The orange on my glass’s rim glistened, and I nibbled, savoring the bubbles and the bitter. Say what you will about Susie, but she delivers impeccable drinks. Hope treated herself to a few deep gulps. We were in for a performance tonight, if she kept up that pace. I wondered what worn tale she might fall back on: the story about sharing a cigarette with Diana Vreeland in a ladies’ room at the Met? The one about sneaking into the von Bülow’s last Victorian croquet party before the hostess was killed—supposedly—by her enigmatic husband? Or would she instead bless the crowd with the recent results of my father’s mole removal? Could be all of the above!

Hope, though, lowered her glass and stuck out her tongue. “Cass, go and grab me a tequila?”

“I don’t think the caterers brought shot glasses, dear,” J.P. said.

“Oh, all right,” said Hope, “put it in a wineglass.”

“It’s time to mingle,” Archer announced, spotting a familiar young man across the party. “I need to bring myself to the people.” As I watched his retreating back, I realized that the crowd around our small group had thinned. People peeled away, aiming for the outside bar set up between the veranda’s columns, the antique furniture arranged in conversation sets on the great lawn, or wandering across the mosaic-tiled floor to literally any other place that didn’t have Hope and J.P. Gilford.

Or me.

Instinctively I touched the wound at the back of my head, healing but still tender, hidden by my hair. Only last week I’d been running on adrenaline and no sleep, navigating a dense crowd of people red-faced and chanting, trying to evade the overeager bodyguards of a particular strongman who—let’s just say—didn’t treat my Nikon with the respect and care it deserved when they got hold of me. But I couldn’t help feel that the muscle in Moldova was more hospitable than folks in this town.

In the distance, a low privet hedge, trimmed now with military precision, was the only impediment to the sea, which today had a soft chop crumpling the surface, turning it into a panoramic expanse of Santorini-blue linen. The sailboats and motor craft were out enjoying the start of their weekend, headed north toward the bay or south to the sound. The early white blooms of the hydrangeas encircling the perimeter of the lawn nodded and quivered in the breeze. If you listened closely, you could hear the waves breaking against the crags and rocks below the Cliff Walk, rumbling their retreat over the stones.

“For a minute earlier this week, they were calling for storms,” Hope was saying. “I just would’ve loved to say I told you so to Susie. Who holds an outdoor gathering in Rhode Island in May without a tent?” Only Hope Coventry-Gilford could cast beautiful weather as something to suffer through.