Once she’d fucked him a few times, though? Well, it was too much missionary, for one thing.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes … I’m coming, I’m coming …”

As she “orgasmed,” her stylist flushed from embarrassment but kept pinning her dark hair in place while a maid came in from the walk-in closet with a velvet tray in her hands. On it were two parures, one made of Burmese rubies by Cartier in the forties and the other a sapphire creation done in the late fifties by Van Cleef & Arpels. Both were her grandmother’s, one having been given to Big Virginia Elizabeth by her husband on the birth of Gin’s mother, and the other presented on her grandparents’ twentieth wedding anniversary.

She made a moaning noise; then hit mute and shook her head at the maid. “I want the Winston diamonds.”

“I believe Mrs. Baldwine is wearing them.”

As Gin pictured her sister-in-law, Chantal, with the hundred-plus carats of D flawless on, she smiled and spoke slowly, as if addressing a dolt. “Then take the diamonds my father bought my mother off that bitch’s neck and ears and bring them here to me.”

The maid blanched. “My … pleasure.”

Just before the woman stepped out of the bedroom, Gin called over, “Make sure you clean them first. I can’t stand that drugstore perfume she insists on wearing.”

“My pleasure.”

It was a bit of a stretch to refer to Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf as “drugstore,” but it certainly wasn’t Chanel. Honestly, though, what could you expect from a woman who hadn’t even made it through Sweet Briar?

Gin unmuted the phone. “Baby, I’ve got to go. I need to get ready. I’m so sorry you can’t be here, but you understand.”

Cue that Peanuts’ routine, where the adult’s voice turned muffled.

God, had he always had that thick of a Southern accent? Bradfords didn’t have any kind of dreadful garbled twang—only enough of a drawl to prove what side of the Mason-Dixon Line they were born and lived on and that they knew the difference between bourbon and whiskey.

The latter being beneath contempt.

“Bye, now,” she said, and hung up.

As she ended the call, she decided to end the relationship. Conrad had started talking about leaving his wife, and she didn’t want that. He had two children, for godsakes—what was he thinking. It was one thing to have some fun on the side, but children needed the illusion of two parents.

Plus, she’d already proven she had no business being a mother to anything. Not even a goldfish.

A half hour later, she was dressed in a Christian Dior gown made of U of C red and had that Harry Winston necklace laying heavy and cool on her collarbones. Her perfume was Coco by Chanel, a classic that she had decided she could carry off when she hit thirty. Her shoes were Loubou’s.

She was not wearing panties.

Samuel Theodore Lodge was coming to the dinner.

As she stepped out into the hall, she looked to the door opposite hers. Sixteen years ago to the day, she had given birth to the young girl who lived in there. And that had been about it for her involvement with Amelia. A baby nurse, followed by two full-time nannies, coupled with a sufficient passage of time, and they were now in prep-school territory.

So she didn’t even catch a glimpse of her daughter anymore.

Indeed, Amelia had not come home for spring break, and that had been good. But the summer was looming, and the girl’s return from Hotchkiss was not something anyone, even Amelia most likely, looked forward to.

Could you even send a sixteen-year-old off to summer camp?

Maybe they could just ship her over to Europe for a two-month tour. Victorians had done that a hundred years ago, before even airplanes and cars with air bags.

They could pay someone to be her chaperone.

And actually, the urge to keep the girl away from Easterly wasn’t because Gin didn’t love her daughter. It was just that the girl’s presence was too stark a condemnation of choices and actions and lies that were Gin’s own and no one else’s—and sometimes it was best not to look too closely at those things.

Besides, Europe was grand. Especially if one did it right.

Gin walked on, heading for the straight-out-of-Tara staircase that bifurcated on a middle landing before bottoming out on both sides of Easterly’s tremendous marble foyer. The dress spoke up with each of her strides, the fall of silk rustling against the tulle underskirting in a way that made her imagine the hushed conversation of the Frenchwomen who had put the stitches in the gown.

As she came to the landing and chose the right side, as it was closer to the parlor cocktails were always served in, she could hear the patter of voices. There would be thirty-two for dinner tonight, and she would be seated in the chair her mother should be in, opposite and down the long table from her father at the head.

She had done this a million times and would do it a million times hence, this acting as the lady of the house—and usually it was a duty she carried out with pride.

Tonight, however, there was a mourning behind her heart for some reason.

Probably because it was Amelia’s birthday.

Best to get drinking.

Especially given that when she had called her daughter, Amelia had refused to come down and get on her dorm’s house phone.

It was the kind of thing Gin would have done.

See? She was a good parent. She understood her child.

Lane refused to dress in black tie for dinner. He just kept his slacks on, and traded his shirt for a button-down that he’d left behind when he’d gone to live with Jeff up north.