My Oxford Year: A Novel

What is he buzzing in my ears?

“Now that I come to die,

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”

Ah, reverend sir, not I!

Robert Browning, “Confessions,” 1864

Blenheim Palace is mind-bogglingly big. Trying to understand how the massive horseshoe-shaped structure used to be—and a portion of it still is—a home, makes my brain hurt. Yes, America has its great mansions, but they’re provincial by comparison. Cute colonial attempts. Summer cottages. Cabins in the woods. And we’re only twelve miles from Oxford. It was a fifteen-minute drive. A drive in a sleek, black Mercedes limo.

With Jamie’s family crest on the door.

Which he tried to block from view by standing in front of it and insisting, “No, please, by all means, after you.”

Today is a “good day.” He woke up feeling normal, much to his chagrin. I know he would have loved to have an excuse to cancel.

But damn, does he look good in his tux.

Everyone looks good. The gowns aren’t sparkly and flashy, they’re understated, the material thick and sumptuous, the cut impeccable. The suits are throwbacks to double-breasted days of yore. As we follow the crowd toward the front door, two giant braziers on each side dart firelight across the guests. Maggie slips her hand into mine and squeezes.

We were in Hall when I told Maggie, Charlie, and Tom that Jamie and I were officially together, and they were happy for me. When I told them I got us tickets to the ball, they had a collective psychotic break. Tom fell to the floor in a giraffe-like sprawl, Charlie stood and slowly ascended to the tabletop, arms outstretched, singing “Jerusalem,” and Maggie just started quietly weeping.

I look over at Charlie in his tails and the Salvador Dalí mustache he grew (or attempted to grow) for the occasion. Tom, in a top hat that adds an unnecessary eight inches to his height, bounces on the balls of his feet, and just misses bumping the little blue-haired biddy in front of him. His attentions are elsewhere. He’s eye-darting Maggie, glancing at her and then quickly looking away before being caught. She looks like Veronica Lake, decked out in a floor-length, cowl-neck, ruby satin dress. Her hair’s dyed platinum blond for the night and styled in long 1940s waves cascading over one shoulder. When Tom first saw her, his eyes goggled and he yelled, “Oi, Mags, you’re gorgeous! You look nothing like yourself!” Charlie and I both swatted him and he turned immediately silent. He kept an openmouthed stare going all the way to the limo before seeming to decide—after giving her a hand to help her into it—never to look at her again. Until now. He looks slightly repentant. And confused. I catch Charlie’s eye and we share a hopeful grin. So far, so good.

I’m in a vintage yellow gown that Charlie picked out for me and Maggie did my hair in some intricate pin-curl updo. She also did a smoky-eye thing that I would have never attempted on my own and can’t stop looking at in any mirror I pass. I definitely look nothing like myself.

We enter the palace and I have to remind myself to breathe.

It’s decorated for Christmas. The marble floors are like glass, reflecting light from two twenty-foot Christmas trees standing sentry in the entry hall and the garlands strung across the gallery railing. The soft orange glow emanating from the vaulted and frescoed ceiling forty feet above bounces off the stone columns and refracts in the paned windows with hushed luminescent whispers.

Everywhere I turn there’s another statue, another piece of art, another tapestry, bookcase, alcove, mural. Jamie guides us through the rooms and hallways (the ones we’re allowed in) as if he grew up here, pointing out historical architectural details, recounting the palace’s ancient scandals, hinting that one or two of his ancestors may have been key players in them. It’s unnerving how unaffected he is by all of this, how easily he moves in this setting. Servants open the door for him, take his jacket, hand him champagne, and Jamie moves through them by rote. Conversely, I’ve turned into a parrot, compulsively squawking, “Thank you! Thank you! You don’t have to do that, thank you!” He wears his tux like a second skin; his posture straightens, his head tips back slightly. He’s like an actor slipping into character.

Jamie’s words come back to me: it’s just awful rich people affirming how awful and rich they are. As someone who wasn’t raised with money, or even remotely near it, I’m simultaneously awed by this kind of wealth and also deeply uncomfortable with it. As much as I may choose to ignore it, Jamie is a product of this system. I’m only now realizing just how much. And yet he’s chosen to toil away in academia, researching, writing, teaching. I wonder if this is the source of some of his familial tension. Maybe they want him to have done something more . . . fitting with his life? Something more profitable? Prestigious? Where I come from, ending up with a PhD, teaching poetry at Oxford, living in an inherited Victorian town house would be inconceivable; but maybe that life is just as inconceivable where Jamie comes from, only for the opposite reason: it’s a failing.

Jamie must see some of this transpiring on my face, because he peers at me and asks, “You all right?” We’re alone now. Maggie, Charlie, and Tom have wandered off to find a bar and we’re scouting for a place to situate ourselves.

I turn to answer him, but my eyes are drawn to a middle-aged woman about ten feet behind him. She’s wearing one of the more colorful gowns, a paisley floral pattern. She also holds a fan. Like, an actual fan. Like it’s Gone with the Wind and she’s about to tap someone flirtatiously on the shoulder with it. She drips money like a leaky faucet.

“Don’t look now,” I murmur lowly, “but the very definition of ‘awful and rich’ is standing right behind—oh shit, she’s looking at us. Let’s go.”

“Steady on, chin up,” Jamie murmurs, a smile playing at his lips. “I’m sure whoever she is, she’s simply thinking how stunning you look tonight.” I lean in to kiss him, but the woman heads decisively toward us. She winks at me (odd), then breaks into a run, and attacks Jamie, grabbing him around the waist. Jamie’s face registers shock, but he looks down at the bejeweled fingers entwined on his stomach and smiles. He quickly spins, enveloping the woman in a hug. They pull apart and she clasps his cheeks between her hands. She gazes into his eyes, her face lit from within by that combination of love, pride, and joy that only exists in one person: a mother looking at her child.

“Gorgeous boy,” she breathes.

“Beautiful mum,” he says back, clearly echoing some childhood game.

Looking at her love for him is like looking directly into the sun.

She steps back like a general, assessing her son fully. “You’re looking quite well, my love, quite well.” She pokes his stomach. “I can’t tell you how delighted I am that you came.”

Whatever I was expecting Jamie’s mother to be like—their relationship to be like—it wasn’t this. At all. I’m so confused I’ve been standing here with my mouth wide open since she grabbed him.

She eyes me. “Shall you introduce me, or must I do everything myself?”

“Yes, of course.” Jamie touches my shoulder. “Eleanor Durran, may I present my mother, Antonia Davenport.”

She takes my hand with gusto. “Eleanor! How lovely. You don’t often hear that name anymore.”

I smile. “That’s why I go by Ella.”

She chuckles. “Family name?”

“Eleanor Roosevelt,” I answer. “My father had delusions of grandeur.”

Jamie chimes in. “You’ll appreciate this, Mother, Ella actually saw you standing—”

I grab the sentence out of his mouth. “Standing over there and wanted to tell you that I absolutely love your dress!” I smile hugely and quick-flash my eyes to Jamie, silently threatening death if he contradicts my story.

“Likewise,” she says, still smiling. It’s as if she’s physically incapable of not smiling. It’s natural, real, written on her face with caring penmanship. There’s a mischievous quality to her, a whimsy that I’ve seen in her son when he’s at his happiest. It’s infectious. “That yellow is extraordinary. In truth, it was the first thing I noticed, and I thought to myself, ‘Who is that stunning light of a woman standing there?’ And then I realized you were standing with my son.” She pokes Jamie’s stomach again. “Well done, you!”

Jamie grabs her wrist and peers at the fan hanging off it. “And what is this?”

“Oh, Jamie, I’ve discovered the most exquisite escape hatch.” Her wide eyes and open enthusiasm strip thirty years from her face. “If I find I’m unable to extricate myself from a particularly dire conversation, I simply wave this and insist that I must get some air. Menopause is truly the most miraculous excuse.”

Jamie lifts an eyebrow. “Is it? I must try it sometime, then.”

Her eyes flit behind me and she calls, “William! Come say hello!”

I look over my shoulder and find the man who stormed out of Jamie’s office, looking as though he has been forcibly stuffed into a tuxedo. A rugged, feral man tortured into elegance. I smile at him as he approaches. He barely returns it, the side of his mouth spasmodically jerking to the left. I don’t wait for an introduction, extending my hand gamely. “Ella Durran. Nice to meet you, sir.”

He takes it, brief but firm. Unisex. He’s not changing his greeting because I’m a woman or, more, his son’s girlfriend. I can respect that. “William Davenport,” he intones, low and rumbly, like a cartoon lion. “I had heard my son was dating a beautiful American girl,” he continues, trying to be endearing, but like his tux, this, too, seems unnatural. He doesn’t look at me.

“I had heard those rumors, too, sir, but I didn’t let them stop me.” Antonia laughs, Jamie smiles, but William gives me nothing more than a tight smirk. He glances at his son. “Jamie.” I can’t tell if it’s a greeting or a reprimand.

“Father,” Jamie replies, suddenly austere, as if he’s mimicking William.

Antonia steps in. “Eleanor, have you ever been to Scotland?”

“No, ma’am.”

She turns to Jamie. “Invite her at Christmas! We’d adore having her.”

“Most kind of you, Mother, but actually”—Jamie softens his voice—“Ella and I are going on holiday.” A flicker of disappointment crosses Antonia’s face and she turns back to me.

I stall, trapped. Jamie hasn’t talked with them about this? “Thank you so much—really—but you see, I’ve never been to Europe,” I say. “It might be the only chance I’ll get while I’m over here.”

Her smile returns. “Oh, then you must go!” she cries. “Another time.” What a gracious, lovely woman. Antonia’s gaze catches something behind me and she rolls her eyes slightly. “You’ll excuse me, but duty calls. I really must say hello. Be back straightaway,” and she moves off, leaving Jamie, William, and me in a loose triangle.

Wasting no time, William leans in to Jamie. “Dr. Solomon said you weren’t willing to do another round of stem-cell replacement.”

Even though he has one round of chemo left, and he won’t have conclusive test results until January, Jamie has decided not to try the stem-cell replacement therapy again. He says it only gave him a year of remission last time, and it was painful, and depleting, and required him to live in a hospital for a month in total isolation. The only other option is a different kind of chemo, which Jamie seems to prefer. I’m doing my best to stay out of it.

At Jamie’s silence, William presses, “Care to explain?”

Any ease Jamie had possessed has disappeared with his mother’s departure. He’s gone cold. Dead-fish cold. He gazes dully past William’s shoulder into the party. “No.”

“Even though it’s your best chance of remission?” William doesn’t even glance at me. Apparently, I don’t belong in this conversation.

But Jamie murmurs, “There’s Cecelia,” and waves to her across the room. “Come, Ella. Let’s say hello.”

“Jamie,” William says lowly, tightly. “This is not a time to gamble, to be reckless. What about trying the—”

Jamie turns to me as if his father has evaporated. “Shall we?”

I glance guiltily at William and say to Jamie, “Join you in a sec.”

“Be quick about it.” Jamie leaves before I can even metabolize my annoyance at his command.

I take a breath and turn to William, smiling, ready to mollify, to assure him that I’m there for his son. “I guess it’s fair to say that Jamie’s a bit stubborn about his medical decisions. But we’re handling it. In fact, he didn’t get a chance to tell you, but his numbers are really promising right now—”

“Are you quite finished?” William’s gaze snaps to mine like a laser, like he’s scanning me. I freeze. Before I can unfreeze, Antonia returns, all easy smiles, touching her husband’s arm.

“So sorry to interrupt, but we really must go find the table now. The Beauchamps are waiting and you know Matthew won’t have his Scotch until you do and you know how insufferable Caroline finds him until he has had it. Please be sure to find us later, Eleanor,” she says, smiling. “And do take my invitation seriously. We would simply love it if you came to visit us. Wouldn’t that be splendid, William?”

William breaks his stare and then, as if nothing but warmth had passed between us, says, “Splendid.”

Antonia leads him away and I, still mulling over the encounter, cross to Jamie and Cecelia, who stand about thirty feet away, heads huddled together. My unease with William is replaced by a sudden nervousness at approaching Cecelia.

I have no idea what to say to her.

Jamie told me that Cecelia met Oliver, who was studying at King’s College London at the time, during her second year at Oxford. They were on the same train, which broke down somewhere between London and Reading, and, with nothing better to do, they began to talk. According to Jamie, his brother phoned him when the train started moving again and simply said, “I found her. The One. Call off the search.” They’d been dating for six months when Oliver was diagnosed. They immediately got engaged. “The romantic impulse of youth,” Jamie had said, rolling his eyes. But I found the story remarkable. That a young woman, twenty-one, obviously smart as a whip, her whole life ahead of her, would choose to commit to a future where there, quite simply, wasn’t one.

What do you say to that?

I smile as I join them, and Jamie slips his hand into mine. “Sorry to abandon ship,” he mutters, kissing my bare shoulder. “But I simply can’t listen to him.”

I don’t argue, I don’t absolve. We’ll talk about it later. I turn to Cecelia. “Awesome gown. Great color!” Truthfully, I haven’t even glanced at her gown. Or the color. She could be wearing a bathing suit for all I know.

“Yours as well,” she says with that smile that could freeze lava in its flow.

“Why don’t I fetch some drinks,” Jamie says, touching both of our elbows. “God knows I need one. What’ll it be?”

“Grey Goose martini, extra dirty, three olives,” I answer. Jamie smiles and turns to Cecelia.

“Whichever white they’re pouring.”

“Sauv blanc?” Jamie asks, beginning to move away. “Chard if it’s not too oaky? Gewürztraminer?”

She looks levelly at him. “White.”

Chuckling, he leaves. Cecelia turns back to me with a slightly more genuine smile. “Jamie and his wine.”

I respond with far too hearty a laugh. “It’s been an education.” I’ve never taken the time to actually see her, to go beyond how pretty she is, into who she is. I try to do so now. It’s slightly easier than before. The door’s no longer locked and bolted, just closed.

“I’m sure it has, rather,” she says knowingly. There’s a sincerity there that feels like an offering.

I seize it. “Look. I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through, I wouldn’t even pretend to know . . . but I have . . . experienced loss before. And if—”

She places her hand on my arm. “Understood. Consider me available. If you have questions, or simply want to chat. I only wish I’d had someone.”

There’s softness in her voice, in her. I like her, I realize. Her coldness, her aloofness, what I mistook for jealousy, I now see was just her protectiveness of Jamie. “Can I just say?” I blurt out. God, where’s Jamie with the drinks? This would be so much easier with vodka. I swallow. “I am so, so, so sorry.”

“Thank you,” she replies immediately, and I recognize it for what it is: the involuntary response of someone who hears “I’m sorry for your loss” every single hour of every single day and for whom it has ceased to have any meaning. But the look in her eyes tells me she knows this one is sincere.

But then she changes tack completely. “Which C course will you be taking next term?”

“W-what?”

“I was thinking I might take Senses of Humour: from Wordsworth to Eliot.” She regards me and, finally, smiles slightly. “I’d quite like to learn how to laugh again.”

I DON’T THINK I’ve ever laughed more in my life. My earlier discomfort has eased. I’ve acclimated to the ostentation and not just because I’ve had a few drinks. We’ve staked our claim in a corner near the dance floor and Jamie has been telling us who everyone is. Charlie then spouts a completely ridiculous falsehood about them. Jamie will point to a portly, balding man, say something like, “That’s Geoffrey Mondale, seventh Earl of Sheffield,” and Charlie will instantly add, “Geoffy Sheffy to his friends, been known to run naked through his woods in Maori-inspired face paint stalking squirrels, which inevitably manage to elude him.” Even Cecelia’s laughing, shaking her head and murmuring, “Oh Lord, enough.” Of course the one time Charlie holds back after Jamie’s introduction, it’s Cecelia who swats him on the arm and says, “Come now, Charlie. Don’t be a bore.”

When Jamie runs out of people to talk about, Maggie asks Charlie to dance with her. They’re turning to leave when Tom—yes, Tom!—steps forward, saying grimly, “I’ll do it,” as if it’s a chore. As if he’s a soldier in the trenches and someone has to run behind enemy lines to rescue a fallen comrade. We all look at him. “What? I’m . . .” He fizzles out. “Taller.” Charlie steps back, hands up, relinquishing. Maggie instantly blushes and puts her hand out for Tom to take, only Tom’s already turned heel, making a beeline for the dance floor. She looks at me, hopeful. I give her an encouraging smile and she turns, plodding in her heels to catch up with Tom. Charlie and I raise an eyebrow at each other. We watch them begin to dance, arms fully outstretched, middle school style, leaving four feet between them. Maggie starts to say something just as Tom starts to say something. She—predictably—apologizes, and Tom looks down at his feet. From which he doesn’t look up again. Maggie’s eyes find us, forehead more deeply furrowed than I’ve ever seen it.

“I give up.” Charlie sighs, turning to me. “Right. To the bar. Statistically, there’s not enough alcohol in the world to make watching that”—he gestures dismissively toward our friends—“comfortable, but I shall happily endeavor to prove the exception.” He leaves.

Jamie turns to me and extends an arm. “Shall we?”

About to answer, I catch a glimpse of Cecelia. She’s watching the dancing couples, wearing a slightly melancholy, nostalgic look. I nudge Jamie and tip my head at her. He quirks his head at me. I try again. He quirks further. I incline my entire head in Cecelia’s direction. He gets it this time. “Ce?” She turns that serene face to him. “Would you care to dance?”

I half expect her to demur, but her face lights up, a smile emanating from it. She nods quickly, almost embarrassed. “So much.”

Jamie offers his arm and she gratefully takes it. As I watch them step out onto the dance floor I can’t believe how happy I suddenly am. Against all reason, given the circumstances, how blisteringly happy I am in this moment, watching these people I’ve come to care about congregate on a dance floor. There’s something magical about it.

On a sigh, I turn to go find Charlie, and run straight into William.

“Whoa!” I cry, keeping control of my glass as I step back from his battering ram of a chest. “Sorry.”

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he says.

“No, it’s fine!” I remind myself to smile. “I was just on my way to—”

“Dance with me.” He offers his arm, looks out at the dance floor.

“I’d love to.” And I mean it. Mostly. I want to start over with him, get to know him. I set my drink on a table.

Just as I extend my hand to him, my purse vibrates. Shit. “Sorry,” I say to William, and his head turns toward me. “I just need to . . .” I dig my phone out and look at the display. Gavin. Of course. “I’ll be quick.”

“I’ll wait,” William says, looking back out, something ominous in that declaration. I wince apologetically, but he doesn’t see it.

Yes, it’s a Saturday night, and yes, I’m at a ball at a palace in England, but this is who I am. I’m the person who takes the call. Besides, I know what it’s about and it’ll be quick. “Gavin.”

“Did you see the numbers I sent?”

“I did.” In the limo on the way over here. “They’re great.”

“Just great?” He sounds so excited I have a feeling he might be a few Manhattans into his evening.

“A net positive favorable—even a net twenty—doesn’t matter when it’s hypothetical,” I say. I glance at William. He’s assessing the crowd, but I can practically see his ear tuned to me like a dog’s. “We’re basically asking people if they’d vote for Santa Claus over the Tooth Fairy. It’s fiction.” I catch the beginning of a reluctant grin on William’s face. Boldly, I raise my voice a little. Am I preening? Sure. “Come on, Gavin, you’re supposed to be the battle-worn vet who doesn’t count chickens, I’m supposed to be the doe-eyed idealist.”

Gavin laughs. “Oh, what do you know, you’re just the doe-eyed education consultant.”

“Then why’d you send me the numbers?” I fire back. “Why are you calling me?”

“Because you’re the only one I know will answer.” There’s a moment of quiet and I swear I hear ice clinking in a glass. It’s five P.M. on a Saturday and Janet’s probably in Florida with her boyfriend and youngest son. Thrice-divorced Gavin is calling me. “You’re doing good, kid,” he says. “Really. You’re doing good—no, you’re doing great—work for us.”

“Thank you,” I say, stealing another glance at William.

“We’re gonna need you in the administration.”

Weirdly, my ears heat. Just my ears, just a rush of anticipatory blood to a random part of me. I laugh it off. “Don’t start measuring the drapes for the Oval just yet.”

He chuckles. “I’ll call you tomorrow. I got a list of possible hires I wanna run by you.” Per usual, he doesn’t say good-bye. He’s just gone.

I slip my phone back into my purse. I turn to William and tap his arm, and he looks as if he’s surprised to see me there, as if he hasn’t been listening to my entire conversation. An actor, he is not. “Sorry about that.”

“Quite all right,” he says, and offers his arm to me. I tuck my hand into his elbow and we move to the periphery of the dancing crowd. William turns to me, taking my right hand lightly in his. My left immediately goes to his shoulder and his other hand finds my waist. I send a silent thanks to my mother for making me take ballroom dance as an elective sophomore year.

I scan the crowd for Jamie and Cecelia, but they must have drifted to the other side of the floor. I see that Maggie and Tom have inched closer, but they gaze in opposite directions, glancing at each other occasionally and then looking away quickly if they happen to meet the other’s eye. Needless to say, they don’t speak. I peer at William, hoping he’ll look back at me and smile. He does neither. So I study him. He’s quite striking for his age. He has Jamie’s jaw and shoulders. But his eyes are dark. Opaque. He begins rolling his neck, back and forth, like a boxer warming up for a fight. Before I can ask if he’s all right, he unclasps my hand and reaches for his bow tie. We pause in our dance as he struggles to loosen the knot without completely undoing it. “Damn constricting,” he mutters.

I smile at him and blurt, “You think that’s bad, try a bra.”

He narrows his eyes at me—it wasn’t funny, I know it wasn’t funny—and retakes my hand. We start moving again. In silence. Just as I’m about to say something to dispel the awkwardness, he beats me to the punch.

“Enjoying your time in Britain?”

“Yes, very much. I love it.” We dance. “This is a beautiful event. Thanks for letting my friends join in tonight. They’re having the best—”

“I fell in love with Antonia before I knew she was a Lady Duncan. She was just a uni girl in a disco who made me tea at three in the morning. We dated for six months before I found out her title went back fifteen generations and she had hundreds of thousands of acres and five estates spread over this godforsaken island. I thought I’d struck gold.” He’s not looking at me. He stares over my shoulder into space. I wait for him to continue. Clearly he has a reason for launching into this story. Not that I know what it is. “I was twenty-five then. I had nothing, all the money I was making went right back into the business. The first ball she took me to? I had to borrow her father’s suit.” A wry smile finds its way to his lips, but quickly disappears again. “We eloped. I gave her a ring I’d fashioned out of a crisp bag.”

I like this William, the young romantic.

“But the following year her father died and I discovered just how much hundreds of thousands of acres and five estates costs a person and just how much he didn’t have. We lived in the Argyll kitchens—that’s the house in Scotland—for two years because it was reliably warm. Which couldn’t be said for the rest of that pile. Toni gave birth to Jamie in those kitchens. Nothing but a bucket of boiling water, me, and Smithy banging on about putting a knife under our mattress to cut the pain. This is 1989, mind you, not 1389. Then my company went public. That fifty quid I’d stolen out my father’s till when I was sixteen had multiplied itself by a million. Oliver was born in a private suite at St. Mary’s in Paddington.”

Why is he telling me this? I’m not saying I’m not charmed, but why?

He looks at me for the first time since we started dancing. It’s riveting. “Do you know why Jamie won’t do the stem-cell replacement therapy again?” Jarred, I open my mouth to engage, but he continues. “Not because it’s painful and tedious and, according to him, futile. It’s you. He doesn’t want to isolate himself, unglue himself from you for a month. That must make you feel quite valued?”

I obviously disagree with his assessment, but I know he’s trying to get a rise out of me and I won’t take the bait. “It’s Jamie’s choice.”

The corner of William’s mouth lifts. I can’t tell if it’s a smile or a sneer. “I see. You’ve never loved anyone before.” I bristle. This is like when I criticize my cousin’s horrible kids and my mother pulls the you-don’t-know-what-it’s-like-to-be-a-parent card. Nothing irritates me more. Except for this. Once again, I open my mouth, but William says, “It’s all right. You’re young. Love is still firmly about hormones.” Everything this man says is rooted in criticism. “You’re a Rhodes scholar, yes?”

“Yes,” I reply cautiously.

“Good. I like dealing with clever people. You have a ticket back to the states on June eleventh, if I’m correct? You will be back in America, working twenty hours per day, in a different city every night, possibly, getting Janet Wilkes elected president.” I want to ask him how the hell he knows any of this, but I’m too stunned to speak. He charges forward. “Do you see yourself and my son gallivanting through Europe until then? Cruising the Seine? Skiing the Alps? Let me burst this bubble. He will either be too ill to travel or he will be dead. After you’re done with him, you will still have a life. He, very well, might not.”

My steps falter. William tightens his grip on my waist, keeping me moving. I try to breathe through my astonished anger. You don’t often get blindsided in slow motion.

“I understand the appeal of lineage,” he murmurs. “Privilege. Access. Believe me. We’re more alike than you realize. My father, too, was a barman.”

My heart nearly explodes out of my chest. How does he know this?

“We both know the embarrassment of a meager upbringing.”

Instantly, my hackles go up. “I am not embarrassed by my father.”

“Had he lived longer you very well might have been.”

I stop dancing and move to wrench my hand out of William’s grasp. His grip turns to iron and he bites out, “Keep dancing, Eleanor. We shouldn’t want to draw unnecessary attention.”

He’s right. I can feel the eyes on us, the curious stares. I seethe as we continue to dance. Face to face. Eye to eye. I silently dare him to say more. He finally continues. “What I mean to say is that we can understand each other. We have both suffered a significant loss in our lives—”

“We’re not going to talk about my father.” My voice is steel. “William.” I call him by his first name because if he can talk to me like this then I can dispense with the formality bullshit. “Just because you somehow have some facts about my life doesn’t mean you know me. Or what I feel for your son. I have no interest in your money. Or you, for that matter.”

“You feel for my son, do you?” The word “feel” oozes disdain. “You have inserted yourself into the very thick of our lives. But you are transient, a squatter in our house. We, Antonia and I, are here for the duration. We are responsible for our son’s life. For his life. Do you hear? Listen carefully. You don’t take a son, an ill son, my-unfortunately-only son away from his mother for Christmas. You don’t tell a father who’s been down this blasted road before that you’re ‘handling it.’ You are fleeting. You, dear girl, are a distraction. A potentially fatal one. Can you live with that? Is it worth it? Riding in crested limousines and going to balls in yellow frocks and having your poor man’s grand tour? Is it worth my son’s life?”

I take a steadying breath. He’s being brutally unfair and insulting, but I understand where he’s coming from. If I were in his position I’d be worried about the sudden appearance of a girl in my wealthy, dying son’s life as well. In retrospect, I can’t believe I didn’t expect this response from him. The unexpected response is actually Antonia’s effusive welcoming.

I center myself, mentally editing what I really want to say. The ugly thing I want to say.

But then I look into his eyes, and I see the deadness there, the smugness, the righteousness, everything Jamie constantly battles when he shouldn’t have to—when he should just be assured of his father’s love—and it makes me angry. And I say the ugly thing anyway. “You know, it’s funny. I didn’t understand how Jamie could have such little regard for his own father. Until now.”

William’s face instantly reddens. Those dead eyes spark to life. “Who do you think you are?” he seethes. “I have already lost one son. I do not intend to lose another.”

As if a glamour had magically dropped away, I suddenly see how ravaged he looks. His eyes moisten with angry, frustrated tears, which I know must embarrass him. It softens me a bit. Just a bit. “You don’t get it. If Jamie wants to do chemo, I’ll sit with him. If he wants to do stem cells, I’ll wait for him. If he wants to swim with dolphins, I’ll get my towel. This isn’t about me. It’s Jamie’s choice, not mine. You have to let—”

“I have to let those choices be guided by an artful little girl who hasn’t the faintest bloody idea what she’s talking about? No, sweetie, I don’t believe I must.”

And I no longer care about appearances. I’m done dancing. I start to pull away, but he tightens his hold on my waist. “Wait—”

“No, sweetie, I don’t believe I must,” I hiss, pulling away from him and leaving the dance floor. William immediately follows. He won’t be left standing alone. The illusion only works if we both leave at the same time.

I’m almost to the safety of the ladies’ room when I feel William right behind me. His voice, though quiet, cuts sharply through the din, right at my ear. “Are you listening to me?”

I bang into the restroom and say, over my shoulder, “No. And neither is Jamie.”