Ten minutes later, Nick exited the classroom as his students excitedly whipped out their phones and began texting, tweeting, and insta-gramming pictures of their instructor being led away by two statuesque blondes in nautical-inspired outfits. Waiting in front of the building on University Place was a silver BMW SUV with tinted windows. Nick got in a little reluctantly, and as the sedan began speeding across Houston Street and onto the West Side Highway, he wondered where in the world he was being taken.

At Fifty-second Street, the car merged into one of the exit lanes leading toward the Manhattan Cruise Terminal, where the cruise ships that visited New York all docked. Moored at Pier 88 was a superyacht that looked like it had at least five levels of decks. The Odin, it was called. Good God, Colin has way too much time and money on his hands! Nick thought, staring up at the gargantuan vessel, which seemed to sparkle as shards of sunlight reflecting off the water danced across its midnight-blue hull. He climbed up the gangway and entered the grand foyer of the yacht, a soaring atrium with a circular glass elevator in the middle that looked like it could have been stolen from an Apple store. The blondes escorted Nick into the lift, which rose just one floor before opening up again.

“We could have taken the stairs,” Nick remarked wryly to the ladies. He stepped out of the elevator, half expecting to find the room filled with friends like Colin Khoo, Mehmet Saban?i, and some of his cousins, but instead found himself alone on what seemed to be the main deck of the yacht. The ladies led him through a series of sumptuous spaces, past sleek lounges paneled in golden sycamore, barstools upholstered in whale foreskin, and a salon with a ceiling that glowed like a James Turrell installation.

Nick began to have the sinking feeling that none of this had anything to do with a bachelor party. Just as he was beginning to consider his options for a hasty exit, they arrived at a pair of sliding doors guarded by two tall, strapping deckhands.*1 The men slid the doors apart, revealing a skylit dining deck. At the end of the deck, lounging on a dining settee in a white pique blazer, white jodhpurs, and camel-colored F.lli Fabbri riding boots, was none other than Jacqueline Ling.

“Ah, Nicky, just in time for the soufflé!” she said.

Nick approached his old family friend, feeling equally amused and exasperated. He should have clued in earlier that all this Scandinavian silliness had something to do with Jacqueline, whose longtime partner was the Norwegian billionaire Victor Normann.

“What kind of soufflé is it?” Nick asked nonchalantly, taking a seat across from the legendary beauty dubbed “the Chinese Catherine Deneuve” by the society pages.

“I believe it’s kale and Emmentaler. Don’t you think all the sudden hype about kale is getting a bit much? I want to know who’s been doing all the PR for the kale industry—they should really get an award. Now, aren’t you the least bit surprised to see me?”

“Actually, I’m rather disappointed. For a while I thought I’d been kidnapped and forced to be an extra in a James Bond movie.”

“Didn’t you enjoy meeting Alannah and Mette Marit? I knew you wouldn’t come if I had just called up and invited you to lunch.”

“Of course I would have, but at a more normal time—I hope you’re going to find me a new job when NYU fires me for abandoning my class in the middle of a lecture.”

“Hiyah, don’t be such a spoilsport! You have no idea how hard it was to find a place to dock this beast. Now, I thought New York was supposed to be such a world-class city, but do you know your biggest marina can only hold up to a hundred and eighty feet? Where is anyone supposed to park their yacht?”

“Well, this is quite a beast. Lürssen, I presume?”

“Fincantieri, actually. Victor did not want his baby built anywhere near Norway, with those pesky journalists always scrutinizing his every move, so he chose an Italian shipyard instead. Of course, Espen*2 designed this one, like he has all our boats.”

“Auntie Jacqueline, I don’t think you summoned me here to talk about shipbuilding. Why don’t you say what you really came to say?” Nick said, breaking off a corner of a still-warm baguette and dipping it into his soufflé.

“Nicky, I told you never to call me ‘Auntie.’ You make me feel like I’m past my sell date!” Jacqueline said in mock horror as she flicked a lustrous lock of black hair behind her shoulders.

“Jacqueline—you don’t need me to tell you that you don’t look a day over forty,” Nick said.

“Thirty-nine, Nicky.”

“Okay, thirty-nine.” Nick laughed. He had to admit that even as she sat across from him in the bright sunlight with only a touch of makeup on, she was still one of the most stunningly attractive women he had ever known.

“There’s that handsome smile of yours! For a while I was afraid you were beginning to get surly. Don’t ever get surly, Nicky, it’s most unbecoming. My son, Teddy, always has the most surly, supercilious look about him—I should never have sent him to Eton.”

“I don’t think Eton had anything to do with it,” Nick offered.

“You’re probably right. He has those snobby recessive Lim genes from my late husband’s side. Now, you should know that all of Singapore was talking about you over the Chinese New Year.”

“I highly doubt that all of Singapore was talking about me, Jacqueline. I haven’t lived there in over a decade and I really don’t know many people.”

“You know what I mean. I hope you don’t mind my being frank. I’ve always been very fond of you, so I don’t want to see you do the wrong thing.”

“And what’s the ‘wrong thing’?”

“Marrying Rachel Chu.”

Nick rolled his eyes in frustration. “I really don’t want to be drawn into a discussion about this with you. It would be a waste of your time.”

Ignoring him, Jacqueline continued. “I saw your Ah Ma last week. She summoned me to visit her, and we had tea on her veranda. She is very distressed by your estrangement from her, but at this point she is still willing to forgive you.”

“Forgive me? Oh, that’s rich.”

“I see you are still reluctant to see her side of things.”

“I’m not reluctant at all. I can’t even begin to see her side of things. I don’t know why my grandmother can’t be happy for me, why she cannot trust me to make a decision about who I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

“It has nothing to do with trust.”

“Then what is it about?”

“It’s a matter of respect, Nicky. Your Ah Ma cares for you dearly, and she has always had your best interests at heart. She knows what is best for you, and only asks that you respect her wishes.”

“I used to respect my grandmother, but I’m sorry, I can’t respect her snobbery. I’m not going to roll over and marry into one of the five families in Asia deemed acceptable by her.”

Jacqueline sighed and shook her head slowly. “There is so much you don’t know about your grandmother, about your own family.”

“Well, why don’t you tell me? Let’s not keep it a mystery.”

“Listen, there is only so much I can say. But I will tell you this: If you choose to go through with your wedding next month, I can assure you that your grandmother will take necessary measures.”

“Meaning what? Meaning she’s going to cut me out of her will? I thought she did that already,” Nick said mockingly.

“Forgive me if I sound patronizing, but the arrogance of youth has led you astray. I don’t think you truly realize what it means for the gates of Tyersall Park to be closed to you forever.”

Nick laughed. “Jacqueline, you sound like some character out of a Trollope novel!”

“Laugh all you want, but you’re being rather foolhardy about this. There is this sense of entitlement that was bred into you, and you are letting that affect your decisions. Do you really know what it means to be cut off from your fortune?”

“I’m doing just fine.”

Jacqueline gave Nick a patronizing smile. “I’m not talking about the twenty or thirty million your grandfather left you. That’s just teet toh lui.*3 You can’t even buy a proper house in Singapore with that these days. I’m talking about your real legacy. Tyersall Park. Are you prepared to lose it?”

“Tyersall Park is going to be left to my father, and one day it will pass to me,” Nick said matter-of-factly.

“Let me give you some news—your father long ago gave up any hope of inheriting Tyersall Park.”

“That’s just idle gossip.”

“No it’s not, Nicky. It’s a fact, and aside from your grandmother’s lawyers and your great-uncle Alfred, I am probably the only person on the planet who knows this.”

Nicky shook his head in disbelief.

Jacqueline sighed. “You think you know everything. Do you know I was with your grandmother the day your father announced that he was going to immigrate to Australia? No, because you were away at boarding school during that time. Your grandmother was furious at your father, and then she was brokenhearted. Imagine, a woman of her generation, a widow, having to suffer the indignity of this. I remember she cried to me, ‘What’s the use of having this house and all these things, when my only son is abandoning me?’ That’s when she decided to change her will and leave the house to you. She skipped over your father and put all her hopes in you.”