The Truth About Husbands

A porcelain-pale debutante, Leslie Brown, glides from finishing-school cosseting into the gilded cage of matrimony with international rake Dustan Renshaw, whose initials already spell ruin for discarded fiancée Janet Preece. The newlyweds exile themselves to continent-hopping salons where whispers travel faster than passport stamps; when the Stonehays arrive with their discreet secretary—none other than Janet—the Riviera villa becomes a hothouse of repressed histories. Janet’s feverish collapse strands her in the care of the unknowing bride, and bedside confessions sketch the silhouette of a seducer initialed “D. R.”—a cipher that detonates Leslie’s illusion of exclusivity once Dustan’s silhouette darkens the doorway again. The revelation cleaves the marriage; Leslie flees into self-willed widowhood while Dustan’s contrition calcifies into a penitent’s silence. Years fray into remorse-spun cobwebs until a telegram announcing Janet’s terminal decline yokes the estranged couple back to the death-chamber. At that lacquered dusk, forgiveness is no radiant epiphany but a slow exhalation of stale grievances, leaving the survivors to negotiate a future stitched from tatters of the past.