Cinderella's Revenge
an excerpt

Four years after her father’s death, Sarah hardly remembered Lord Renault or the charmed life she had lived before he died. It was especially difficult to recall such distant images at times like this, when she was sent to market in the pouring rain to procure a quantity of meat that she knew she would have struggled to carry home on the best of days.

It was with gratitude, then, that she had accepted the assistance of the newest kitchen-girl, Laura, who had offered to go with her. Ostensibly, of course, it was to learn the ins and outs of the market, which could be a difficult place to navigate, but in truth the girls had struck up something of a friendship, as they shared a room and the scorn of the rest of the household.

“Sarah,” Laura said quietly as they collected their thin coats and large baskets from the giant back room and scampered out the door into the rain, “sometimes you almos’ remind me of a lady like Louisa, instead of a poor kitchen-girl like me. How did you fin’ yo’r way to Pebeworde, anyway?”

Sarah frowned and pulled her coat closer around her thin frame. Her red hair, never cooperative, strayed from under her ratty hat and was almost immediately wet enough to stick to her forehead in uncomfortable clumps, and she took her time in arranging herself as best she could before she answered. “I was born in Pebeworde,” was all she said.