8 years ago

*Summer*

Sitting in front of the mirror, I watch as Miriam works to put my hair up in a style reminiscent of Marie Antoinette, which seems appropriate as my mother would have my head if she knew the true reason I had pleaded and begged for our affair to be a masquerade ball. But it had been necessary to my plan. Every ball I have attended thus far has been boring and uneventful.

It is my first season and I should be enthralled with the sparkling glamour. Instead I find it all rather dull and attending the affairs extremely wearisome.

I spend a good deal of my...