Penelope had made her choice.

She grabbed the edge of the high-thread-count silk sheets and hauled them off the bed with a grunt.

"Sorry, Vincent," she murmured, tying a knot so tight her knuckles turned white. "These are probably woven from the hair of virgins and dipped in liquid gold, but they’re about to become a very expensive rope."

She looped the first sheet over the mahogany bedpost, tugging it with all her might. In her past life, she had spent much time being delicate and refined that she’d forgotten she actually had muscles.

Now, sweating in a corset that felt like it was trying to relocate her ribs to her throat, she realized that being a damsel in distress was much more exhausting than it looked in the storybooks.

"If I fall and die," she thought out loud, dragging the makeshift rope toward the window, "I’m going to haunt William first for being a snake, and then I’m going to haunt Vincent for making me climb out of a third-story window in a dress that weighs more than a small child. Why can’t he just trust me this once?"

She tossed the bundle of sheets out the window. It unfurled, dangling several feet above the stone courtyard. It didn’t quite reach the ground, but it was enough.

"Perfect," said Penelope before she hitched up the voluminous emerald skirts of her gown. She tied the excess fabric around her waist with a silk sash, looking less like a Marchioness and more like a very green, very angry cabbage.

She climbed onto the ledge, the wind whipping her hair into a frenzy. Looking down was another terrible mistake. Her stomach did a somersault that would have put a court jester to shame.

Right... don’t look down. Look at the wall. The very expensive, very hard wall.

With a deep breath and a prayer to any god currently listening, Penelope swung her legs over the side. Her silk slippers instantly lost their grip on the stone, and she dangled there for a heart-stopping second, her arms shaking.

God help me!

After steadying herself, Penelope began to shimmer down, her hands burning against the silk. Every time the wind blew, she swung back and forth, her heavy skirt acting like a sail.

"I’m a kite. A regal, emerald kite," she thought hysterically as her foot finally found a ledge. "Vincent is going to kill me, maybe. Or worse, he’ll lock me in a room with no windows. Actually, he might just build me a room of soft pillows. Honestly, a nap in a padded cell sounds fantastic right about now."

Penelope finally reached the end of the sheet, still a good six feet from the flower bed. Below her, the patrol’s footsteps echoed as they rounded the corner.

"Heavens, if you help me land without breaking my neck, I promise to stop complaining about everything," she lied to the heavens, and then she let go.

Penelope hit the ground with the grace of a dropped sack flour.

The six-foot drop felt more like sixty. Penelope landed in a deep patch of decorative ferns, the impact jarring her teeth so hard she was surprised they didn’t rattle out from her skull. Her voluminous emerald skirts didn’t act as a parachute as she had hoped; instead, they billowed and engulfed her head, momentarily trapping her in a claustrophobic cage of silk and petticoats.

"Just great," she muffled into the fabric, scrambling to find air. She fought her way out of the emerald fabric, her hair now a chaotic nest of ash-brown tangled and stray fern fronds. She was fairly certain she had a damp leaf stuck to her cheek.

She froze, her ears straining. The rhythmic crunch-crunch of gravel was getting louder. The guard patrol was seconds away from rounding the corner of the east wing. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Thinking fast, she didn’t run for the courtyard directly, as that was a one way ticket back into her chamber. Instead, she pressed her back against the cold stone wall, tucking herself into the deep shadow of an ornamental archway. She held her breath, her heart hammering against her ribs so loudly she feared the guards would hear it over their own footsteps.

The shadows of two guards stretched long across the grass in front of her.

"Did you hear something?" one asked, pausing just feet from her hiding spot. The fact that they might spot the rope she used was what scared Penelope the most.

"Probably just a stray cat in the briars," the other grumbled.

The guards lingered for another long, agonizing moment. One even adjusted his helmet, the metal clinking, before their footsteps began to fade toward the stables.

Penelope let out a long, shaky exhale. She was out of the room, but she was still inside the walls, and she looked like she’d been dragged through a hedge backward. She looked down at her silk slippers, and it was now stained with mud and grass.

Right. Phase one completed: survive the fall. Phase two: somehow get to the palace without looking like a swamp hag.

"My Lady, you are indeed quite spirited," said a familiar, terrifyingly calm voice that drifted from the darkness beside her.

Penelope froze, her heart nearly leaping out of her chest.

No. No way!

The universe couldn’t be this cruel. She slowly turned her head, praying that it was just a hallucination brought on by the impact of hitting dirt. But there, tucked neatly into the deep shadows of the archway, stood Martha.

The maid didn’t look shocked. She didn’t look angry either. She looked like she was waiting for a transport carriage.

’Is she a ninja, a ghost? Is Lady’s Maid just code for domestic Special forces? How did she get here?’ Penelope wondered, her panic momentarily eclipsed by sheer bewilderment.

"B-but–you–you’re here. Aren’t you supposed to be outside my chambers?" She stammered, her voice a frantic whisper as she stepped away from Martha.

"I had a feeling you would attempt something regardless of my warnings," Martha replied, stepping out of the shadow with the practiced grace of a cat. She reached out and delicately plucked a stray leaf from Penelope’s disheveled hair. "Your technique with the sheets was creative, if structurally unsound."

Penelope bristled, her fear rapidly turning into the desperate defiance of a cornered animal.

"I am not going back," Penelope snapped, trying to regain some semblance of aristocratic dignity despite the fact that she had mud stains on her hips. "Martha, I am serious. If you try to drag me back up there, I will scream. I will tell the guards that you pushed me. I will."

Martha did not react, and Penelope’s mind screamed at her to think. Naturally, she would not be able to outrun Martha in this dress, let alone the guards.

Desperation clawed at her throat as she realized she was running out of time, and logic would certainly not win this battle. But emotions might do the trick.

Her expression crumpled, her eyes welling with sudden, shimmering tears. She didn’t just sit, but collapsed to her knees, the fabric of her skirts pooling around her like a shroud.

"If you’re so loyal to the Marquis," Penelope said, her voice dropping into a raw, urgent tone, "then you’re failing him right now! I am not trying to run away from him. I just need to get to the palace and none of you are willing to help me. If the Marquis ends up in some trouble, then I will never be able to forgive myself for it. And neither will any of you."

Martha finally blinked. For the first time, a flicker of something crossed her expression.

Watching the Marchioness, the same woman she had been told was a manipulative liability, collapse into a heap of emerald silk in the dirt, cracked the maid’s iron composure. The sight of Penelope sobbing on her knees, clearly more concerned for the Marquis’s life than her own dignity, made a genuine flicker of uncertainty cross her face.

"I just got married yesterday," Penelope wailed, her voice cracking with a vulnerability that felt painfully real. "I’m not ready to be a widow!"