Chapter 2

Dominic requested an introduction to Ada three days later.

My father couldn't understand it.

Salvatore Valli had spent years preparing me for an alliance with the Bellantes. I knew the household, the accounts, the charitable boards, the names a respectable visitor wasn't supposed to recognize.

Ada had grown up largely outside that public life. Her mother had been my father's mistress before becoming his second wife. None of that made Ada less entitled to a future. But Dad had always kept two sets of rules, and he expected us to build our lives inside them.

“Did you pay the artist?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“Both fees?”

“Yes.”

Ada entered before he could question me again.

“Perhaps Dominic knows appearances aren't everything.” She looked at me, serene as a woman offering advice she hadn't arranged to profit from. “If he cares about someone, a portrait won't matter. Don't you agree, Clara?”

She'd paid the artist herself. I could hear it in the careful wording.

In my first life she'd wanted her portrait to look damaged. She thought a slighted daughter would interest him more than another beautifully dressed candidate for a family alliance. When his advisers steered him toward the supposedly uncomplicated daughter, he'd married me instead.

Then he'd met her in person and decided I'd stolen his life.

This time the undamaged portrait carried Ada's name. There was no wounded woman for him to rescue in secret. He could choose her openly.

I wished them both the pleasure of it.

Dad asked me to help her prepare. I knew what Dominic drank, what his mother disliked, which lawyer would be at the dinner. Thirteen years of knowledge made me a very useful older sister.

“You're taking this well,” Dad said.

“I want the introduction to go smoothly.”

He patted my hand. “We'll find the right place for you too.”

I smiled because I didn't intend to let him find it.