Three hours before the wedding, my future mother-in-law ruined my wedding dress and left a note with just four words: “Know your place.”

Now the silk had turned pink-brown, the lace was eaten through, and one sleeve had dissolved into threads.

Behind me, my maid of honor, Tessa, whispered, “Oh my God, Claire.”

I didn’t cry.

That was the first thing Evelyn Harrow got wrong.

The second was assuming I didn’t understand why she hated me.

To Evelyn, I was “the scholarship girl” who had somehow trapped her only son, Adrian.

She introduced me as “an accountant” with the same disdain people reserved for something unpleasant. At engagement dinners, she corrected my pronunciation of French wines I hadn’t ordered and once asked whether my family “understood formal cutlery.”