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Authors: Jennifer Steil

The Ambassador's Wife

BOOK: The Ambassador's Wife
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Also by Jennifer Steil

The Woman Who Fell from the Sky

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer F. Steil

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

www.doubleday.com

D
OUBLEDAY
and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published and unpublished material: Ernest Tubb Music, for permission to reprint lyrics from “Waltz Across Texas.”

eBook design adapted from printed book design by Maria Carella

Cover design by John Fontana

Cover images: woman © Wojciech Zwolinski/Trevillion Images; city © Nadeem Khawar/Moment/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Steil, Jennifer.

The ambassador's wife : a novel / Jennifer Steil. — First edition.

pages; cm

ISBN 978-0-385-53902-9 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-385-53903-6 (eBook)

1. Ambassadors—Fiction. 2. Artists—Fiction. 3. Kidnapping—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.T4485A83 2015

813'.6—dc23

2014018579

eBook ISBN 9780385539036

v4.1

a

Contents

Prologue: September 17, 2010

Part Two

Chapter 4: January 2007: Miranda

Chapter 5: August 9, 2010: Finn

Chapter 6: June 7, 2007: Miranda

Chapter 7: August 14, 2010: Miranda

Chapter 8: June 7, 2007: Miranda

Chapter 9: September 3, 2010: Finn

Chapter 10: June 7, 2007: Miranda

Chapter 11: August 18, 2010: Miranda

Chapter 12: August 30, 2007: Miranda

Chapter 13: October 2010: Miranda

Chapter 14: September 17, 2007: Miranda

Chapter 15: September 17, 2007: Finn

Chapter 16: September 18, 2007: Miranda

Chapter 17: October 19, 2010: Finn

Chapter 18: September 18, 2007: Norman

Chapter 19: October 2007: Miranda

Chapter 20: January 4, 2008: Finn

Chapter 21: January 11, 2008: Miranda

Chapter 22: October 2010: Miranda

Chapter 23: November 5, 2010: Miranda

Chapter 24: July 2008: Miranda

Finn

Miranda

Chapter 25: November 19, 2010: Finn

Chapter 26: September 19, 2008: Miranda

Chapter 27: November 2010: Miranda

Chapter 28: July 4, 2010: Miranda

Chapter 29: November 18, 2010: Finn

Chapter 30: August 11, 2009: Miranda

Chapter 31: November 29, 2010: Finn

Chapter 32: March 17, 2010: Miranda

Chapter 33: December 3, 2010: Finn

Chapter 34: December 1, 2010: Miranda

Chapter 35: June 23, 2007: Finn

Chapter 36: December 7, 2010: Miranda

Chapter 37: December 12, 2010: Finn

Chapter 38: December 25, 2010: Finn

Chapter 39: December 8, 2010: Miranda

Chapter 40: January 2, 2011: Imaan

Chapter 41: January 3, 2011: Finn

Chapter 42: December 2010: Miranda

Chapter 43: December 13, 2010: Finn

Chapter 44: January 13, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 45: December 13, 2010: Finn

Chapter 46: February 14, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 47: February 14, 2011: Tazkia

Chapter 48: February 14, 2011: Finn

Chapter 49: February 14, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 50: February 14, 2011: Tazkia

Chapter 51: February 14, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 52: February 14, 2011: Finn

Chapter 53: February 14, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 54: February 14–15, 2011

Chapter 55: February 17, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 56: March 11, 2011: Miranda

Finn

Chapter 57: April 3, 2011: Finn

Chapter 58: April 29, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 59: May 5, 2011: Norman

Chapter 60: May 5, 2011: Finn

Chapter 61: May 5, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 62: May 5, 2011: Finn

Chapter 63: May 5–6, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 64: May 6, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 65: May 6, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 66: May 8, 2011: Finn

Chapter 67: May 8, 2011: Miranda

Chapter 68: July 14, 2011, London: Finn

Chapter 69: August 11, 2011: Miranda

Epilogue: September 17, 2013: Miranda

F
OR
T
IM AND
T
HEADORA, MY HOME

SEPTEMBER 17, 2010

As she curls herself around the wasted body of a stranger's child, cupping the tiny head in her hand, the remembered glow of a painting emerges unbidden from the gloom of Miranda's mind. A woman sleeps in a boat, reclined in her husband's arms and draped alongside the body of her sleeping child, bathed in a benediction of pale light. Around them are dark water and a darker shore. The woman's body is limp, trusting, abandoned to its fate. Opposite the slumbering family, Fortune plies the oars, with the assistance of a hopeful Cupid. Something about the image—the family's relinquishing of control over their destiny—fills Miranda with terror. They drift, serenely dreaming, into darkness
. Wake,
she wants to cry to them
. Wake up and take an oar.
Fortune and Cupid are unreliable guides. As the baby tugs at her breast, Miranda gazes down at her with dull eyes, trying to remember the name of the painting. What was it? The child whimpers as the nipple slips away from her mouth; she is too weak to suck for long
. The Dream of Happiness.
That was it. Constance Mayer's
Dream of Happiness.
She who had known so little of it in her own life. When Miranda thinks back on her brief life with Cressida and Finn, this is the image that keeps returning to her. A moment of blissful unconsciousness, and then black
.

BOOK: The Ambassador's Wife
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