If only they were plain, simple people who talked plain, simple English, then his life would be a whole lot easier. Instead, Pop was the stiff-upper-lipped aristocrat, and Mom was quite, quite mad and a little too fond of the juice. And somewhere beneath all the evasion and the madness and the veiled comments was something Unmentionable. Something that had to do with his Genevieve—about the need for her to be looked after.

He’d known almost from the start that there was something the family was hiding. Even during the three-month courtship, Lady Ticksted made occasional references to Genevieve’s “delicate health” and alluded to an “ongoing condition.” When the viscount gave his blessing to the engagement, he had laid great emphasis on the need for Robert to “take care of” his daughter. Not such an unreasonable request, perhaps, but he did keep on. It was as though he saw Genevieve as a little girl or an invalid, more in need of a nursemaid than a husband.

Robert did his best to probe further, but no elucidation was forthcoming, and he didn’t wish to seem disrespectful or overly suspicious. Ultimately he put the whole thing down to a sort of nameless, damp Englishness. Certainly there was no evidence of illness in Genevieve. Quite the contrary. And once he’d gotten his bride away from Viscount Ticksted’s house in the flat, gray marshes, she positively thrived.

It had been a long time since he’d given much thought to the “Unmentionable” in Genevieve’s past. But tonight, alone in the apartment, it was back in his mind again, and he found he couldn’t keep himself from thinking about it. He could ask Genevieve directly, of course, but he’d tried that before and it hadn’t got him anywhere. She was as difficult to pin down as her parents, and lately she’d begun to form a whole set of her own new Unmentionables….

Whenever he tried to bring up the issue of their settling in Boston, she immediately changed the subject. She’d do this so fluently and effectively that he wouldn’t realize until later that it had happened. Another Unmentionable had to do with Lulu: He wanted to know where exactly they went on their evenings out, who they talked to, what they talked about. He wanted to understand why his wife had established such a close friendship with someone she had so little in common with. Couldn’t she see that if she volunteered a little information, there might be no need for him to ask all these questions?

And then there was the incident a few weeks ago.