And now she descended a grand staircase into a ballroom of hundreds and did the opposite of disappearing, and she found that her body remembered how — that underneath eight years of practiced smallness, the woman who had run boardrooms at twenty-nine was still entirely intact, waiting, straight-backed.

She did not hurry.

She did not scan the room for approval.

She simply came down the stairs at her own pace, as though the entire evening had been arranged to wait for her, which, in fact, it had.

She let her eyes find the family’s table only once on the way down, and she took in the whole tableau in a single unhurried glance: Seraphine, half-risen, her hand fallen away from a man who was no longer an asset.

Lenette, gray-faced, her mouth slightly open.