The Richest Girl

A porcelain heiress, orphaned beneath chandeliers of Newport and Paris, must wed before the calendar sheds its final leaf or forfeit a fortune that already owns her. The fiancé—an effete portrait of entitlement—vanishes like cigar smoke, leaving her clutching a loophole: a ‘white wedding’ sanctioned by her urbane godfather, a man who once tucked stock-market tips between her nursery rhymes. What begins as a bloodless transaction soon curdles into something molten; the same ink that signs the marriage license begins to sketch desire across the margins. In drawing rooms where every glance is a share price, she discovers that liquidity of the heart is the riskiest investment of all, and that the only collateral she has left to offer is the pulse beneath her sternum.