Excerpt of In the Still of the Night by Jill Churchill

January, 1932

Lily Brewster was standing by the gatehouse entrance to Grace and Favor Cottage. "Cottage" was a serious misnomer because the home was an enormous, if somewhat run-down, mansion that overlooked the Hudson River. A brisk wind from the west brought the smell of the cold river water swirling around the mansion, blowing snow from the roof and making the trees in the heavily wooded area to the sides of the mansion creak and groan.

Lily was waiting, as she'd been doing nearly every day for several weeks now, for the postman. She was huddled in a sable coat that was even more run-down than the house. Her father had bought it for her shortly before the Crash of '29-when the Brewster family was still the financial and social cream of the crop.

She also wore a pair of old overshoes she'd found in the rabbit warren of third floor rooms when she and Mrs. Prinney started cleaning them out a month earlier, and a hand-knitted cap in rather violently conflicting colors that Mrs. Prinney had knitted her for Christmas. But she was still shivering.

She was about to give up when she heard the approaching racket of the old Model T the postman drove in the winter. In summer those who expected to get mail had to go to Voorburg-on-Hudson to pick it up at the post office, which was a cubbyhole in the back of the greengrocer's store. But in the worst winter months, a driver delivered it to the mansions on the hills above the town. It was the town council's way of thanking the few affluent residents who stayed in winter and contributed to the faltering economy.

Not that Lily and her brother Robert were still among the affluent, quite theopposite, but they did live in a mansion, and few people knew their true circumstances.

"Morning, Miz Brewster. Got a bunch of things for you. Jack Summer sent up a newspaper, too," the postman said, handing her a wad of papers, envelopes and the newspaper. "And I brought Mrs. Prinney that roast she ordered from the butcher. He said you could pay whenever you were in town next."

Lily thanked him, tucked the butcher-paper wrapped roast under her arm and hurried inside. She delivered the roast to Mrs. Prinney, shed her fur coat and sat down in the entry hall to look at the rest.

There were a couple letters for Mr. and Mrs. Prinney (by this time Lily recognized their daughters' handwriting). The Voorburg-on-Hudson Times headline grabbed her attention next. FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT. Though raised as adedicated Republican, Lily was glad to hear thee confirmation of the rumor. She had no idea what Governor Roosevelt, a neighbor a few miles away at Hyde Park, thought the solution to the financial crisis in the country was, but it was dear that President Hoover was only making things worse. She set aside the newspaper to read the rest of it later, and came to a letter addressed to her and Robert.

She feared it was yet another rejection. That's all she'd received so far, but she was bound to get an acceptance soon. From somebody.

She opened the envelope carefully and read the enclosed card.

"Robert!" she shouted. "Robert, where are you?"

A voice drifted down from the second floor. "Up here. What's wrong?"

Her brother Robert came bounding down the stairs a moment later, a bit disheveled and alarmed-a combination that did nothing to harm his startlingly good looks. He had rather longer hair than was quite stylish, but the dark gloss of it against his fair skin and sky-blue eyes was his own style. Lily, his younger sister, had the same coloring, but not quite the perfection of features that he possessed. A trick of genetics that she considered highly unfair.

"Nothing's wrong for a change," she said. "Something's very right. Come into the library and read the letter I just got. Julian West has accepted our invitation!"

"Julian West? Really?"

"Read this!" she said, shoving him into a chair and handing him the note. "Isn't he absolutely gracious? To be a famous author and write to us in such a friendly way. It's amazing. And look, he signs it Julian, just as if we were old friends."

"Don't swoon so, Lily. This was probably written by a secretary."

"I don't care. He's coming here in April. Now we can invite the others. What a coup!"

Lily and Robert Brewster had grown up in the lap of luxury. Their father had been a multimillionaire by the time he was thirty, partly by inheritance, largely by hard work and intellect. But when the stock market crashed and he jumped out of his broker's window five flights above Wall Street, they discovered that he had gotten greedy. He'd borrowed against all the family properties-the apartment in New York, the summer house in Massachusetts, the sprawling home on the coast of South Carolina, the cottage in Kent, England, where they frequently spent Christmases with British cousins. And he had put all the money into the stock market on margin.

After his death, when everything was sold for far less than its value to meet his debts, Lily and Robert were left with their mother's pier glass, eight hundred dollars, and two hunks and a suitcase each of their personal belongings.

And very few skills that meant anything anymore. Knowing which fork to use for shrimp and the rules of polo were no longer valuable assets.

Then almost two miserable years later good luck struck them. Or rather, glanced off them. A very wealthy great- uncle they barely remembered died and left them Grace and Favor Cottage. But Greatuncle Horatio, being both canny and suspicious, had put a huge restriction on them. They had to live in the mansion for ten years without being...