She was celebrated as a beauty far and wide, and I absolutely hated her.
It didn’t help that we were the same age, our birthdays a few weeks apart.
I couldn’t stop myself from comparing the hell of my life with the heaven of hers, and the differences made my bones quake at night.
As self-defeating as it was to brood on that, I couldn’t help myself because I saw her every day on her rides.
I was hardly alone in my hatred of her. But I was alone in my obsession with her life.
All the workers scowled when the Patron’s Daughter made her appearance, but they had the good sense to forget about her after she was gone.
Not me. I tracked everything she did.
Because she was so spoiled, the Patron’s Daughter threw temper tantrums well past childhood to satisfy every whim that crossed her mind.
It was through a tantrum that she was able to make her debut a year earlier than her peers.
It was the custom for young ladies to come out in Society when they were eighteen, unless they were exceptionally accomplished, which she wasn’t, or they had older sisters who had already married, which she hadn’t.