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Insults or not, when dinner time came, the noble Princess Annabelle found herself sitting at the same table
as this “coarse country wench.”
My furniture was small and rough, and the princess complained endlessly. “Napier, this chair is so uncomfor-
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Chapter 1
table. Let’s just go back to the inn in town.”
Napier smiled. I’d never seen him, a man as cold as ice, actually smile before.
But there was a hint of sorrow in it.
“I have sat in chairs like this for two years,” he said quietly.
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The disdain on Annabelle’s face was immediately replaced by a wave of heartbreak. She was so beautiful that even her scorn was endearing.
Trying to lighten the mood, I chimed in. “And I’ve sat in chairs like this for eighteen years!”
Napier never deigned to speak to me, and this time was no different.
But Princess Annabelle shot me a mocking smirk. “And what if you sat in them for twenty? A lowly creature. like you was born to sit in crude chairs.”
I lowered my head in embarrassment, but under the table, I saw my mother’s fist clench and unclench. She had never liked Napier because he refused to marry me, but tonight, she remained silent.
After a moment, Napier spoke, his voice formal. “You bought me when I was at my lowest. For these past years, I have worked from sunrise to sunset in your home. I believe my labor has repaid your kindness. We are even. We owe each other nothing.”
With that, he stood and gave my mother a slight bow. Then he turned to leave with Princess Annabelle.
In a panic, I moved to stop him, but my mother grabbed my arm.
We listened as the carriage wheels clattered away into the distance. Only then did she sigh. “My daughter, give it up. I told you long ago, he is not one of us.”
She had said the same thing the day I bought him.
But I hadn’t listened. I had inherited my mother’s weakness for a handsome face.
When the soldiers brought the convicts to town for sale, my eyes had locked on the thin, frail form of Napier
in the crowd.
His eyes were beautiful. One fleeting glance from him was enough to make my face burn.
The day I brought him home, he collapsed from illness. The town doctor said he was barely clinging to life. As I paid the doctor, my mother sighed and cursed me for being a fool, for buying a sickly money pit who was clearly not our kind.
I never imagined he was a noble Grand Tutor.
I never imagined he would despise the idea of being my husband so much.
And I certainly never imagined that he would one day leave this desolate place.
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