Chapter 31

Since she was a child, Elizabeth Grant had known she would be the richest, most popular, and best-known among her group of privileged friends.

Young Elizabeth had never had cause to ponder her own importance. Her early years had been a young girl’s perfection, right from the very day of her birth. It was true that Elizabeth was the heir to an old and affluent nobility, but unlike most other lordly families, her parents, Lord and Lady Grant, were an odd couple. Married without love, they hated each other to death. Both were resentful, rude, and selfish. They saw their daughter’s birth not as the arrival of an heir but rather as that of a child who would save their already failing business and wealth.

And so there were celebrations, fêtes, and festivities other than those of a mother and father staring in wonderment at their new daughter.

The Grants were young parents—Edward was barely twenty-two and Vivian had just turned twenty—but they were practical, ambitious, and strong, and the