I just need to get the order of things straight in my head. My grandmother died, right?” “Yes. That must have been 1973.” She paused, frowning. “Maybe ’74.” I was born in 1978, in San Francisco, which gave my mother enough time to emigrate, find a husband, and give birth to me. “So who was the earl when Violet died?” “Her son, of course. Roger Shaw was the fourteenth Earl of Rosemere.” “That’s my mother’s brother. My uncle.”
