Olivia Wakefield’s maid pulled the last pearl button through the loop of her mistress’s deep-apricot watered silk. She dusted a faint, shimmering powder across her shoulders and pinned the best and last of the autumn’s garden roses in her upswept hair. Then she stood back, critically examining the masterpiece from coiffed head to slippered toe, and smiled. “Perfect, miss.”

“Thank you, Mary. You’ve outdone yourself.”

“You’re ready for the ball, miss.” Mary tucked a wayward wisp behind her mistress’s ear.

“Now or never.” Olivia smiled, then sobered. “I’m not much for balls.”

“But this is your birthday, miss. Mrs. Meitland said that everyone who is anyone in New York will be here. The Ascots, the Vanderbilts, the—”

“Please, Mary.” Olivia raised her gloved hand to stop the outpouring. The less she knew or thought about the grand event her sister and brother-in-law had orchestrated, the better chance she had of pretending a composure she did not feel.

Mary curtsied again, a habit that made Olivia want to bob up and down, too.

“Please tell Dorothy I’ll be down directly.”

“Yes, miss.” Mary curtsied once more but hesitated. “The guests are arriving. There’s already a dozen carriages by the—”

“Dorothy and Drake will greet them.”

“Yes, miss.” Mary bobbed less certainly but obediently pulled the door behind her.

Olivia sighed, relieved to be alone at last. She blinked at the softly powdered oval in the looking glass above her dressing table, recognizing the face but unnerved by the lackluster eyes reflected there. She hated this vulgar display of wealth and eligibility Dorothy and Drake had concocted. She’d argued and pleaded but in the end hadn’t known how to stop them.

“Father, I miss you tonight most of all,” she whispered. At last she breathed deeply, straightened, took up her dance card, and marched toward the battle.

Along the upper hallway, she paused and turned the brass knob of her father’s study. One moment. Just one moment. Olivia slipped inside and leaned against the closed door, breathing in the faint, lingering scent of his tobacco. She strolled the perimeter of the room, running gloved fingers over his collection of stones chipped from the bases of pyramids in Egypt, tracing long shelves of leather-bound volumes. She smiled as she spun his globe—something she was ordered not to do as a child—and smiled again as she blessed the marble busts of his literary trio, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis—“Tous pour un, un pour tous.” She ran her fingers for the hundredth time over the last stack of books he’d been reading. All of it yours a year ago. All of it mine now.

Olivia sank into the leather chair behind his mahogany desk, turned her face to the moon-filled window behind her, and fingered the string of pearls at her neck—his last personal gift given on her last birthday, a quiet and earnest family affair that he’d understood she loved so well. You understood so many things.

And she had understood him—understood what he was about to say, about to dictate, even before he’d formed the words. She’d been his protégé in travel and research for historic articles ever since her disappointment—ever since she’d sworn off men, a determination her father had assured her would pass with time. She’d been his secretary and typist for treatises on issues of social justice. She’d embraced the causes he’d espoused, and that had been enough for her—to work at his side—until last year.

With his first sign of heart trouble, he’d stopped traveling and insisted that she embrace a cause of her own, a life of her own. That was when she’d taken up with other young women from her church, forming a circle. They’d embraced the garment industry workers’ strike, hoping that wealth could influence where desperation and a righteous cause could not. But the crusade was short-lived, at least for her.

When her father suffered a massive heart attack, Olivia had given up her crusade for social justice to nurse him. He’d lingered three months, arguing all along that her time with him was too great a sacrifice from her own life and aspirations.

Oh, Father. It was so little.

He’d encouraged but never pestered her to marry. Now that he was gone, it seemed the topic of every conversation with her sister and brother-in-law.

They’ve tried to assume the position of father, mother, and matchmaker—all in one. It does not suit them. It does not suit me.

“I thought I’d find you here.” Dorothy, magnificent in ivory silk and diamonds that sparkled in the light of the hallway’s chandelier, stood, eyebrows raised and hand on hip in the doorway. A perfect halo of electric light spread round her. “Hiding, Miss Liberty?”

Olivia smiled at their father’s pet name for her—a title bestowed when she was born the same day Lady Liberty was dedicated in New York harbor. “Seeking courage, I’m afraid.”

“You’re not a coward,” her sister chided.

“I miss him, Dottie,” Olivia pleaded, hating her own pleading.

But it softened her older sister, if only for a moment. “I miss him too. But that’s why you need someone, Livvie. You’re turning into a recluse, shut up in this house.”

Olivia turned away. “While he was alive, I had a purpose. I felt more alive—a part of something greater than myself.”

“Father had that way about him.”

“But now—I don’t know. I feel . . . adrift.” Olivia raised her shoulders helplessly.

“A ship without its mooring?”

“Yes . . . exactly.”

Dorothy sighed but stayed by the door as if coming into the room might draw her into something too deep. She squared her shoulders, and Olivia recognized the subtle change as her sister’s retreat to safer territory.

“There are things I want in life—things I need, things I mean to do,” Olivia went on. “I just don’t know what they are.”

“I only want what’s best for you.”

“I know that. But I don’t think I’ll find what I’m looking for tied to a man I don’t love and a silly social calendar. You, of anyone, should know that of me.”

Dorothy looked away. “It’s not all silly.”

“I’m sorry,” Olivia stammered. “You know I didn’t mean that for you.”

But Dorothy forged ahead. “Drake has invited some charming and eligible men to the ball. You can take your pick—railroad, real estate, banking. You’re a wealthy woman.”

Olivia’s nerves pricked. “A perfect merging of bank accounts—how good of Drake.”

“You need a husband. You can engage in all those causes you’re mad about inside marriage, provided your scribbling about them doesn’t create scandal. But Drake says you must have someone to direct your business affairs, at the very least. And if you won’t allow him to take things in hand, well, then . . .”

Olivia closed her eyes at the unspoken but repeated topic of every conversation: money, money, money. Sometimes she envied people who had none to fight over.

“Drake said you really must be settled before . . . before long.”

“Before I’m a crotchety old maid?” Olivia smirked.

“Let us say, more kindly, before the bloom leaves the gilded lily,” her brother-in-law countered, standing suddenly behind his wife.

Dorothy started, clasping her hand to her neck.

Olivia, too, felt her breath catch but stood, determined to regain her composure. She did not want Drake in her father’s study. He had no right, though he acted as if he possessed everything. Nothing could have moved her to her detested birthday ball so quickly as his presence.

“We mustn’t keep our guests waiting.” Olivia squeezed her sister’s hand and pushed past Drake into the evening ahead.