Instead he read her findings, said one cold word about the administrator responsible, and had the man replaced by the end of the week.

The money that had been taken from the staff was returned to the staff.

And when the new arrangements were drawn up, Caspian did not sign them himself and inform her afterward.

He stood behind her decisions and let them be hers.

For Cosima, who had spent a decade being told she was too unwell to be trusted with a checkbook, the experience of being not merely believed but backed was so foreign that she had to sit with it privately before she could take it in.

She had expected, at best, to be tolerated in this marriage.