Prologue
Emma Lee Maxwell, beautiful, clever, and amiable, with an overly indulgent father and a prodigiously large circle of friends, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence and had lived nearly twenty-three years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
On the day Emma Lee was born, the angels gathered in heaven to witness the hallowed event. All births are hallowed events, but Emma Lee’s was perhaps more hallowed than most. For, on the day Emma Lee took her first breath, her mother took her last.
And so, the celestial gathering decided to bestow upon the tiny orphan a bounty of divine gifts, including beauty, amiability, joy, and intelligence. They created a most magnificent and congenial child.
The little orphan, our most unexpected heroine, grew to be a beautiful, clever young woman with a doting father, indulgent sisters, and a life free of any real expectation. As a result, Emma Lee’s slender shoulders formed unblemished by the burden of expectation.
Indeed, Emma Lee knew the unadulterated joy of leading the fun, fanciful, feckless life of the truly blessed. Idle days filled with sunshine and shopping. And at night, when she rested her golden head on her satin pillow, neither care nor want threatened her peaceful slumber.
Alas, dear reader, do not operate under the misapprehension that our heroine is a wholly divine manifestation tumbled to earth, for Emma Lee Maxwell has, like all mortal creatures, a unique combination of vexatious flaws.
Emma Lee, precious, golden-haired Emma Lee, possesses the singularly challenging traits of the youngest child: manipulativeness, selfishness, attention-seeking, immaturity, and an overweening desire to please others, particularly those fortunate enough to orbit around her celestial body. Emma Lee, with her angelic countenance and form, suffers the worst of afflictions: vanity.
Vanity working on a willfully pampered girl, produces every sort of mischief, to (mis)quote a sensible nineteenth-century English novelist. And this is where our story well and truly begins, dear reader, when vanity run amok propelled our heroine on a crash course with her destiny . . .