Odette had caught all of it and filed none of it, because to file it was to know it, and to know it was to have to do something, and for a long time she had not been ready to become the kind of woman who did something.
The jacket changed that.
You can explain away a glance.
You cannot explain away a pill.
Chapter 4 — The Penniless Charity Case
There was one more figure standing behind the marriage, and she had never once pretended to like Odette.
Maeve Ashcombe, Dorian’s mother, presided over the family the way a queen presides over a court she suspects of disloyalty — watchfully, and with a long memory.
She had decided, years before, that Odette did not belong.
Odette had come from nothing Maeve recognized: no country club, no family name, no trust.
Maeve had a particular phrase she used, always just quietly enough to be deniable, always just loudly enough to land. Our little charity case. She said it with a smile, at dinners, as though it were affectionate.