And she had decided, young, that she wanted at least one thing in her life that the name had not arranged for her.

She wanted to know if she could be loved as a person, and not as an acquisition.

So when she met Lucius Beckworth — in a crowded roadside café during a thunderstorm, both of them waiting out the rain, him talking easily about how kindness mattered more than status — she had not told him who she was.

She said she worked as an independent financial consultant, which was not quite a lie.

She kept the apartment above the bookstore because she genuinely loved the neighborhood.

She drove the old car because it still ran.