I was there, and so were the duke and duchess, and just about everybody of note in the Bahamas, including Alfred de Marigny. Freddie came in a few minutes late, dressed to the nines, as we all were, crisp and sleek and deeply tanned. He grabbed a coupe of champagne from a nearby waiter, caught my eye, smiled, and wandered over.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said.

“Wouldn’t miss it. How was the hunting?”

“Terrible.”

“I didn’t realize you were such friends with the Oakeses.”

Freddie pulled out a cigarette case and tilted it toward my neck. I shook my head. He pulled out one of his strong, brown-papered cigarettes and ejected a flame from his gold lighter, the one his ex-wife had given him for a wedding present. “I like Oakes,” he said. “I like the way he is his own man, the way he stands up to these Bay Street fellows.”

“Yes? Anything else you like?”

He glanced to a nearby cluster of guests. “How lovely you look this evening, Mrs. Randolph. That dress is very much becoming to you.”

“Why, thanks. My housekeeper recommended it.”

“Your housekeeper has an excellent eye.”

“So do you, I hear.”

He opened his mouth. I smiled. We had come to a certain understanding, Freddie and I, landlord and tenant. I think he had made the offer of the cottage with certain hopes, and maybe Veryl was right. Maybe I should have entertained those hopes, maybe I should have put on my red dress and perfume and invited him over for cocktails, put on a record or two, lit some candles, all those things. But I had not. I couldn’t say why. Freddie was a good bet, a gentleman, someone I could like enormously and never fall in love with. Ideal, really. And now he had caught the attention of Miss Nancy Oakes, who always got what she wanted, and I wondered if the twinge I felt in my ribs had something to do with regret or something else.

“Just remember, she’s only seventeen,” I said. “She’s got a hell of a lot to learn, even if she’s the last one to admit it.”

“Ah, Lulu—”

But the commotion was already starting, the entrance of Miss Nancy Oakes on her father’s stocky arm. We turned to the entrance of the ballroom and shuffled back respectfully, while the orchestra made important noises. I remember Miss Oakes wore a green silk dress that perfectly suited her slender figure, and turned her auburn hair especially bright beneath the incandescent lights. I remember how her smile consumed her face and lit her skin from underneath; the way you smile when you’re thrillingly conscious of everyone’s gaze, when you’re experiencing the admiration of every single person in a ballroom like that, when you’re drinking it all in one gulp.