“Of course,” he said. “Good day, gentlemen.”

He took the train back to Oxford, first class; Tom had found that English taxi drivers are an inexhaustible source of conversation, especially when a man wants to think. He was going to have to give them up; his first action in the last few days that would have pleased his mother.

The English countryside rushed quietly past him. It was, he had to acknowledge, very beautiful, if one liked that sort of thing: gentle meadows, copses of trees, fat white sheep, mellow and contented in the hot summer. But nothing, certainly nothing to France, he thought with pride; nothing to the elegance of formal grey stone, graceful buildings in symmetry, the manicured lawns and schematic walks of his father’s park; villages where the houses were planned, not jumbled together. London was cluttered, Paris refined; he wanted to go home.

The simplest way would be to leave. Oxford was no prison. He could send movers, clear his room, take lodgings anywhere; there were some fine luxury places to rent on the Left Bank. But, although loath to do anything that Sophie wanted, he was not quite ready to throw away his degree. Oxford was still preeminent among the world’s great universities, and although he wouldn’t confess it now, Tom had been proud to make it in. He planned a safer out. He would go to the Senior Censor and request rustication. One year away. That would be enough to stop Maman messing with his inheritance, and then he could return to the girls and parties.

Polly would still be there in a year. Tom flinched at the thought. He was busy—he was heartbroken—but yet, but yet, he still thought about her. Could he win her back? If he returned in triumph, sole controller of his father’s vast holdings, a celebrated homme d’affaires. More than just an heir. Tom had a strong suspicion that being an heir would mean nothing to a girl like Polly. What was it the English called it? Trust fund brat. A man needed to show himself a man to get rid of such a label, and Thomas Massot was ready to do it. Nobody complained about the Rothschild boys, or the Rockefellers. It was so old-fashioned to consider twenty-one the majority, anyway. Legally it was eighteen, had been for years.

The train pulled into the station at Oxford. Tom was glad. His plans were made, and he only wanted, now, to set them in motion.

At the end of this bitter fight, he would have put things right. The world was becoming clearer to him. He needed to save his mother from herself, be his father’s son. And win Polly back. She was different—intelligent, beautiful, daring. There were, indeed, better groomed and more delicate girls out there. And true, he’d enjoyed his stint as a playboy.