“He should be here shortly.”

“Ah … do you need help? As a gentleman and a farmer, I feel as though I should offer.”

Lizzie laughed him off and jogged the handles. “Greta and I’ve got this. Thanks.”

“And I’ve got your man,” Samuel T. replied as he lifted his briefcase.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to make Chantal go away—and I’m going to enjoy doing it.”

With another wave, he strode over to the mansion’s entrance. Easterly’s pale stone steps were shallow and broad, and they brought him up to the Corinthian columns around the glossy black door with its lion’s head knocker.

Samuel T. didn’t bother with formalities. He opened the way into a foyer so big one could have bowled in it.

“Sir,” came a British clip. “Are you expected?”

Newark Harris was the most recent in a long line of butlers, this current incarnation trained at Bagshot Park across the pond, or so Samuel T. had heard. The Englishman was very much out of the David Suchet as Hercule Poirot mold, officious, pressed as a fine pair of slacks, and vaguely disapproving of the Americans he served. In his black suit, white shirt, and black tie, he looked like he could have been in place since the house was built.

Alas, that was only appearances. And the man had things to learn.

“Always.” Samuel T. smiled. “I am always expected here. So if you’ll excuse me, that is all.”

The Englishman’s dark brows shot up, but Samuel T. was already pivoting away. The dining room was to the right, and emanating from it, he could smell a familiar perfume.

He told himself to stay away. But as usual, he could not.

When it came to young, young Virginia Elizabeth Baldwine, soon-to-be-Pford, he never had been able to distance himself for very long.

It was his only character flaw.

Or rather, the only character flaw that concerned him.

Striding across the black-and-white marble, he walked into the long, thin room with the same attitude as he had dismissed the butler. “Well, isn’t this romantic. The affianced enjoying a morning repast together.”

Richard Pford’s head snapped up from his eggs and toast. Gin, meanwhile, showed no reaction—overtly, that was. But Samuel T. smiled at the way her knuckles went white on her coffee cup—and to make things sting more for her, he almost took the pleasure of informing her that her father’s suicide was common knowledge.

She was better at being cruel than he was, however.

And as Richard prattled on about something, all that registered was Gin’s long dark hair falling on her flowered silk blouse, and the Hermès scarf around her neck, and the perfect arrangement of her elegant body on the Chippendale chair. The overall effect was as if she had been posed by a great artist. Then again, say what one would about the woman’s morals, she always looked classy. It was the bone structure. The Bradford superiority. The beauty.

“—invitation soon,” Richard said. “We expect you to attend.”

Samuel T. glanced at the broomstick sitting across from her. “Oh, for your wedding? Or are we talking about her father’s funeral? I get the two confused.”

“Our nuptials.”

“Well, I’m so honored to be on a list that no doubt will be as exclusive as Wikipedia.”

“You don’t have to come,” Gin said quietly. “I know you’re quite busy.”

He looked at that diamond ring on her finger and thought, yes, she had done well for herself. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford a gem of that size, and he was hardly a pauper. Pford’s money was on Bradford levels, though.

So yes, it was a helluva lifeboat she had chosen to jump into. It would have been safer for her to try to swim with the sharks.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Samuel T. murmured. “And I’m sure that daughter of yours is thrilled to finally get a father.”

As Gin blanched, he refused to feel bad. Like so much of Gin’s life, “that daughter,” Amelia, was a mistake, the result of one of her random hook-ups after she’d gone off to college, a living, breathing bad decision that, as far as he understood, she had failed to parent and barely acknowledged.

Why couldn’t he have just hated her? Samuel T. wondered. God knew there was reason enough.

Hatred had never been the problem, however.

“You know,” Samuel T. drawled, “I envy you two so much. Marriage is such a beautiful thing.”

“How is Lane’s divorce going?” Richard said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it.”

“Among other things. You know, one in three marriages end in divorce. But that won’t be you two. True love is so wonderful to see live and in person. You are beacons to us all.”

Richard’s brow lifted. “I didn’t think you were the settling kind.”

“I’m not at the moment. But my dream girl is out there. I just know it.”

That was not a lie. Unfortunately, she was marrying this asshole having breakfast with her—and the term that better fit Gin’s role in Samuel T.’s life was “nightmare.” But he’d meant his RSVP. He would be there when she walked down the aisle with this fool just to remind himself of the reality of their relationship.

As the sound of a powerful car engine percolated through the old-fashioned, single-paned windows, Samuel T. nodded to the happy couple. “My client’s arrived. I can tell the purr of a Porsche anywhere. It’s like the sound of a woman’s orgasm—something you never forget.”

Turning away, he paused at the archway. “Something for you to work toward with her, Richard. Good luck with that, and call me if you need any instruction. I gave her her first one.”

Lane pulled up to Easterly in his 911 and parked next to his attorney’s classic maroon Jaguar.

“What a view,” he said as he got out.

Lizzie looked up from the ivy bed she was on her knees in front of. Wiping her brow with her forearm, she smiled. “I just started about five minutes ago. Things will look even better in an hour.”

He walked onto the cropped grass. Off in the distance, he heard the hum of a lawn mower, the chatter of electronic clippers, a low whir from a leaf blower.

“I wasn’t talking about the horticulture.” Bending down, he kissed her on the mouth. “Where is—”