Money-Minded and Plot-Aware novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Spilled Cup
Jo wakes at the Spring Ball as the villainess, takes the Prince's public insult, and demands the engagement bond back before the whole court.
The last thing I remembered was chapter sixty-one, a cold mug of tea and a blinking cursor.
Then somebody poured a glass of red wine down the front of my dress.
I came awake standing up, in a ballroom, with two hundred people looking at me.
The wine was cold and it soaked through silk all the way to my ribs.
"Oh no!" a girl cried.
"Oh, Lady Rosamund, I'm so sorry, my hand slipped!"
She was small and brown-haired, in a white gown without a single stain on it.
She held an empty glass with both hands and her eyes were already wet.
I knew that face.
I had read about that face for eleven months, on my phone, on the train, in the toilets at work.
Sorrel Pennick, the Saint of Alder Court, the heroine of the book.
And I was standing in the villainess's body, in the villainess's green dress, at the villainess's Spring Ball.
Rosamund Hallowell, twenty-four, who got hanged in chapter sixty-three.
I felt the whole world tilt, and I grabbed the nearest thing, which was a gold-trimmed sleeve.
"Careful," said the man inside the sleeve.
"You'll stain my coat as well as your own."
"Crown Prince Edmund looked down at me."
He was golden and handsome and entirely certain that he was the kindest man in the room.
"Rosamund," he said, loud enough for the gallery.
"You have been cruel to Sorrel for the last time."
"I didn't do anything," I said.
"I was standing here."
"You stood in her way," he said.
"You always do."
This was the scene.
Chapter eleven, I thought, and my brain went quiet and cold, the way it does when a client calls with a bad claim.
In the book, Rosamund screamed at the saint here and threw the wine back.
That was the first brick in her scaffold.
The Prince would announce the end of the engagement at Midsummer, and Sorrel would be poisoned, and I would be blamed.
Forty days.
The book gave her forty days, and she had wasted every one of them screaming.
I had spent six years in a claims office, and I knew how to argue with people who wanted my money.
"I looked at the Prince's hand, which was holding Sorrel's elbow."
I looked at the ring on my own finger, a big green stone in a heavy gold setting.
Under the stone, in tiny letters, was a number I had read in chapter four.
"Your Highness," I said, in my loudest customer voice.
"That's fine, I won't scream."
The whole room leaned in.
I pulled the ring off my finger and held it up to the chandelier.
"This is the betrothal ring, valued at four hundred crowns, held in bond by the Hallowell house."
"If the engagement is broken, the bond is returned in full."
"I'd like that noted before more wine arrives."
Sorrel stopped sniffling.
The Prince's smile slipped a little at one corner.
"You are making a scene," he said.
"You started it," I said.
"I'm only keeping the receipt."
Somebody in the gallery laughed, and then somebody else did.
I put the ring back on, very slowly, and looked straight at the Prince.
"When you're ready to end it, Your Highness, bring the four hundred crowns and the apology."
"In that order."
His face went red.
Sorrel put a trembling hand on his arm and whispered something that made him lift his chin.
I turned to leave, with wine running down my legs, and nearly walked into a wall of black wool.
It was a tall man in a marshal's coat, with a scar through his left eyebrow.
Grey eyes, flat as a winter pond.
I knew him too.
Hadrian Stroud, the Lord Marshal of Alder.
Chapter sixty-three, the last line of Rosamund's life: "Hadrian Stroud signed the order without looking up."
He had been watching me since I pulled off the ring.
"Lady Rosamund," he said.
His voice was low and perfectly calm.
"Walk with me."
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