“Is that true?”
Maeve’s hand went to her throat.
“I only — I was trying to keep this family from falling apart—”
“You were keeping your lifestyle intact,” Rhys said, and the coldness in it was worse than any shout.
“You traded both your sons for a handbag.”
Around the room, the guests of Greenwich had begun, quietly and then not so quietly, to leave — gathering wraps, avoiding eyes, moving toward the doors while Maeve called after them not to go, that this was all a terrible misunderstanding, that they must stay.
They did not stay.
There is no sight a certain kind of society flees faster than the collapse of a family that had spent years insisting it was better than everyone else’s.
Chapter 16 — The Envelope
Odette crossed the ruined ballroom to where Dorian was pushing himself up off the floor, and she dropped a thick envelope onto his chest.