When We Were 21

A gilded Edwardian maze of affections, When We Were 21 unfolds like a Fabergé egg cracked open to reveal not jewels but jagged shards of ego. Dick “Imp” Audaine—youth incarnate, all cheekbones and inherited swagger—struts through Mayfair drawing rooms believing the world a carousel placed there for his private delight. Beside him glides Phyllis Ericson, whose calm gaze masks a storm of unspoken preference: she cherishes not the boy but the man who raised him, Richard Carewe, guardian, patron, reluctant stoic. Into this uneasy triangle slinks Kara Glynesk, siren in silk, nostrils flared at the scent of old money only to discover, post-nuptials, that the vault is bare. Letters are misread, hearts misaligned, reputations auctioned off in whispers. The Trinity—three lifelong custodians part chaperone, part Greek chorus—flap like distressed doves, yet the matrimonial locomotive thunders forth, unchecked until Kara’s mercenary eye lands on a richer berth. Abandoned, chastened, the Imp awakens from his prolonged adolescence; the collateral damage, a fiancée’s faith, reforms itself into the quiet triumph of a woman finally free to choose the steadier embrace of a man who has waited in the shadows, letter in hand, secret intact.