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right temperature in this suite. No chilly draft, not even after I rose like Venus out of the marble tub that I’d filled with a rosewater bubble bath. Sipping the champagne, I wrapped myself in the hotel’s soft cream-colored terry bathrobe, to dry off comfortably.
    I was toweling my hair dry when the butler wheeled in my dinner on a gold-and-white trolley, and expertly laid the dining table with silver, crystal, china, and linen that was soft enough to put in your lap without its shedding the telltale lint of streamlined laundering. The tender steak was cooked just the way I’d requested—only barely pink—with asparagus, and sweet red potatoes the size of golf balls, and real French bread. Then I nibbled on a few cookies and sipped a cup of tea that made me feel warm, relaxed, and free of time zones.
    While dawdling over the tea, I filled out my order for tomorrow’s breakfast of coffee, boiled egg and toast, marmalade and jam, and the day’s newspaper to be delivered with it. Then I changed into my silk nightgown and climbed into the enormous bed, which was firm but layered with soft cotton bedding, and I laid my head on the generous down pillow.
    Drowsily I thanked my cousin Jeremy for arranging for me to have a good night’s rest. The boy I’d known was now an important, grown-up London businessman. I wondered how he felt about suddenly being in charge of the family affairs. His father, my Uncle Peter, who was Mom’s brother, had died when Jeremy was just twenty-five; and his mother, Aunt Sheila, who is veddy veddy English and whose family was wealthier than everybody on my side totalled up, still lives in London. I recalled the annual Christmas cards that she and my mother exchange, enclosing brief but polite letters and the occasional embarrassing snapshot of me and Jeremy.
    Those snapshots ended a few years ago with Jeremy’s wedding photo—and my lack of one—but then he was divorced within a year, with no real explanation. In the photo his wife was looking off-camera, so all I could see was a good profile and blonde hair, not much more.
    Was he, too, one of the walking wounded when it came to love? The grown-up cousin Jeremy in the photos looked like a smooth-faced, elegant English businessman, yet in the eyes I could still see the slightly rebellious boy from the beach at Cornwall that summer.
    He’d been stiff and starchy at first, as we sat primly with the adults over tea and cakes served in the kind of china that Americans use only when somebody dies or gets married. It was all I could do to balance my plate and teacup, for I felt my cousin’s watchful eyes and, worse, his mother’s. But one afternoon, when we raced each other through my grandmother’s walled-in garden with its path leading to the sea, I was able to joke with him and get him to drop his cool, snotty attitude.
    He even confided in me that he certainly was not going to be just another Englishman in a suit in another “bloody boring” job, like his banker father. He was going to travel on safari, he said, kicking pebbles in the path; or explore ancient ruins, or start a rock band. I was flattered that he was confiding in me, even though he called me “child.” But this important conversation was interrupted by a very buzzy bee that relentlessly chased me halfway down the path until Jeremy commanded me to stop shrieking and “Freeze!” Something made me trust him, so I halted. As the bee circled me to come in for the kill, Jeremy valiantly gave his beach towel one sharp, quick snap! and the bee fell down dead at my feet. I was highly impressed.
    Our mothers were already ensconced with chairs and umbrellas, waiting for us.The sand where we laid out our blanket was warm, and Jeremy dared me to race him into the water.The waves were crashing and filling the air with a wonderful bracing salty flavor. But the ocean was breathtakingly cold. After the first toe in I hesitated, and that was when Grandmother Beryl splashed past me and