Ash & Bramble by Sarah Prineas Page A

when he married wealthy Stepmama I refused to let her redecorate my room—I don’t like blue—though she offered more than once to pay for it. I still don’t regret saying no, because Stepmama would only add it to her list of the many things that her ungrateful stepdaughter owes her.
    A bed takes up some of the space, with a chipped wardrobe beside it and, under the window, a small writing desk covered with books and papers and a pot of ink. I must be a scholar, though I don’t recognize the handwriting on the pages. Opening the top drawer of the desk, I find an embroidery hoop and an impossible knot of silk threads. Only one edge of the cloth is filled with an awkward jumble of stitches. I have calluses on each of my fingertips, but clearly I am noseamstress. I wonder how I got them.
    I try to think back to what happened yesterday. A kind of blank nothingness waits for me there, and I flinch from it. For a moment I feel as if I am falling. A sudden pain lances into my forehead, and I lean against my bedroom wall and close my eyes. The wall is solid behind me. With my fingers I can feel the nubbled silk of my dress. My too-small shoes pinch my toes. An ordinary day, I tell myself. Yesterday was ordinary. I don’t need to think about it.
    At a scraping sound, I open my eyes. The maid Anna is dragging the packed trunk out of the room.
    I take a deep, steadying breath. “Anna.”
    She straightens. “Yes, Lady Penelope?”
    â€œDo you remember my father?” I ask. “The duke?”
    She frowns, and for a moment she looks flustered. “I—” Then she looks primly down. “I remember just what I ought to,” she says, her voice wooden.
    A strange answer.
    â€œWill that be all?” she asks.
    â€œYes,” I say, and I can’t help adding a sharp retort. “If you’re done taking all my dresses away, that is.”
    With a flush, she bobs a hasty curtsy and leaves the room.
    Sighing, I rub my forehead. The ache lingers, as if someone is pushing against it with freezing-cold fingers. I catch sight of the ash-smudged bandage on my wrist. I don’t remember hurting myself. I turn my hand over and unwrap the bandage. It reveals a mostly healed gash on the inside ofmy wrist. It doesn’t hurt, so I find an old stocking in my wardrobe and wrap it up again. As I try to remember how I got the gash, my head aches even more. I know what will comfort me, and I reach into the pocket of my dress for my thimble.
    But the pocket is empty. Frowning, I check my other pocket, and then the purse in the wardrobe where I keep a few coins. The thimble isn’t there, either. I know it isn’t in my desk with the disastrous jumble of embroidery, but I check it just in case.
    I couldn’t have lost it, could I?
    Now I really am getting watery. The thimble is real, solid—I know it. It’s the only thing that I am really certain of. Everything else is slipping away from me. I can’t remember anything about my father, not even what he looked like, and the only thing I remember about my mother is that the thimble was a special present from her. It is silver, engraved along the bottom with the roses among thorns that are the symbol of my mother’s family, and it has been passed down, mother to daughter, for many generations. Just having it in my pocket gives me strength. And now to lose it!
    If I can find the thimble, I will have something to hold on to. Something that will make this strange place feel solid and real to me; something that will make me feel real to myself.
    The thimble is surely somewhere in the house. It must be. Where else could it be?

CHAPTER
8
    H IS LIPS ARE STILL BURNING FROM THEIR KISS, AND YET Shoe is furiously angry with Pin.
    â€œYou have a chance to get away, you stubborn idiot,” she shouts, and points up the stream toward the mountain. “Go, curse you!”
    Glaring at her, he scrambles to his feet. She is the one