“Kitty, remember what we discussed,” Oliver said. “The entire point of this photo shoot is to reposition your image. You’re not supposed to look like a high-fashion temptress anymore. You’re going to look like a supremely elegant hostess who’s not trying too hard to impress. A cultural force and a rising civic leader. Charlotte, think of those photos by Skrebneski of Jacqueline de Ribes in her Paris apartment. Or C. Z. Guest bending down to pet her poodle. Or Marina Rust on her wedding day. We want young, regal, comme il faut.”

“Ollie, we’re going to comme-il-faut the hell out of her! Kitty, dry your tears. We need to give your face one of my emergency hyaluronic acid boosters right now, before it gets too puffy,” Charlotte commanded.

“And then we’re going to add the subtlest sun-kissed highlights to your hair. You’ll look like you just came back from a summer in the Seychelles!” Jo proclaimed.

Two hours later, Kitty was posed on a Regency settee in front of The Palace of Eighteen Perfections, the magnificent Chinese scroll painting she had purchased two years ago for a record-breaking $195 million. She was dressed in a pale pink Oscar de la Renta off-the-shoulder ball gown, the billowing duchesse satin skirt pooling gloriously around her, and on her head was a delicate Edwardian pearl headband.

Gisele, in an adorable Mischka Aoki cornflower blue dress with feathers and cascading ruffles was positioned lying on the settee, one leg dangling and her head resting on her mother’s lap. Harvard stood on the other side of his mother with his arms around her neck, looking precious in a white sailor suit with navy blue piping from Bonpoint and white socks that went up to his knees. At the foot of the settee lay a gleaming pair of Irish setters.

Nigel had imagined Kitty’s cover shot as a sort of modern-day re-creation of a Watteau portrait, and to achieve this he had brought all the way from New York the enormous Polaroid 20 x 24 camera. There were only six of these unique handmade cameras in the entire world, and so precious were the prints that every frame Nigel shot would cost $500. But the camera was somehow able to achieve an indescribable alchemy, creating images that were remarkably crisp and yet otherworldly. To go along with this concept, Nigel had confected an extraordinary blend of natural light fused with massive studio lights to create the sort of dappled, late-afternoon northern light straight out of an eighteenth-century atelier.

“Gisele, you have the prettiest smile,” Nigel remarked as he stared into his viewfinder. Harvard was distracted by the dogs and kept reaching down to try to pet them. “Harvard, give your mommy a kiss!” Nigel encouraged, and then at the precise moment, just as Gisele was relaxing into her smile, Harvard was planting kisses on his mother’s cheek, and the sunlight was hitting the painting at just the right angle, Nigel asked, “Kitty, what are you thinking?” Her expression suddenly took on a faraway look, and Nigel clicked the shutter, knowing he had just captured the defining shot.

Minutes later, the giant Polaroid was ready, and Toby, the first assistant, carefully placed the print on a special easel at the back of the room for all to see.

“Oh that’s the shot! It looks like a Sir Joshua Reynolds come to life! Isn’t this the most perfect tableau you’ve ever seen?” Oliver said to Patric.

“If only Nigel could join them in the photo. And take his shirt off. Then it would be perfect,” Patric whispered back.

“I’m speechless! It’s sooooo gorgeous I can hardly believe it. Nigel, this is going to be our best cover ever!” gushed Violet Poon, the editor in chief of Singapore Tattle. “Oliver, I’ll admit I thought you were out of your mind when you said you wanted to cut all her hair off. But it was a stroke of genius! Kitty looks so soigné! Like Emma Stone! She’s positively regal now. I can already see the headline on the cover: Princess Kitty! I’m going to take a picture of this glorious print for my friend Yolanda, since she so kindly allowed us to borrow her Irish setters for the shoot!”

Violet snapped a picture on her phone and immediately sent it out in a text. Minutes later, she excitedly reported, “Yolanda is absolutely crazy about the photo!”

“Would this be Yolanda Amanjiwo you’re referring to?” Oliver asked.

“The one and only!”

“This is the woman who’s so pretentious, she put a Picasso in her powder room right above the toilet so everyone has no choice but to notice it while they pee?”

“She’s really not like that, Oliver. Haven’t the two of you met?”

“I’m not sure she’d ever deign to meet me, since I don’t have a title or my own plane.”

“Oh come on, Oliver. You know Yolanda would love to meet you. She’s throwing one of her famous dinners tonight. I’ll see if you can come,” Violet said as she continued to text at warp speed. A few moments later, she looked up at Oliver. “Guess what? Yolanda wants to invite everyone to her dinner. You, Nigel, and especially Kitty.”

“No doubt she’s heard about Kitty’s three planes,” Oliver quipped.

“Oliver T’sien, don’t be like that!” Violet scolded.

Oliver approached Kitty, who was now posing languidly Madame Récamier–style in a vintage emerald-green-and-white-striped Anouska Hempel ball gown as Nigel and his team rearranged the lighting for a more dramatic evening look. “Do you think this pose works?” Kitty asked.

“It’s gorgeous. So, guess what they are going to put on the cover of Tattle as a headline to your photo? ‘Princess Kitty.’ ”

Kitty’s eyes widened. “Oh my God I love it!”

“Annnnd…guess who has just invited you to dinner tonight? Yolanda Amanjiwo.”

Kitty couldn’t believe her ears. “This is that lady Tattle calls the Empress of Entertaining?”

“The very one,” Violet said excitedly. “I sent her a pic from your photo shoot and she’s absolutely bonkers to meet you. See, your photo shoot isn’t even out yet, and already you’re the toast of the town, Princess Kitty! Please say you’ll come tonight!”

“Of course. I’ll change my plans,” Kitty said. She had planned a moonlight dinner cruise alone with Nigel, but this, she felt, was more important.

“Splendid! Eight o’clock sharp, white tie.”

“White tie? In Singapore?” Oliver frowned.

“Oh yes. You’ll see. Yolanda does things on a grand scale. She entertains like no one else I know.”

—

Several hours later, Oliver, Nigel, and Kitty found themselves in Yolanda Amanjiwo’s drawing room, a vast space with black travertine floors that felt more like the lobby of a resort hotel than a home. Half the room was comprised of a reflecting pool that extended outdoors into an even larger pool, and from the middle of the pool rose an immense Jeff Koons gold Balloon Dog.

Yolanda and her husband, Joey, stood at the far end of the room in front of a wide marble block that displayed a collection of ancient Apulian vases. As Kitty was led to the receiving line, she knew she had made the right choice by wearing a black off-the-shoulder vintage Givenchy gown with white satin gloves and her not overly flashy necklace of graduated diamonds ending in a teardrop canary diamond of forty carats. As she approached her hosts, flanked by her debonair escorts in their white-tie tuxedos, a butler announced in a high, nasal tone, “The Honorable Oliver T’sien, Mr. Nigel Barker, and Mrs. Jack Bing.”