The Forgotten Heiress Returns
She had mistaken him for nothing more than a stranger nursing a grudge over some stolen trinket, a minor inconvenience to be handled and forgotten.
She hadn't, for even a single moment, considered that he might be the very man whose name sat carved near the top of the family she had just spent weeks scheming her way into.
Marian and Zoe had gone utterly silent beside her, their earlier laughter dying somewhere in their throats, their faces frozen in matching expressions of horror as the pieces clicked together for them too, a fraction slower than they had for Amber.
Zoe's hand had risen halfway to her mouth and simply stopped there, suspended, as though she had entirely forgotten what she me