But it was no good.The rheumy blue eyes were still sharp with that cynical gaze. Judy knew she’d been caught out. She flushed; how she loathed Pierre’s mother! Oh, it had been a convenient alliance, but the bitch never passed up an opportunity to show that she was still queen bee.

“It is a very beautiful house,” she muttered.

“All true estates have a dower house.” Katherine smoothed her long skirt, vintage Chanel tweed, paired with the matching jacket tailored to her still-slim form; she wore a cream silk shirt by Givenchy and a necklace of pearls the size of marbles, their lustre soft against the wrinkles of her skin. “This is, I believe, one of the better ones in France,” she added complacently. “And my dear Pierre had a great hand in choosing the decor,” she added.

Her claw of a hand gestured at the antique Chinese wallpaper, the curtains of pale orange dress silk fringed with cloth of gold, the cream-and-cornflower tones of the priceless Persian rug that underlay her Louis XIV chairs and Chippendale sideboard.

“He always had such great taste,” Judy forced herself to say.

Katherine looked at her. “Has, Judy, has.”

“Let’s hope so.” She took refuge in her coffee. Bitch! Why did Katherine always twist the knife, talking about Pierre? And throwing parties, to show that Judy was not the hostess. It was as though she was trying to rub in the nasty feeling that Judy couldn’t smother for too much longer—that this little adventure was Pierre, part two.

Judy was in the house with Tom—but not his wife. She was at the parties—but not the hostess. She got gifts of jewels—but no engagement ring. . . .

Judy perceived quite clearly what Katherine was saying, in her roundabout, spidery way; I’m family—you’re not.

Katherine smiled thinly at her, to show she knew what Judy was thinking.Very well, I’ll grasp the nettle, Judy told herself.

“And do you get used to it—all this luxury?” she asked. She lifted her head, brazenly drinking in the antiques, the architecture, the liveried servants; the butler hovering nearby with the silver Georgian coffeepot, and Katherine speaking as though he weren’t even there. Two could play that game.

“But of course.” Katherine arched one silver eyebrow, disapprovingly. “If one comes from a good family ... one hardly needs to ‘get used’ to it.”

Judy was unbowed. In fact, she felt a stirring of her old self—something that she had shoved relentlessly underground when the affair with Tom started. She was sick of playing the good girl. How far had it got her anyway?

She regarded Katherine with loathing, and decided to stir the pot a little.

“And are you?” she asked. “From a good family, I mean?”

Katherine made a motion that, were she younger, might have been interpreted as tossing her head.