Excerpt
Of course, a sensible woman would never have accepted the invitation in the first place.
To attend a week-long house party filled with bickering gentleman magicians, ruthlessly cutthroat lady politicians, and worst of all, my own infuriating ex-fiancé? Scarcely two months after I had scandalized all of our most intimate friends by jilting him?
Utter madness. And anyone would have seen that immediately…except for my incurably romantic sister-in-law.
Unfortunately, Amy saw the invitation pop into mid-air beside me as we sat en famille at the breakfast table that morning. She watched with bright interest as I crumpled it up a moment later in disgust…and then she dashed around the table, with surprising agility despite her interesting condition, to snatch the ball of paper from my hands before I could toss it into the blazing fire where it belonged.
Naturally, I lunged to retrieve it. But I was too late.
The moment she smoothed it out enough to read the details, her eyes lit up with near-fanatical ardor. "Oh, yes, Cassandra, we must go! Just think: you will finally see Wrexham again!"
"I know," I said through gritted teeth. "That is exactly why we are going to refuse it!"
"Now, love…" Her eyes widened, and she gave me her most innocent look...which put me on guard immediately.
Kind-hearted, loyal, and adorable are all phrases that may apply very well to my brother's wife; innocent is not one of them, and never has been.
She had, after all, been my mother's final and most promising political protégée.
"I should think," she said now, as if idly, "that you would wish to show everyone how little notice you take of any gossip. After all, if we refuse this invitation, you know everyone will say it was because you were too afraid to see Wrexham again."
My teeth ground together. "I am not afraid of seeing Wrexham."
"Well, I know that," Amy said, looking as smug as a cat licking up fresh cream. "But does he?"
Well. It isn't that I don't know when I'm being managed. But there are some possibilities that cannot be borne. And the thought of my ex-fiancé's dark eyebrows rising in his most fiendishly supercilious look at the news of my cowardly refusal…
I drummed my fingers against the table, searching for a way out.
Behind my brother's outspread newspaper, an apparently disembodied voice spoke. "Better leave early," my brother said. "It's meant to snow next week, according to the weather wizards."
Amy sat back, smiling and resting her hands on her rounded belly…
And that was how the three of us ended up rattling through the elven dales in mid-winter, with the first flakes of snow falling around our carriage.
