Excerpt from A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Don't hurt yourself. I've got the general idea. How much are we talking about? Thousands?"

He looks up, and his eyes are a little sparky. "Millions."

"What?"

"He licenses the design out, you know, and the revenue from that alone is one and a half million dollars a year, give or take a hundred thousand—"

I clutch the roof beam.

"—which is pure profit, you know, because he doesn't have to make the—the thingamajig himself. They just pay him for the design. It's patented." He pronounces the word patented with triumphant emphasis, as he might say gold-plated.

"Yes, Ox, darling. I understand what a patent is." In the midst of my beam-clutching shock, the shawl has sagged away from my shoulders. I resume both balance and composure and tuck myself back in while these extraordinary numbers harden into round marbles and roll, glimmering, back and forth across the surface of my mind. How could a man invent a single object and then vault—vault with such marvelous, casual ease!—over the accumulated wealth of no less than Mr. Thomas Sylvester Marshall of Fifth Avenue, whose father once supplied the entire Union Army with canned ham? A wealth that had dazzled me at seventeen. The company had naturally been sold in the seventies—canned ham being incompatible with the social aspirations of so keenly ambitious a woman as Mrs. Thomas Sylvester Marshall, my mother-in- law— and the proceeds invested in such a manner that a passive two hundred thousand dollars—give or take ten thousand—still drift gently into the Marshall coffers each year, enough to keep us all in silks and horses and ennui. But two hundred thousand is not one million five hundred thousand. A patent: well, that's a different kind of capital altogether. A patent suggests activity. Suggests having actually earned something.

I take the soft fringe of the shawl and rub it between my thumb and fore- finger, in much the same way that the Boy caresses my hair. "Gracious me. She's quite a catch, then. Pretty and sweet and loaded. Does she have anyone to share all this lovely money with?"

"An older sister. Virginia. She's already married."

"I see. And how old is your little darling?"

He hesitates. "Nineteen."

"Oh, Ox. She's just a girl!"

"She's a very old nineteen," he says. "And you were married at eighteen."

"So I was."

"And Sylvo was thirty-six at the time, wasn't he?" "So he was."

"Well, there you are." He nods and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of his overcoat. "Smoke?"

"Thanks."

I accept the cigarette gratefully and allow him to light me up. He starts his own smoke from the same match, shakes out the flame just as it reaches the intersection of his finger and thumb. Like me, he closes his eyes as the virgin draft fills his lungs, and I am reminded of the first time we shared a smoke together, after the bon voyage party (if that's the term) that Sylvo and I threw for Tommy. You look like you could use a smoke, he said, upon finding me alone on the terrace, staring across the dark wilderness of Central Park, and I agreed that I did, and we stood there smoking together at three o'clock in the morning, not saying a word, until I tossed my stub over the ledge onto Fifth Avenue and turned to him. This is our little secret, Ox, I warned him, and bless the idiot, he's kept it ever since.

"It's not just the lettuce, though," he says now. "I was falling for her already, before I found out about that."

I reflect for an instant on my brother's extraordinary capability for self-delusion. "No doubt," I say.

"Wait until you meet her, sis."

"Oh, I can't wait. When are you proposing? I'll have to consult my calendar and throw you two lovebirds a smashing little engagement party."

Excerpted from A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams. Copyright © 2016 by Beatriz Williams. Excerpted by permission of William Morrow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.