.”
“He might be seeing someone else,” Brooke suggested.
Madison leaned closer. “Or several people.”
Brooke’s eyes widened. “At the same time?”
“I meant several different people.”
“So did I.”
“It could be an organized group.”
Helena lifted one hand before the two of them could transform Adrian’s absence into an international conspiracy.
Katherine folded her hands over her unfinished embroidery. “Long-term relationships often experience periods of diminished novelty. Popular culture refers to one such period as the seven-year itch, although the precise duration lacks reliable empirical support.”
Brooke and Madison looked at her together.
Neither said anything, but the same thought passed through both their minds with remarkable clarity.
That may be true for the rest of you. We haven’t even been with him for seven years.
Helena leaned back in her chair. “Perhaps we’ve simply been together too long. None of us is as young as we used to be.”
Brooke and Madison looked at her again.
That may be true for you.
They kept this thought to themselves. They were not women of deep strategic ability, but even they understood that certain thoughts were safer when they remained thoughts.
“Maybe he’s bored,” Vivienne said.
“With us?” Brooke asked.
“With himself, probably. Unfortunately, we’re the ones he associates with the experience.”
Across the city, Eleanor Beaumont appeared to have reached a similar conclusion.
She entered Adrian’s office shortly before noon the following day, settled into the chair opposite his desk, and announced, “You never come to see me anymore.”
Adrian looked up from a report. “I called you this morning.”
“A scheduled telephone call is not a visit.” Eleanor sighed. “I raised you as my own, but naturally that cannot make me your real mother. If I were your real mother, perhaps you would still enjoy speaking to me.”
Adrian put down the report.
Whenever Eleanor was dissatisfied with him, she eventually arrived at the fact that she had not given birth to him. Whenever she arrived there, he eventually surrendered.
“What do you want?”
“You seem bored with the women at home.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then perhaps you need someone new.”
Adrian hesitated.
“This is your idea,” he said cautiously.
“Entirely,” Eleanor replied.
That evening, Adrian returned to the estate and stayed at Vivienne’s villa.
Vivienne did not mention Eleanor’s proposal over dinner. She did not mention it while Adrian answered messages, or while he complained about a director who had used seventeen presentation slides to communicate one sentence. She waited until they were in bed and the lights had been lowered.
“So,” she asked, “finding another companion was your idea?”
Adrian’s reply came a little too quickly.
“It was my mother’s.”
Vivienne turned toward him and produced an expression of exquisite sympathy.
“I see. If it was Eleanor’s idea, you naturally had no choice.”
“Exactly.”
“Poor Adrian.”
He heard something unusual in her voice but could not identify it. “You don’t object?”
“Why would I object? Helena doesn’t.”
“Helena is very understanding.”
“Yes,” Vivienne said. “She is.”
Adrian relaxed.
Vivienne watched him close his eyes.
Oh, please.
Eleanor did not care whether the household contained one more woman or one fewer. She merely liked things to happen. Someone had clearly mentioned Adrian’s recent behavior to her, knowing perfectly well what she would do with the information.
As for who that helpful person might have been, Vivienne did not need to ask.
When it came to playing the benevolent woman, Helena stood unrivaled. Vivienne called it playing because she had known Helena too long not to recognize the quiet amusement occasionally concealed beneath her kindness.
Two days later, Eleanor announced that the Beaumont family would begin searching for a new long-term companion.
Helena sat beside her, composed and innocent.
Vivienne looked at her.
Helena returned a gentle smile.
The search began.
What Helena had apparently intended as an introduction to one or two suitable women became, in Eleanor’s hands, a formal selection process involving the family office, an application portal, three event coordinators, a security team, several outside consultants, and a schedule long enough to resemble the planning documents for a corporate merger.
All applicants were adults and fully informed about the arrangement. Adrian already had one legal wife and five recognized long-term partners. A new companion would not share Helena’s legal position or inherit control of Beaumont Group, but she would receive independent representation, financial protection, a residence on the estate, and security for any future children.
Helena and the family lawyers dealt with those details quietly.
Eleanor dealt with everything that could be made visible, ceremonial, or unnecessarily grand.
News of the search spread far beyond the social circles where it had begun. Applications arrived from across the country. The numbers rose so quickly that the family portal briefly crashed.
Adrian examined the figures with renewed respect for himself.
“I didn’t realize there would be this much interest.”
“Your personal appeal may have been underestimated,” Helena said, turning a page in the preliminary report.
Adrian looked pleased.
“Although the publication of the annual financial protections probably helped.”
He looked less pleased.
The first round eliminated applicants who had falsified their identities, concealed existing marriages, sold advance interviews to tabloids, or submitted business plans explaining how proximity to Adrian could improve their brands.
The second round examined appearance, health, background, manners, and public composure. Eleanor cared deeply about height, posture, complexion, and the correct way to enter a ballroom. Helena cared more about criminal records, undisclosed debts, privacy, and whether the applicants understood what they were applying for.
The third round included formal interviews, social events, media questions, interaction with children, and the ability to remain calm in the presence of several Beaumonts at once.
That last requirement eliminated more candidates than expected.
Brooke and Madison took the process very seriously.
Until now, they had been the newest women in Adrian’s household. The arrival of another companion would finally make them senior members of something.
Brooke and Madison discussed every candidate with tremendous authority. One was too quiet, another talked too much, a third looked likely to borrow clothes without asking, and a fourth seemed incapable of appreciating good gossip.
The two of them spoke as though years of wisdom and careful judgment had earned them their own places in the Beaumont household.
No one reminded them that they had originally entered it through a combination of luck, mutual encouragement, and neither woman being brave enough to come alone.
Across the table, Katherine studied the assessment criteria.
“The category marked ‘pleasant but not exhausting’ lacks measurable parameters.”
“It means not like them,” Vivienne said, indicating Brooke and Madison.
Both women looked offended.
Nina smiled into her tea.
Before the finalists arrived at the estate, the six women gathered in the sunroom to discuss what sort of person would suit the household.
Madison leaned forward. “What do you want the new woman to be like?”
Helena considered the question.
“She should have Vivienne’s charm, Katherine’s intelligence, Nina’s serenity, and your and Brooke’s liveliness.”
Vivienne added, “And Helena’s virtue, naturally.”
Brooke sat upright. “You’d really let a woman like that move in?”
Silence fell.
Madison recovered first.
“She means such a perfect woman probably doesn’t exist.”
Brooke nodded rapidly. “Yes. I was questioning the feasibility.”
Helena smiled.
Vivienne raised one eyebrow, then lifted her teacup to hide the corner of her mouth.
The final selection took place at the Beaumont estate on a bright Saturday morning. The remaining candidates arrived through the eastern gates and were driven past clipped lawns, fountains, guesthouses, the equestrian center, the private medical building, and several residences large enough to be mistaken for independent country homes.
By the time they reached the main house, some had begun to understand that joining the Beaumont family involved less intimacy than infrastructure.
The candidates assembled in the ballroom beneath crystal chandeliers and portraits of generations of deceased Beaumonts, whose painted faces looked positively eager for the latest piece of family gossip. Helena, Eleanor, and the five current companions sat at the front.
Eleanor rose, adjusted her jacket, and cleared her throat with great ceremony. She tapped the microphone twice, listened carefully to the sound, and began her opening address.
She started with the history of the Beaumont family. From there, she moved to the responsibilities of inherited wealth, the moral purpose of philanthropy, the changing role of women in American society, the importance of loyalty, the education of future children, the preservation of family traditions, and an anecdote about a wedding she had attended in Newport in 1989.
Eleanor continued from early morning until the sun stood high above the ballroom windows. Every candidate remained perfectly upright, perfectly attentive, and perfectly smiling. Not one of them dared to glance at the clock.
When Eleanor finally concluded, the applause was immediate and remarkably enthusiastic.
Helena rose next. She looked over the candidates and smiled.
“Welcome. I look forward to having one of you join our family.”
That was all.
Eleanor nodded approvingly. “Concise.”
The candidates regarded Helena with heartfelt gratitude.
The interviews began.
There were questions about family expectations, privacy, public events, and life inside a household where everyone already knew one another’s habits. There were formal introductions, a luncheon, a charity presentation, talent performances, and an exercise in responding to intrusive journalists.
Eleanor watched everything with tireless delight.
Vivienne studied clothes, posture, and social instincts. Katherine listened to the answers with academic seriousness. Nina noticed who spoke kindly to the staff. Brooke and Madison whispered so constantly that Olivia eventually moved their chairs six inches apart.
This did not stop them. It merely required them to whisper louder.
By evening, the final choice had been made.
Her name was Felicity Hart.
She was twenty-four years old, a former regional beauty-pageant winner, and the daughter of a man whose boutique wine company had collapsed after several years of poor management and worse borrowing. Felicity maintained a lifestyle account online, although its polished photographs suggested considerably more income than it actually produced.
She was beautiful enough to silence a room for several seconds, but in person she was quiet, restrained, and almost painfully aware of how little she had accomplished beyond being beautiful.
When Eleanor asked what she hoped to gain from joining the Beaumont household, Felicity did not claim to have dreamed of Adrian all her life. She did not announce plans to transform the family foundation, build a business empire, or become an inspiration to women everywhere.
“I would like a stable home,” she said. “And I would like to get along with everyone in it.”
It was not an ambitious answer.
This helped.
Vivienne approved of the way Felicity understood her own appearance without pretending not to. Katherine approved when Felicity admitted that she did not understand one of Katherine’s questions. Nina approved of the fact that Felicity did not claim to possess a magical instinct for children. Brooke and Madison approved of her pageant history and immediately began planning to ask where she kept her crown.
Helena listened, watched, and cast her vote.
Felicity Hart was selected as the new addition to the Beaumont family.
The other finalists received generous compensation for their time, together with professional introductions where appropriate. Eleanor wanted to keep several of them nearby because she had grown fond of them during the interviews.
“They’re all very nice,” she protested.
“That is not a job qualification,” Helena said.
“It ought to be.”
Adrian had remained away from most of the selection process. His presence, according to Eleanor, might interfere with the objectivity of the proceedings. He would meet the final choice privately, after which both he and Felicity could decide whether they wished to continue.
Their first meeting took place that evening in one of the smaller drawing rooms of the main house.
Adrian found Felicity every bit as beautiful as the selection committee had promised. Felicity, for her part, appeared satisfied with Adrian as well. Their conversation went pleasantly. Adrian appeared satisfied, Felicity found no reason to object, and before long they left the drawing room for the villa that had already been prepared for her.
She spent the night there with Adrian.
By morning, there was no longer any need to call her the selected candidate. Felicity Hart had officially become the newest member of the Beaumont family.
The following morning, Helena asked casually, “Are you pleased with the new addition?”
“She’s… fine,” Adrian said.
He could hardly explain his hesitation. Last night, Felicity’s eyes had reminded him of Vivienne, her quiet smile of Nina, her careful way of speaking of Katherine, and her occasional liveliness of Brooke and Madison. Taken together, even her general manner bore a faint resemblance to Helena.
After a nationwide search, they had somehow found him a condensed version of the women he already knew.
Familiarity had increased.
Novelty had not.
Adrian sighed and returned to considering the complicated relationship between the two.
For a fleeting moment, a flicker of mischief—quite at odds with her usual composure and dignity—crossed Helena’s face.
