About this story
He predicts that before you leave tonight, you meet the woman you are going to marry — an American heiress named Idina Chester, drawn by your title as your debts grow urgent. You resist and try to leave before any introduction. In the lobby, Lord Melthorpe presents Idina Chester within minutes, and El-Rami has already vanished.
How it opens
The crowded house darkened as Hamlet began to weigh death against the fear of what might follow it.
You were Sir Frederick Vaughan, a fashionable young baronet more interested in escape than philosophy.
London examines an unfamiliar face more diligently than it listens to a familiar tragedy.
I recognize you now; drawing rooms repeat your predictions even when they laugh at them.
Choose
Touch his shoulder and ask what brought him to a fashionable first night.
Wait for the curtain and study him as carefully as everyone else does.