About this story
Masked men take the box at night, your maid turns Queen's evidence, and the Old Bailey cross-examination reads your lie about the bankers until the laughter turns. The suit dies, the stones stay lost, and you marry the preacher without diamonds. Seventy-six chapters carry you from London to the tower and the sea.
How it opens
Lady Linlithgow's room displayed expensive habits surviving long after the money that had formed them.
Curtains shut out the afternoon, and candlelight caught every coloured stone you had chosen to wear.
Lady LinlithgowLizzie, three bracelets do not become more valuable because you wear them together.
Lady LinlithgowIf your father had left cash instead of acquaintances, you might indulge such experiments.
Choose
People notice confidence before they ask what it cost.
Then introduce me to people who can afford not to ask.