He was charming in the particular way of men who have decided charm is a currency, spent carefully and always at a profit.

I was, at the time, exactly what I appeared to be — a corporate attorney who kept a low profile, who did not advertise her family, who seemed to have no particular power of her own.

That was the version of me he married.

I have wondered, in the years since, whether he would have looked at me twice if he had known the truth.

I have decided that he would have looked harder, and married me faster, and it would have been worse.

Because the truth was that every step of Rupert’s rise ran through me, though he never knew it.

The transfer that put him on a fast-track team — I had suggested the reorganization to my father over Sunday dinner.

The high-profile account that made his reputation — the client had been steered to his desk.

The promotions that came a little faster than his peers’, the doors that opened a little more easily: I had opened a number of them myself, quietly, because early on I had loved him, and because a wife who loves her husband wants to see him succeed, and does not always stop to ask whether success is good for a man who mistakes it for evidence of his own greatness.

That was my mistake, and I own it.