I nearly did that.

But the paper was genuinely good, and passing on a sound acquisition because it might one day become socially awkward is not a principle, it is a flinch, and I do not run my firm on flinches.

So I bought it, and I told exactly no one at the dinners, and I planned to hold it quietly and, if it ever came to enforcement, to hand it to a subordinate and stay far away from the room.

That was the plan.

It was a good plan.

It survived right up until the moment Theodora Whitcombe decided the harbor would be improved by my absence from it, and I understood, catching myself on that rail, that arm’s length was a courtesy — and that the Whitcombes had just used up every courtesy I had.