I met his oldest friend, a harbor engineer who cheerfully corrected every exaggerated story Desmond told about his twenties.

Pearl was not asked to make decisions about our relationship.

We told her only what she needed to know, in simple language, and reassured her that her father would always be her father and that my care for her did not depend on romance.

Two years after I first walked into Ashcroft House, Desmond and I married at a small lakeside ceremony.

There was no magazine cover, no announcement of a merger of fortunes.