Cecil paused for a split second, as if it had just dawned on him that his future mother-in-law was Chinese and his bride half Chinese, and maybe his statement could be perceived as a tad offensive. If the notion momentarily disturbed him, it was forgotten as soon as the waiter arrived and Cecil held court over the table, ordering afternoon tea with a multitude of finger sandwiches, scones, and petits fours for everyone, selecting the right vintage of champagne from the wine list, and, most important, making sure everything was served on his approved china. “Please take away these dishes with the blue-and-gold pattern you use for regular guests. Talk to Stephanie—she knows where the hand-painted Limoges that have been put on reserve for me is kept.”

“Cecil has his own set of teacups stored here,” Lucie explained to her brother.

“Seriously? What’s wrong with the ones they have?” Freddie probed.

“Freddie, tea always tastes much better served in Second Empire French porcelain,” Cecil began to lecture. “But more importantly, look at your sister’s ravishing lips! They’re like a hybrid between Andie MacDowell’s and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s. I simply cannot allow these precious lips to touch a teacup unless it has a rim thinner than 1.3 millimeters!”

“What would happen if they did?” Freddie stared at his sister’s lips wide-eyed.

“It would simply never happen. I wouldn’t permit it! From now on, Freddie, your sister is going to be treated like the divine empress she was born to be,” Cecil declared.

“Got that, Freddie?” Lucie said with a little giggle.

Cecil turned to Marian. “Mrs. Churchill, you deserve a special prize for your patience today!”

“What do you mean?” Marian asked.

“I know you’re only being polite, but I cannot believe that you haven’t asked to see the engagement ring yet!”

“Oh, yeah, let’s see the ring, Lucie,” Marian remembered, trying to summon up enough enthusiasm to impress her future son-in-law. Lucie shyly extended her hand across the table and caught her mother recoiling almost imperceptibly. “Oh, wow, Lucie. Oh, wow,” was all Marian could muster up.

Freddie whistled. “Look at the size of that thing! It looks like a tumor on her finger. Where’s Dr. Pimple Popper when you need her?”

“Very funny, Freddie,” Cecil said a little crossly. He looked up and suddenly his frown transformed into a look that a penitent might reserve for the apparition of the Virgin Mary, as a trio of exceedingly chic women entered the room with a cute young girl dressed in riding breeches.

“Why, it’s Jackie, Martha, Alicia, and Helena! Hot damn, everyone’s here today!” Cecil sprang up from his seat to give double-cheeked air-kisses to the ladies, before patting little Helena on her head as if he were dribbling a basketball. “Ladies, may I present my new fiancée, Lucie Churchill? You know, her father was Reggie Churchill, and she’s the granddaughter of Consuelo Barclay Churchill.”

“Yes, Cecil, we know. And don’t forget she’s also the daughter of one of our country’s pioneering geneticists, Dr. Marian Tang Churchill,” Jackie said graciously, giving Marian a wink.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Cecil stammered, realizing his faux pas. He hadn’t realized Marian would know this particularly glamorous set of ladies.

“It’s hard to believe our town’s most eligible playboy is now officially off the market,” Martha wryly remarked.

“He sure is. And here’s the proof!” Cecil grabbed Lucie’s wrist and thrust it at the ladies, who gasped in unison.

“Stunning! Is it Verdura?” Martha asked.

“What a compliment, Martha. No, it is an original Cecil Pike! The cabochon emerald is forty-nine carats and belonged to the Nizam of Hyderabad. The accent rubies are from my mother, bought from the Patiño auction many years ago, and then I had Laurence Graff personally select these twelve brilliant cut diamonds to go around the band. All D flawless, of course.”

“It looks like something one of the infantas might have worn in a Velázquez,” Alicia, an art historian, observed.

“You know, that’s precisely what I was going for! I was channeling the Duchess of Alba when I designed the piece, if you really want to know,” Cecil said, his eyes misting a little.

“You did good, Cecil! I’m sure Cayetana would have approved!” Jackie declared.fn3

After the ladies had been escorted into the adjacent dining room where the more discreet crowd liked to be seated, Cecil sank contentedly into his antique kilim embroidered chair. “Between those ladies, everyone who’s anyone will know the news before the sun sets on the island. Which reminds me …” He fished his phone out from his jacket pocket and began scrolling through his Instagram. “Holy Moira Rose! It’s trending! The proposal video is trending! 27,084 likes already! Cornelia Guest just liked it! Prince Joachim of Lichtenberg just re-grammed it! Oh, excuse me, I must show this to the ladies. Lucie, come. Quickly, Lucie!” Cecil leaped out of his seat, dragging Lucie along with him.

“Well, I guess Cecil is part of the family now,” Marian said with a shrug.

Freddie gave his mother a look. “Yeah. I think we’re gonna have to stop using those coffee mugs from Zabar’s.”

“SOCIAL GRACES”

BY GEOFFREY MADISON COLUMBUS

If you were anywhere near the Upper East Side yesterday, you might be forgiven for thinking that some hotshot director was filming a movie on location at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There were ballerinas and daredevil acrobats, there were Broadway dancers, there was a marching band. However, this was no film that brought Fifth Avenue traffic to a standstill but Cecil Pike in the midst of a Marvel-budget-sized wedding proposal to Lucie Churchill. Cecil, no stranger to this column, is the dashing charmer who has been proclaimed the biggest catch in the universe by every magazine, blog and social media outlet that matters. He’s the GQ-handsome bon vivant and heir to the ginormous Pike billions, first gushed in the oil fields of Central Texas and then multiplied exponentially thanks to the genius of his force-of-nature mamacita, Reneé Mouton Pike, one of the world’s leading investors who never misses a brilliant start-up opportunity or a chic party anywhere in the universe, thanks to her private India Mahdavi–designed Boeing 757. The less socially attentive might recognize Cecil from his cameo appearances on Antiques Roadshow, where he schools the experts with his encyclopedic knowledge of 16th- to 18th-century European antiquities. This, after all, is a guy who goes deep-sea diving in search of Spanish shipwrecks and has a classics degree from Oxford. Pike mère et fils are esthetes extraordinaire, having restored Buckley House in London to its former glory with the help of Jacques Garcia at the whispered cost of more than half a billion (pounds, not dollars!), and are said to be doing the same to an ancient fort in northern Rajasthan. The lucky lass Lucie, a rising art consultant who’s on the speed-dial of every wannabe Mugrabi these days, is the exotically beautiful daughter of Dr. Marian Tang and the late Reginald Churchill, a true blue-blooded New Yorker descended from generations of Churchills, Barclays and other Knickerbocker Club types. We haven’t seen such a classy union of old money and new money in a while, and this will be one beautiful power couple to put on your radar, not to mention a power wedding. You heard it here first: the nuptials are rumored to be taking place this autumn at a little dive in the Persian Gulf called the Louvre Abu Dhabi.