You would never know it, of course, from the way his grandmother acted; their return to the Château des Étoiles had been picture-perfect. Katherine, insisting that Tom’s return should be as his father would have wanted it, engineered a grand pageant. The staff were all lined up outside the front steps, forming a long line towards the house; and as Tom stepped out of the limo, offering his hand to Judy, they had each greeted them as they passed by: “sir” and “Madame,” little bob curtsies from the women, the men inclining their heads. It was as though he were literally royal.

Tom couldn’t get the scene out of his mind. As he gazed out of his bedroom towards the lake—his bedroom, once his mother and father’s room—the unpleasant memory returned. Instead of feeling grand, he had felt foolish; behind the obsequious words, Tom knew, there was contempt, pity—even loathing, in the case of his mother’s former driver. He hadn’t told Grandmother. Katherine would have insisted on having the man dismissed at once, and Tom had no interest, none, in further scandal.

And Grandmother had positively glowed. Possessed with inexhaustible energy and what Tom felt was inappropriate joy, she’d shown him around his childhood home; the portraits of both his parents still hung in the entrance hall, but beyond that, it was transformed—all traces of his mother’s presence removed with lightning speed. The clothes and shoes in her dressing room, vanished; his own suits hung there now. Her modern books, gone from the library; her gardening gloves from the rear lobby. Katherine had even put new plants in the conservatory. His mother’s occasional private bedroom, the one she hadn’t shared with Papa, had been assigned to Judy, with the comfortable styling of a guest chamber.

Grandmother had made it clear that regardless of their relationship, she, and not Judy, was the chatelaine.

And Tom found that was the one aspect of his homecoming he felt comfortable with. Grandmother had wasted no time; the week after they moved in, she threw a little soirée, with a hundred and fifty people Tom had not seen since the affair in his Paris apartment. Celeste and Margot de Fortuny, and their father, the marquis; Georges Tatin, without his pregnant wife; many other forgettable types, all swilling the best champagne from his cellars and practically kissing his ring. There were some handpicked gossip columnists, known for their obsequiousness regarding the rich and famous, and the party got the write-up it deserved: much was made of Tom’s new independence, the mastery of the estate and company, and pleasant remarks on Katherine’s impressive gown of severe gunmetal satin and her stupendous necklace of brilliants.