She was sorely in need of a rescuer. Even before her troubled summer she had begun to long for escape. She’d been getting through the interminable days by reading, dreaming about the life she could one day have, and scribbling her fantasies in her notebook in the form of poems. And then Robert arrived, with his easy laughter and his gallantry and his kind smile. How relaxed he seemed beside her pinch-faced, neurotic mother. How straightforward beside her double-dealing father. She’d grown up in a house full of secrets where nobody ever spoke their minds. And here at last was a man she could really talk to.

During their three-month courtship, she sat back from their conversations, trying to assess him seriously and not allow her judgment to be colored by her eagerness to get away from her parents. She wasn’t in love with him—not in an explosive, earth-shattering way, at any rate. But she felt a tremendous fondness for him, and she sincerely believed she could make this evolve into the Real Thing. At the time he proposed, she thought she was halfway there.

The horse was life-size but with nothing of life about it.

“I guess I don’t know much about art,” Robert was saying. “But I took some advice, and I can tell you this is a sound investment. More so than those literary magazines you have me funding.”

One afternoon, late in their courtship, Robert and Genevieve were walking together in Lady Ticksted’s rose garden. The sky had been getting progressively darker, and then thunder rolled overhead.

Genevieve turned her face up to the sky. The storm would be magnificent. “Do you know how hungry I am?” she whispered. “For life, I mean. For the world.”

“We’d better get back,” said Robert. “It’s going to rain.”

“Then let’s get wet.” She had a tight hold of his arm.

“Your mother won’t be pleased with me. What if you got a chill?”

“Oh, Robert. Don’t be boring.”

The rain came suddenly.

“Quick,” he said. “We’ll be drenched.”

“I don’t care.” And then she put a hand against his cheek. “I’m suffocating in that house. My life is moving further and further away from me.”

He frowned and gave her the look. The lost-dog look. It said, What are you talking about? It said, Poor me. It was the first time she’d seen it.

She stopped in her tracks. One word sounded in her head. The word was NO, loud and clear.

“Genevieve?”

Within seconds, she’d rallied. Swallowed heavily. Sent the word away. Made herself forget it.

He was the man who would take her out of this place forever and show her the world.

He squeezed her hand.

And she let him lead her back into the house.

“Genevieve? Aren’t you going to say something?”

She couldn’t go on pretending to herself.