Part 2His Discarded Maid Married His Master

By seven-thirty the following evening, the private mountain road leading up to the Radcliffe manor was choked with a glittering procession of luxury town cars and sports coupes.

I arrived in an understated black silk slip dress—simple, high-necked, cut straight to the ankle. No jewelry. No makeup beyond a coat of balm.

As I approached the grand revolving glass doors of the entrance pavilion, two stone-faced private security guards stepped out, crossing their arms.

"Private function, ma'am. Invitation only."

I stood in the biting wind, looking at the chandeliers blazing inside, and opened my mouth to give Lachlan’s name.

Before the words could form, a high-pitched, nasal voice cut through the terrace air behind me.

"Well, well. Look what crawled out of the gutter."

Kiki, Lachlan’s cousin, swayed over on stiletto heels, holding a martini glass. She gave my unbranded dress a slow, mocking once-over and burst into an exaggerated giggle.

"Did the local soup kitchen run out of broth, Elise? Or did you honestly think you could sneak back in through the service door to climb into my cousin's bed again?"

Several debutantes in glittering taffeta turned around, clustering like crows smelling carrion.

"Kiki, is this her?" one murmured, covering a laugh behind French-manicured fingers. "The live-in maid’s daughter who tried to trap Lachlan on his eighteenth birthday?"

"The very one," Kiki sneered loudly. "Same cheap, desperate look. Security, what are you doing? Letting someone smelling of bus tickets and dish soap stand around out here? She's polluting the air."

The insults hit with the sharp, acidic sting of deja vu.

Eight years ago, beneath the exact same portico, Lachlan had stood under the light and told thirty of his peers that I was a social-climbing gutter stray who had unbuttoned his shirt while he was half-asleep. I remembered the sound of my mother’s knees striking this very bluestone, weeping, pleading for them not to blackball us from the county.

My breath caught for half a second. My jaw tightened, and I turned to face Kiki—

"Kiki, mind your manners."

Lachlan’s baritone drifted down from the double mahogany staircase inside the grand foyer.

He was dressed in a bespoke midnight-black tuxedo, descending the stairs like a monarch surveying his courtiers. Tinsley was draped over his arm in an ivory haute couture column gown, her diamond necklace flashing beneath the chandeliers.

"Elise is my personal guest," Lachlan announced as he reached the marble floor.

He stopped before me, his eyes sweeping down my unadorned black dress with a faint frown of aristocratic disapproval.

"I told you to wear something suitable yesterday, Elise. You always had this stubborn, pedestrian lack of taste. But no matter." He turned to face the gathering crowd, his voice projecting easily across the grand hall. "Elise will be taking up residence in the estate's carriage house starting tonight. I expect everyone to treat her with the appropriate... forbearance."

A collective murmur rippled through the hall.

Kiki’s jaw dropped. "Lachlan, have you completely lost your mind? Letting "her" move back onto the property? What about Tinsley?"

Tinsley rested her head lightly against Lachlan’s bicep, wearing the serene, saintly expression of a woman offering scraps to a stray dog.

"Don't be unkind, Kiki," Tinsley said softly, loud enough for twenty people to hear. "Elise has had an extraordinarily difficult life. Lachlan is simply being chivalrous. The Radcliffe family won't notice the cost of an extra mouth to feed, and I certainly have no reason to feel threatened by a charity case."

She turned her gaze toward me, her eyes glittering with cold triumph.

"Since we’ll be living on the same estate from now on, Elise, let's put whatever unfortunate misunderstandings happened in the past behind us, shall we?"

Tinsley reached out, lifting two crystal flutes of deep-red Cabernet from a passing waiter’s silver tray.

She held one out toward me.

"Here. Let this be a toast to your return to our service."

I looked at the thin crystal glass, then shifted my gaze to the breast pocket of Lachlan’s dinner jacket.

For the jade, I swallowed the bile coating my tongue and reached out to take the flute.

My fingers had barely grazed the chill of the crystal stem when Tinsley’s wrist made a sudden, violent jerk.

The entire glass of red wine tipped inward, drenching the pristine, million-dollar ivory satin of her designer gown in a grotesque splatter of crimson.

"Oh!" Tinsley shrieked, stumbling backward into Lachlan’s arms as tears flooded her eyes with practiced speed. "Elise... if you hated me that much, you didn't have to ruin my couture in front of everyone!"

The entire ballroom went dead silent.

Then Kiki’s voice erupted like a siren.

"Are you insane, you jealous psycho? Do you have any idea how much that custom gown cost?"

Lachlan’s face turned an ugly, thunderous shade of purple as he gripped Tinsley’s waist. He glared at me as if he wanted to tear my throat out.

"Elise! What the hell is wrong with you?"

I stood entirely still, looking at the puddle of wine on the marble floor.

"Lachlan, if you're not going to use your eyes, donate them to science," I said evenly. "There are twenty people standing here. I never even touched the glass."

"Shut up!" Lachlan snapped, deaf to every word. To him, the narrative was already written: I was a desperate, unhinged girl losing her mind over his engagement.

"Tinsley offered you an olive branch, and you humiliated her in my home. Is this how you beg for grace?" He pointed a trembling finger at the pool of dark wine on the floor, then at Tinsley’s stained satin slippers.

"Apologize to her right now," Lachlan commanded, his voice carrying to every corner of the silent hall. "Down on the floor. Take a napkin, get on your knees, and wipe her shoes clean."

A sharp collective intake of breath echoed around the room.

Demanding that I kneel before the entire social register to clean another woman’s shoes was not discipline.

It was an execution of my humanity.

I looked into Lachlan's self-righteous eyes, my jaw locked.

"I won't."

Lachlan’s eyes narrowed into slits. He let out a low, dangerous sneer.

Slowly, theatrically, he reached into his pocket and produced the green jade pendant, holding it up by its red silk cord between two fingers.

"You won't?" he whispered. "This looks like fragile antique jade, Elise. I wonder how many pieces it breaks into if it meets the marble?"

Every drop of blood in my body went sub-zero.