The first three notes of the violin made Lydia Bellamy forget how to breathe.
She was standing beneath the blazing chandeliers of Wetherell House, surrounded by people who had spent three years pretending her family had never existed, when a melody rose above the whispers and the rustle of silk.
She knew that melody. It had never been published, never performed in public, and never belonged to anyone outside her family. Her father had written it for her mother before Lydia was born. He had played it for Lydia on the last evening she ever saw him smile.
And now, in the grandest ballroom in Philadelphia, a violinist was playing the song of a man the city had called a thief.
Lydia did not turn toward the orchestra immediately. She was afraid that if she moved, the music would vanish and she would discover she had imagined it. Her pale lavender gown trembled faintly with each breath. She kept her gloved hands at her sides, though every instinct urged her to clutch the small silver locket hidden beneath the neckline of her dress. Around her, gentlemen in dark coats and ladies in elaborate gowns smiled, bowed, and exchanged the sort of conversation that sounded gracious until one listened carefully. A few people had stopped talking to look at her. More would follow. In that room, a woman's smallest mistake could become a story repeated for years.
Across the ballroom, Nathaniel Ashford watched her without moving. His burgundy evening coat set him apart from the black-clad gentlemen near the doorway, but Lydia would have recognized him in any crowd. Three years earlier, she had loved him with the reckless certainty of a young woman who had never been forced to doubt the goodness of the people around her. Three years earlier, when her father had been accused of stealing money meant for widows and children, Nathaniel had been standing near the men who condemned him. He had not spoken a single word in Daniel Bellamy's defense. Before the month was over, he had left Philadelphia without saying goodbye.
Lydia had promised herself that Nathaniel would never again see her cry. Tonight she had nearly succeeded, until the violin began.
She had not wanted to attend the Wetherell winter assembly. The invitation had arrived that morning in a thick cream envelope, its edges embossed with silver, addressed to Miss Lydia Bellamy as though the intervening years had been nothing more than