She laughed, openly and without malice, at the stuffy traditions I had spent my life taking too seriously.

She made me feel, for the first time, like a person rather than an heir.

My mother, Genevieve, had despised her from the first day.

“Enjoying someone’s company is one thing, Christopher,” she told me over dinner one night, in the cool, reasonable voice she used for her cruelest opinions.

“Building a family legacy with them is quite another.”

“Rosalind is the only woman I have ever wanted to build a family with,” I had said, and I had meant it with everything in me.