The first time she let a dinner run long rather than leave for a call, she’d told herself the call could wait an hour, and it could.

The first time she let Margery introduce her as “Crispin’s wife, she keeps busy with a little investing,” she’d told herself it wasn’t worth the correction, and it wasn’t — not that once.

The first time Crispin repeated the story about building everything alone and she said nothing, she’d told herself that a man needs to believe in his own myth, that puncturing it would be cruel and would gain her nothing.

Every single accommodation, taken by itself, had been small and sensible and even kind.

That was the trap of it.

No one had ever asked her to disappear all at once; if they had, she would have refused.

They had only ever asked her to disappear a little more than yesterday, and she had agreed a thousand times, and a thousand small agreements had built a woman who managed a fortune from a hidden room and let her own family call her a temporary employee.

The cage had no single bar thick enough to notice.

It was made entirely of reasonable moments, and she had woven every one of them herself.

Chapter 3 — Mrs. Stroud

She washed the small cut on her finger, pressed a bandage over it, and opened the closet.

She chose a simple black dress — no sequins — and shoes she could stand in all night without thinking about them.

She wasn’t going to the gala to compete with Odette.

She wasn’t going to prove who could command a room.