Checkmate, Heiress

"I'm looking for the Marquis, or Lady Griffith. Please let them know—I'm their birth daughter. I was switched as a baby at the hospital sixteen years ago."

The day Ivy Griffith, the real heiress, came to find her family, the rain fell harder than usual.

She stood square in the doorway, drenched. Her thin, coarse dress clung to a frame gone gaunt with hunger, every angle of her showing through the fabric. Rainwater ran in dark ropes from her matted hair, and her face had gone blue-white with cold.

Only her eyes stayed startlingly bright.

Tucker, the gatekeeper, summed her up in his own words.

"This girl's missing a screw somewhere, running to a stranger's house in rain like this.

"And I sure can't bring her in soaked to the bone like this to see the Marquis and the Marchioness. What if she catches a chill and gets everybody else sick too?"

Tucker eyed the girl standing there dripping onto the front steps, clearly torn. Ever since the manor had picked up several new heiresses, someone showed up almost every month claiming to be a long-lost Griffith heiress. Most were frauds. But you could never be sure one of them wasn't the real thing.

By the time the news reached the inner house, I was sitting with my mother, keeping her company.

The moment she heard another girl had come to claim kinship, Lady Griffith shuddered.

"Lord above, when does this end? I don't have any fingers left to prick for her."

She held up both hands miserably, ten fingers wrapped in gauze, her face somewhere between exhausted and despairing.

"I haven't picked up a needle to sew in so long my fingers ache just looking at one."

She thrust her bandaged hands toward me, pouting like a scolded child.

"I'll need to drink ten cups of your tea before I'll feel better."

I laughed despite myself and cradled her hands gently, blowing on them.

"All right, all right. I'll make you a batch this afternoon. With extra sugar."

"You'd think she could've picked a better time to show up than while your father's away—now I'm the one who has to get pricked again."

My mother sighed, but she dutifully unwound the bandage from one finger anyway.

Marigold, her personal maid, brought over a small gold bowl and carefully drew a single drop of blood.

"I swear, I hope this one really is my ninth daughter, so I never have to prick myself again."

"Heaven willing, Momma, this will be your ninth daughter for real."

Everyone at Griffith Manor already knew there were supposed to be nine daughters coming home. With me, that made ten—my mother liked to say I completed the set, her perfect ten.

When the first "real heiress" came home, her blood matched both parents', and the three of them had wept in each other's arms with joy.

When the second one's blood matched my nominal father's too, my mother had actually gone for a sword—only to discover, to everyone's shock, that the girl's blood matched hers as well. None of them understood how, but the three of them ended up in another tearful embrace regardless.

By the time the third "real heiress" was welcomed home, my parents had finally realized something was deeply wrong, and sent for the sage.