I must have worn my disdain on my face because my mother shot me one of her legendary warning looks the moment my lips parted to reply. Because I did not wish to embarrass my mother (and not because I felt any need to make Mrs. Brougham feel cleverer than she actually was), I said, “I suppose one always has a companion.”

“But your brother is not here now,” one of the Brougham girls said.

“My father is not always with my mother, and I would imagine that she considers him to be her companion,” I replied.

“A brother is hardly the same as a husband,” Mrs. Brougham trilled.

“One would hope,” I retorted. Truly, this was one of the more ridiculous conversations in which I had taken part. And Penelope looked as if she would have questions when we returned home.

My mother gave me another look, one that said she knew exactly what sort of questions Penelope would have, and she did not wish to answer them. But as my mother had always said, she valued curiosity in females…

Well, she’d be hoist by her own petard.

I should mention that, petard-hoisings aside, I am convinced that I have the finest mother in England. And unlike being a nontwin, about which I have no knowledge, I do know what it’s like to have a different mother, so I am fully qualified, in my opinion, to make the judgment.

My mother, Eloise Crane, is actually my stepmother, although I only refer to her as such when required to for purposes of clarification. She married my father when Oliver and I were eight years old, and I am quite certain she saved us all. It is difficult to explain what our lives were like before she entered them. I could certainly describe events, but the tone of it all, the feeling in our house…

I don’t really know how to convey it.

My mother-my original mother-killed herself. For most of my life I did not know this. I thought she died of a fever, which I suppose is true. What no one told me was that the fever was brought on because she tried to drown herself in a lake in the dead of winter.