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all about the woman the moment she saw her. For all her jewelry (a diamond necklaceat lunch?), her careful accent (a sort of French-English concoction), and her five-thousand-dollar suit (in Raleigh?!), Ariel would have known her anywhere. There was an air of the cotton mills around her that no time or money could wipe away. The woman was very nervous and kept smoking cigarettes and talking too much.
    In the end, they both got what they wanted. Mrs. Dunkirk said her husband had talked about buying an island and developing it into “a billionaire’s playground.” It might as well be an island near Arundel. As she said this, she stubbed out a lipstick-tipped cigarette and gave Ariel a look to let her know that in spite of her origins, she’d married into Big Money.
    Mrs. Dunkirk said she would direct her husband toward one of the many islands off the coast of North Carolina, if Ariel would get her mother to crown her as Mrs. Arundel at the fall festival. Ariel had to work to refrain from exclaiming at the vulgarity of such a thing, but she knew where Mrs. Dunkirk was coming from. Mill girls were never made Miss Arundel, no matter how pretty they were. Ariel’s mother had been Miss Arundeland she had been too. To get my mother to agree to such a low-class display, Ariel thought, I’ll have to drug her—or give her what she most wants in life, which is for me to marry David.
    As Ariel smiled at Mrs. Dunkirk and agreed, she gave no sign of her inner turmoil. She said she thought it was a delightful idea to have a
Mrs.
Arundel, and who better than someone who had made such a success of her life. Mrs. Dunkirk stubbed out another cigarette and went out to her waiting limo. As she waved good-bye, Ariel thought that breeding always told. Even the one time she’d met Sara in person, when she hadn’t had a bath in what looked like weeks, there was an air about her that told who her mother was. Her blood had been diluted by her dissolute father, but the blood of the Ambler family was stronger, and it showed in Sara—just as Mrs. Dunkirk’s breeding showed in her.
    At these thoughts, Ariel could imagine David telling her she was a snob, but she didn’t care. In another era, David would have been a socialist.
    By the time Ariel got home, she was ready to go forward in her plan to get the man she loved. But first, she had to tell David what she and Sarawere planning to do. He would, of course, protest and tell her that it would never work, but she knew he’d agree to help her. She couldn’t pull this off if he didn’t help, because David knew her. Really knew her. He wasn’t like her mother, who only cared that she was dressed properly and didn’t embarrass her.
    David was different. One wrong move on Sara’s part and he’d know she wasn’t who she was pretending to be.
    David would help, Ariel knew that. And it was going to work. She knew that too.

Chapter Four
    W HEN SARA FINALLY GOT TO A RIEL’S bedroom, she was so tired that all she wanted to do was crawl under the covers and sleep. But she couldn’t because Ariel’s bed was covered with a menagerie of weird-looking stuffed animals. Sara vaguely remembered that Ariel had made her memorize some rule about her stuffed animals, but she was too tired to remember it.
    The two cousins had spent nearly three weeks together in New York. Ariel had wanted more time, but it was all she could finagle out of hermother. “And I had to lie hugely to get that time,” she said. “With David’s help, of course. Dear David.” When she said this, her mouth turned down at the corners, as though she was bitter about something.
    Since the cousins had corresponded for years, Sara would have said that she knew her cousin well, but as she found out that first day, she didn’t know her at all. Maybe it was because Ariel had grown up in isolation—homeschooled—but Sara soon found that the