The final installment of Croker's trilogy opens with Mark Jervis and Honor Gordon circling each other like dancers caught between passion and pride. Honor's anger at the revelations about Mark's wealth simmers beneath the surface, yet during a moonlit waltz, the truth of their feelings becomes undeniable. But Mark's world is about to crack open: his estranged father, a broken man living in isolation, demands care, forcing Mark to choose between familial duty and the woman he loves. Set against the languid heat of British colonial India, where social hierarchies shimmer beneath polite conversation, this volume unravels the threads of family secrets, inherited trauma, and the weight of new wealth. Croker writes with sharp observation about the particular agonies of the colonially-adjacent British middle class, their anxieties about status and marriage rendered with psychological nuance. The romance between Mark and Honor is not simple: it is complicated by pride, by the moral ambiguities of sudden wealth, by the shadow of a father who cannot be easily saved. This is a novel about what we owe those who have hurt us, and whether love can survive the discovery that the person we desire has been keeping score.
