Written to Die for the Angel, So I Exposed Her First novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Brooch
She wakes as the angel's best friend at the Garden Tea, finds the planted brooch in her bag, and slips it into the lackey's glove in front of the Lord Warden.
Perrine woke up holding a teacup, and the first thing she knew was that it was the wrong cup.
It was thin white porcelain with a gold rim, and it was half full of something cold.
Her thumb was pressed to a chip in the handle that she had never felt before.
Around her, twelve women in pale summer silk were laughing at nothing under a striped awning.
Beyond the awning the harbor of Saltmere glittered, full of masts.
She knew the harbor.
She had never seen it.
"Perrine, darling, you've gone white," said a soft voice at her elbow. "Is it the sun?"
She turned her head.
Aurelie Quillon was smiling at her, small and golden, with lilac-grey eyes and a ribbon in her white-blond hair.
The Angel of the Harbor.
Perrine had read that name on a night shift, in a hospital break room, four hundred pages ago.
She had read the last page twice.
She knew exactly where she was.
She was in chapter four of The Lantern of Saltmere, at the Dowager's Garden Tea.
The girl she had been cast as was the best friend who was going to be dead by chapter eighteen.
"It's the sun," Perrine said. "Give me a minute."
"Of course. You always say that when you're ill and won't make a fuss."
Aurelie squeezed her hand and went to speak to someone else.
Perrine sat very still.
In the book, this was the afternoon the brooch went missing.
Aurelie's mother's pearl brooch, the only thing she owned from the family she'd lost.
It vanished from the cloakroom, and a footman found it in Perrine's reticule.
Perrine, loyal Perrine, said she had taken it herself so that Aurelie's real favorite, the shy Miss Merrin, would not be sent away in disgrace.
Everyone wept.
Aurelie forgave her in front of the whole tea.
The book called it a beautiful scene.
Perrine put her hand into the little silk bag on her lap.
Her fingers closed on a cold gold pin.
It was already there.
She did not look down.
Across the lawn, a girl in lilac gloves was watching her over the rim of her cup, and looking away too fast.
Odile Merrin.
Twenty-two years old, daughter of a ship chandler, the angel's most devoted shadow.
In the book she was a "sweet, nervous girl".
In the book nobody ever asked why she was always the one who carried Aurelie's things.
Perrine stood up.
Her legs worked, and her hands were steadier than she'd expected.
They were rough hands, scarred across the palms.
Her own had never been like that.
She crossed the grass to the long table where the cloaks were hung on a rack for the sun.
Odile's lilac cloak hung beside her own.
Odile's lilac gloves were on her hands, but the left one was tight at the wrist, and had a pocket sewn at the cuff.
Perrine had read that detail too.
A trick for passing a pin.
She came back across the lawn smiling, and stopped at Odile's chair.
"Miss Merrin, you look hot. Let me take your glove, you've worn them all day."
"No, I'm fine," Odile said.
"I insist."
Perrine took the girl's left wrist, quickly and lightly.
With the other hand she slid the gold pin out of her bag and into the cuff pocket.
Then she drew the glove down off Odile's fingers.
Odile snatched, a half second late.
The brooch fell out onto the grass.
Twelve women looked down at it.
It was a small pearl on a gold stem, in the shape of a wave.
Aurelie's hand went to her collar, where nothing was pinned.
"My mother's brooch," Aurelie whispered.
"Is it?" Perrine said. "How odd. It was in your glove, Miss Merrin."
"I never," said Odile. Her face was bloodless. "It was in your bag. Everyone saw you take it."
"Then let's look in my bag."
Perrine opened the silk bag wide and turned it over on the table.
A handkerchief fell out, and a comb.
Nothing else.
"And let's have someone who isn't any of us do the looking," she said. "Where is the Lord Warden? He keeps the peace on this quay, I'm told."
A man had been standing under the awning's edge with a glass he hadn't touched.
He was tall and black-haired, with a pale scar cutting his left eyebrow.
He had been looking at Aurelie since the first cup was poured.
Lucan Halcyr, Marquess of Halcyr, Lord Warden of Saltmere harbor.
The male lead.
In the book he had been in this scene only to carry Aurelie's tears out of it.
He came forward now, and looked at the brooch on the grass, and at the glove, and at Odile.
"The pocket's sewn in," he said quietly. "At the cuff."
Nobody on the lawn moved.
"It's for her fan," Odile said.
"It's a good fan," the Warden said. "Show me."
She had no fan.
The silence went on long enough that a woman by the lemonade began to cry.
Then Aurelie was kneeling in the grass with both hands over her mouth.
"Oh, Odile," she said, and her eyes were wet. "Oh, you poor girl. Please don't send her away. I forgive her. I forgive her, truly."
Everyone sighed.
Women reached for her.
Lucan Halcyr looked down at his angel and at nothing else.
Over the golden head, Aurelie's eyes lifted and found Perrine's.
She was still smiling.
It was a very small, very patient smile, and it was not a smile you gave to a friend.
"You will apologize to Miss Quillon," Lucan said, without turning around. "Now."
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