“Well at least if his wife’s here, he’s less likely to try for a repeat performance,” said Ameerah helpfully.

Nory didn’t know if the presence of his wife would make her feel better or worse. Worse probably. She wondered again how she’d been talked into this. At that moment, Charles turned and saw them, and the greetings began anew.

“Cocktails!” called Jenna shrilly, jumping up and pulling an ornate brass bell lever on the wall near the door. Nory imagined the staff ruing the day their predecessors ever installed the bell system. Jenna would be sure to make full use of it for the duration of their stay.

Later, slightly woozy from the two cocktails warming her blood, Nory followed Ameerah and Dev, who followed Jenna up the grand staircase to be shown to their rooms. From the way Jenna spoke, you would have thought she had chosen the decor and made the beds up herself.

“This is you, Ameerah,” she said, opening the door wide and waiting for Ameerah’s response. Dev threw himself straight onto the four-poster bed and said, “Awesome!” Jenna sometimes forgot that Ameerah’s family boasted mansions in several countries, and she was therefore not often inclined to be overwhelmed by luxury. But Ameerah made all the correct noises of pleasure. Besides, many of her familial properties were too modern for the kind of run-down grandeur that only history can bring.

Before Nory had attended the private school, she had assumed that there were simply people who had money and people who did not—her family fell into the latter category. But she had quickly realized that being wealthy was more nuanced than that; there was old money and new money, and there was a healthy snobbery on both sides toward the other camp. Many of the students at Braddon-Hartmead had come from old money—Charles, Pippa, Jeremy, and Guy included. Ameerah, Jenna, and Tristan were new money, although Jenna’s family tried to pass themselves off as old money; her dad had purchased titles for himself and his wife, which had scandalized the school governors at the time.

In the simplest terms, Nory learned, the old money tended to be history rich but cash poor (relatively speaking) and new money, the opposite (though they had a far nicer time in Nory’s opinion). After too much wine, Charles used to tease his wife-to-be by describing her family as “flash with the cash but mostly trash.” However, Jenna had the last laugh when her stepmother graciously stepped in to bail out Charles’s family business when it was threatened with receivership; he no longer teased his fiancée with that particular joke.

Nory’s room was down the hall.

“I chose this one for you because it looks over the formal gardens and I thought you’d appreciate it more than anyone else here.” Jenna smiled as Nory crossed straight to the window and let out a sigh of ecstasy.