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“Well, not exactly…”

“Nonsense! There is no shame in changing your mind, Samantha. If you love him —”

“Which I do not.”

“But if you do, and simply do not wish to admit it,” she smirked, “then that is quite all right. I shall allow you to keep your pride.”

“I fear I have no pride left.”

“You ought to. Look at it this way — you have come into a party of strangers and made yourself so well known that you shall be returning on the arm of a duke. Who else could say that?”

“My sister, almost,” Samantha laughed.

“Ah, yes, my brother was telling me about that. Some young ladies do truly have all of the good fortune.”

“I am certainly not fortunate,” Samantha sighed before realizing what she had said. “Well, I am. I have my good health and an adoring sister, and now, I have a friend, and my sister’s new family is wonderful and loving, and —”

“It is quite all right,” Penelope laughed. “I know exactly what you mean. I know how you grew up, and there is no shame in it.”

Samantha disagreed. It hurt knowing that she was the only one in the room that did not have staff in her household growing up and that she was the only one that had to try to run a household (with Diana’s help, of course) as her father spent too much money on alcohol to be able to afford any help for them. Until a few mere months before, she had just one ball gown, and somehow, her father expected her to find a husband with it.

It did not matter that Penelope did not think it shameful. As far as Samantha was concerned, it most certainly was, especially when even though her circumstances had changed, she still had Miss Norton and Lord Nicholas Pratt looking down on her as if she were a commoner or even something awful on the bottom of their shoe.

“Excuse me, one moment,” Samantha said quietly to Penelope before going towards them.

She did not know why she was doing this. It was not in her nature to be confrontational, and yet since her arrival, it was allthat she knew how to be. With each passing day, she felt herself becoming more and more like her father, and she could not stand it.

“Oh, if it isn’t the pauper,” Miss Norton huffed “Have you come to ruin the night even further?”

“Hush, Emma,” Lord Nicholas said firmly.

“No. She has made the entire party worthless, and I guarantee that it was deliberate.”

“Why would I have done that?” Samantha asked, trying to trick her into confessing.

“Because you are jealous,” she snarled. “You saw how content Nicholas and I are, and you could not stand it, and so you… I do not know what exactly you did, but you have tricked his brother into proposing to you. I hope that you are at last happy.”

Why, Samantha wondered, did everyone expect her to be happy with this outcome? Had she not made her position on the matter clear?

“Let me be very clear,” Samantha said coldly, straightening herself so she was standing tall, “I do not want your life. I do not wish to be you. I do not wish to be anyone that is even half as bitter as you. Why is it, I wonder, that everyone else in attendance is happy for me and the duke, but the two of you cannot bring yourselves to be? Is that anger all that you haveever known? Because, if so, at least you may both find some comfort in the fact that you are perfectly suited for one another.”

“At least we are suited,” Miss Norton spat. “You and the Duke shall only ever be miserable, and the one saving grace in all of this farce is that I shall be around to see it all.”

“Emma,” Lord Nicholas warned a second time.

“I am so grateful that you are this invested in my life,” Samantha replied with a smile, “but I cannot say the same about you. I apologize if that is not what you were expecting, but in truth, I have to admit that I do not find you all too interesting. It is perhaps because of that that everyone here has described you in exactly the same way, and I shall leave you to assume just how that was.”

Miss Norton turned scarlet.

“Now,” Samantha continued, “if you do not mind, I wish to enjoy the rest of my evening without the two of you staring at me all night. It is not proper of either of you.”

Samantha then walked away from the two of them, looking as though she were ten feet tall, but she felt like she might have collapsed at any second.

“That,” Penelope breathed as she returned, “Was spectacular.”

“They shall hate me forever now,” Samantha groaned slightly, “and my father shall be furious, and the Duke —”

“Will be just as glad as I am that someone has at last told them what they look like. Believe me, you have done nothing to be ashamed of. There is only so much that a person can take before they snap, and they have nobody to blame but themselves for nobody liking them all too much.”