Some people thought she had been too hard.

Others thought Lucius had simply met the natural consequences of his own choices.

But the people in that room who had lived through something like it understood the truest thing about that night, the thing beneath all the documents and the applause.

Lucius Beckworth had not lost his wife on the staircase.

He had lost her every time he let his mother speak to her with contempt, and every night he chose secrecy over honesty, and the day he decided her trust was a tool.

He had lost her, most of all, the moment he concluded that a woman without visible wealth was worth less than a woman with visible power.