The Prairie Spy Malinda rode her horse Melrose to Court Pendu Plat, there to meet with Reverend Morgan and the man who had ruined her life, Lord Lamborne. Not even the lord’s men, the Black Amish, could keep her from stealing the Golden Pearmain with which she would ransom the freedom of her family from the lord’s foul clutches.
“And then I will be free to marry Crown Prince Rudolph,” she said to herself. She’d developed a bad habit of speaking to herself. It was the stress.
She just hoped the prince hadn’t done anything rash in her absence, like marrying that American Beauty of the Bayou, Orleans Rennette. Her father, the ruthless VonZuccalimaglios Rennette, would stop at nothing to see his daughter at the prince”s side.
But Malinda still had a few friends behind the scenes at court – the scullery maid Pixie, the stable boy Oliver, and gentle Merton Russet, the very blacksmith who had shod Melrose. By the time Holiday arrived, she and her family would be free – or dead.
And in the end? They all lived apple-ly ever after.