Cover

Dedication

For Wade, who taught me how to breathe.

You are solid ground to me.

Il estoit une fois un Gentil-homme qui épousa en secondes nopces une femme,

la plus haütaine et la plus fiere qu’on eut jamais veuë. . . .

Le Mari avoit de son costé une jeune fille,

mais d’une douceur et d’une bonté sans exemple, elle tenoit cela de sa Mere,

qui estoit la meilleure personne du monde.

—Cendrillon; ou, La Petite Pantoufle de Verre

Once upon a time there was a nobleman, who took for a second wife

the haughtiest and proudest woman that had ever been seen. . . .

The husband, on his side, had a daughter, of unexampled gentleness and goodness.

She inherited these qualities from her mother,

who had been the best creature in the world.

—Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper

1

POTOMAC: ARBOR HALL

Once upon a time always began on nights like tonight.

Candles flickered in the trees that grew up through the marble floors of Arbor Hall, setting aglow the faces of the partygoers beneath them and the garlands of shattered glass sparkling in their intermingled branches. My heart beat like a hummingbird trapped between my breastbone and spine.

I ducked behind an old oak climbed over with ivy, hiding for a moment from the music and all the people, careful to avoid the gap carved around its trunk.

Tonight wasn’t truly a beginning. I’d loved Peter forever, even if I’d never told him so. Tonight was growth—a page turned. Tonight, I would reap from seeds I’d sown and tended half my life.

Tonight, I’d go to sleep with a ring on my finger and my future clear before me. Confident in the promise that tomorrow and the next day and the next would be happy days, always the same, always close to the ones I loved. Ready to do my duty by Potomac and take my place as its head someday, with someone strong and trustworthy at my side. Just as soon as Peter said yes.

I tugged an ivy vine loose with shaky fingers, looped it into a wreath, and pinned it over the loose ponytail I’d made of my curls.

Tonight, whispered my heart. You’re getting engaged tonight.

My breath came fast at the thought, my knees practically knocking together.

Momma had told me the story of my birthday a hundred times. On the night I was born, she paced here in Arbor Hall beneath the trees, pleading with me to leave the safety of her womb and enter the world.

It was a wild, wonderful, magical place, she said. Back aching, ankles swollen, she walked through the forest sheltered beneath the hall’s marble dome and whispered stories to where I waited in her belly, as if to prove it to me.