Page 7 of The Pumpkin Bride

When do you prefer to perambulate? He feasted on egg whites and a foul-smelling green juice. The chill fall air is good for the humors. Me? In addition to my training, I walk several times per day to keep my waist trim.

He then pointedly sketched his glance between her waist and her breakfast of simple toast, butter, and blackberry jam. Message received, Prince. She’d certainly perambulated her ass away from Brambleton Castle, hadn’t she?

Saints, he was so different from her true love.

She rubbed at the ache Bram’s memory conjured in her chest. Long ago she’d felt lucky to have found him at such a young age. He’d fallen for her when she was awkward and less self-assured. At the time, it had seemed a blessing, because she could trust he’d loved her. Not the beauty she’d grown into or the title that had increased in importance. But now she wondered if it wasn’t a curse. In comparison to Bram, all men were lacking.

A hooting owl flew overhead.

Her knees wobbled as she started, and she sprawled across the path. A bramble scratched her cheek. With a hiss, she pressed her palm to the spot to ease the sting. From the inner pocket of her dowdy cloak, her cat, Fuzzle yowled.

“Sorry, Fuzz.” She reached inside to scratch behind his tiny ear.

During her second week in Harvest Hollow, she was still willing to try to find common ground with Crispin. Pets seemed a safe topic. In addition to his stables and the farm animals, the prince kept at least a dozen hounds and as many falcons.

“Animals make such lovely companions, don’t you think?” she’d asked.

They’d paused to enjoy the late-blooming roses, which was where she’d noted the servant’s gate that would eventually lead to her freedom.

“I do.” Crispin had nodded. “My gyrfalcons are the envy of Harvest Hollow. Second only to my stag hounds. No one can believe the quality of their pedigree.”

Saints, this man turned every conversation back to rank.

“Do they keep you company, though?” She plucked a rose to dry and steep in her morning tisanes.

“Only when I’m hosting nobles. They make an excellent backdrop.”

Vile to use creatures for scenery.

“Don’t you find them to be comforting? If it weren’t for my cat, Fuzzle, after . . .”

She’d stopped herself before confiding that Fuzzle’s warm cuddles kept her sane while she grieved for Bram. Instinct told her she couldn’t trust Crispin with that level of intimacy. Not yet. Maybe if he—

“About the cat. You’ll need to quarter it in the barn. They make me sneeze.”

That was it. That was the moment she’d hatched her plan to leave Harvest Hollow. She’d spent the last week dodging Bess in the markets to assemble her escape kit.

Her first plan, the forthright one, was to have a discreet—but honest—conversation with Crispin. She would admit she held no affection for him and allow him to confess the same. Though the marriage contracts were signed, they could agree to lead married but separate lives. This discussion could not go through third parties, however, and it would be best to surprise him with it. As she entered the servants’ hallway she’d learned to navigate since she arrived, she approached the hidden entrance to Crispin’s privy chamber.

The conversation she overheard shocked her to her core.

With her fingers pressed to her mouth to stifle a gasp, she learned the awful truth. As he clinked glasses with Kevin, his man-at-arms, Crispin celebrated the wedding banns to be announced during tomorrow’s services at Briarveil Cathedral.

“Years of planning, Kevin, and it’s all tumbling into place,” Crispin said triumphantly. “After the wedding, the mountain sprites will rend Rowan and Beckett Ashford limb from limb, leaving Marigold the undisputed heir to the Thornwick throne. Her grief will consume her, and I’ll put her away at Scarlet Spire to take the sea air, leaving me, per the marriage negotiations, to rule both Harvest Hollow and Thornwick as one sovereign. What says the spy?”

“The House of Ashford is all crest and no coin.” Sir Kevin’s voice reminded her of the dank and dark catacombs of Thornwick. “The wars have stripped their coffers to the bone. This marriage and your support pull them from the fire.”

“Excellent. The deeper in debt they are, the less likely her parents will be to contest Marigold’s placement by the sea. I’ll finally have unfettered access to Thornwick’s minerals and boot the peasants who live atop that fortune.”

Marigold backed away from the door and forced herself to hurry back to her rooms on quiet feet. Thankfully, Bess was sleeping, leaving Marigold to devise her escape. With Fuzzle in her lap, she lifted her quill to draft a warning letter to her parents.

No—Crispin said he had a spy.

Surely any correspondence betwixt she and her family at Thornwick would be read by his operative, if delivered at all. Instead, she drafted a coded letter to her twin, Rowan, who was stationed at the Gildfall Mountains, to the north. Spies might surround him as well, but a benefit of twinhood was the indecipherable secret language they shared.

She tapped her chin as she worked through the logistics.

The letter might not reach him for ages since he currently served on the northern borders. Even if he sailed the Sea of Red Tides on the Orvale, the navy’s fastest ship, she couldn’t expect a speedy escort home. The marriage contracts were in place, it was true, but she and Crispin were not yet married. Once they spoke their vows, she would have no leverage.