Thomas hadn’t said a word beyond a simple good-morning. He had come to the Riviera just to visit her, he’d told Annette with his wry smile, knowing she wouldn’t believe him. As always, he had a loftier purpose in mind: to convince her Vietnamese caretaker, a mandarin scholar respected both abroad and in his own country, to return home. Thomas would go on and on about how Saigon needed credible centrist leaders and how Quang Tai could help save his country from disaster, and Annette would pretend a suitable neutrality, despite the prospect of losing her caretaker. She was only sparing herself one of Thomas’s notorious lectures on not being shortsighted and selfish; she suspected he already knew she didn’t want the bother of having to replace Quang Tai.

She sighed, frantically mincing one half of the onion. Her eyes had begun to tear, and if she didn’t slow down and be careful, she’d likely chop off the end of a finger. Thomas wouldn’t keep quiet for long. It wasn’t a Blackburn trait.

The newspaper rustled as he turned a page, and she heard him take a small sip of coffee.

“All right, Thomas, you win,” she said, whirling around with her paring knife. “What do you want to tell me that you’re trying so hard not to tell me? You might as well spit it out, because you know you’ll get around to it sooner or later.”

Looking slightly miffed at her sharp-sighted observation, Thomas folded the newspaper and laid it on the table. Like all Blackburns, he was a man of impeccable moral and intellectual respectability-the kind of highbrow Bostonian that Annette usually found boring and irritating. For two centuries, the Blackburns had been outspoken patriots, historians, poets, reformers, public servants and eccentrics, if not the best moneymakers. Eliza Blackburn-the patron saint of the family-was one of Boston ’s favorite Revolutionary War heroines. Her portrait, painted by Gilbert Stuart, hung in the Massachusetts State House; in it she wore the cameo brooch that George Washington himself had presented to her, in gratitude for her efforts at smuggling weapons, ammunition and information from British-occupied Boston to the patriot forces in outlying areas.