Code for homosexual. But Caroline was being genuinely complimentary, no edge in her voice, and Jane realized, as they drove through the flickering golden light, that she was a little smitten, too. The warm breeze was blowing in the window, scattering Caroline’s fine golden hair. She swept it off her face with her right hand, the sun glinting off a hammered silver bracelet she had clamped around her wrist. Jane pulled down the sun visor and looked at herself in the narrow mirror. If Caroline was a perfectly ripe peach, she was a head of broccoli. Freckles, wrinkles, and dark circles. She wasn’t living her life properly, that was her problem. Study Sufism and you end up looking like Caroline, run around in circles for ten years and you end up looking like Jane.

They turned onto the long sloping drive that led from the road through the Wade estate and down to the lake. The pines on either side of the drive had to be a hundred feet tall, and the dirt road itself was covered with a blanket of fallen needles and bright leaves. The leaves parted for the Citroën as Caroline shifted and they sped downhill. And then they rounded a curve and the Georgian brick manor house appeared in a clearing, surrounded by acres of yellowing grass. The house itself seemed to be gazing off at the limp green lake and the low rolling mountains. How Dale’s pulse must have raced when he saw this estate for the first time. No need to pretend that this view didn’t have something to do with his decision to marry Caroline six months after they met. Dale could make all the money he wanted with his real estate deals and his restaurants and his developments; he could make more powerful friends than he could keep track of; he could accumulate dozens of academic degrees and become fluent in ten different accents; but here was the ultimate prize, the one thing he couldn’t buy outright and had to marry into: class.