A Noble Girl's Fairy Tale

Edwardian era, Britain, 1910

Miss Rosalind Blenno was seventeen, with red hair and green eyes. Born into a distinguished family, she was beautiful and captivating.

She was a lovely rose in full bloom.

She was innocent and pure, full of feeling, and should have been able to live carefree.

But after her eminent father died, he left behind a great deal of debt.

To preserve their comfortable, respectable lifestyle, her mother had no choice but to package her off and sell her to a newly wealthy American across the Atlantic.

The American Camp family had made its fortune in oil and railways over the past few decades. They were nouveau riche, unable to break into the old-money upper class, and desperately needed a marriage alliance with an old British family.

Miss Blenno, penniless but with a noble surname and an impeccable reputation, now fallen on hard times, was the perfect choice.

Alfred Gwynne Camp, the family's eldest son and heir apparent, was forced to cross the Atlantic and marry a woman of noble birth.

He was a businessman through and through, and saw this as nothing more than a transaction.

Black-haired and blue-eyed, he had received a comprehensive elite education since childhood. He was elegant in manner and exceptionally handsome.

His unhurried manner made him seem especially cold and heartless.

He regarded his future wife, a girl named Rosalind, as a trinket he had paid dearly for.

He treated her with utter disdain and mockery.

*

But later, he discovered that his fiancee was a little different.

She loved him with a sincerity so passionate and ardent that it could melt anything.

She called him Fred, though his nickname was Alfie.

He thought it was a little girl's game, but in the end he willingly lost himself in her deep green eyes.

They danced together on the lawn and kissed playfully in the garden at night.

He even climbed onto her windowsill late at night like some lovesick boy.

All just to kiss her again and again in her arms.

Alfred realized that he had fallen in love with the wife chosen for him.

He had a dazzling diamond set custom-made, engraved with all his love, just to give it to his muse in the moonlight.

The embodiment of all things beautiful.

But during one of their usual secret meetings, his fiancee proposed eloping, her expression sorrowful.

She said she was going to be married to a cold, heartless fiance, a mercenary businessman who reeked of money.

She said, "My dearest Frederick, let's elope. We'll escape to Scotland, where no one will find us."

Alfred's expression turned cold. He didn't know what was wrong with his fiancee, but she had always mistaken him for someone else.

The Fred she spoke of with such affection had never been him.

He was merely that ridiculous fiance.

He was consumed with jealousy.

Note: The female lead injured her head in a fall. Because of her immense suffering, she believes she is a character in a novel and mistakes the male lead for her lover.

The male lead falls hopelessly in love. He loves her so much.

Theme: Marriage should be built on love