Love Is a Choice (Book 1)

The Royal Spring Season Ballroom smelled of wax polish, warm bread, and flowers that had been cut too early to wilt for anyone’s comfort. Charlotte von Falkenhayn kept her back straight anyway, because straight backs were what people remembered when they were deciding whether you were worth speaking to. Her dress was the color of watered milk, sewn well but plain, and the pearls at her throat felt like they were loaned from someone else’s life.

Her mother had called it an invitation, and her father had called it a miracle that came too late to be polite. Charlotte knew better than to believe in miracles. A poor noble house did not get invited to the Crown’s season halls for kindness; it got invited when someone wanted to look at it and laugh quietly, then decide which family would beg first.

She passed servants with silver trays and women with sharp smiles. Every few steps, someone’s eyes caught on her hands—small ink stains on her fingers, the callus at her thumb from counting ledgers—like proof that she had not come to play a part. In the court’s whispers, she was “the girl with debts,” a joke waiting for the right moment to become public.