Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Before transmigrating into the novel The Gilded Cage, Xu Lisha had read that line — penned by Jane Austen.

And now, here, as Isabelle Norman, she was witnessing its fulfillment with her own eyes.

"Dear Sir Norman, Lady Norman, and lovely Miss Audrey Norman — I must ask your household to prepare to receive Duke Spencer in the second week of next month. By the gracious will of the Pope and the loving care of Her Majesty the Queen, I dare declare this will be a most felicitous marriage, one that shall add still greater glory to your house."

Outside the manor, the Queen's envoy — a silver-haired gentleman with a hooked nose — held his chin high and, in the lofty accent of the capital, delivered his message in a single breath, weaving in ornate flourishes of praise, before at last bowing to the assembled Norman family.

"Everyone, I look forward to our next meeting."

Behind him, the ceremonial guards in royal uniform removed their hats and saluted in perfect unison.

"Farewell, Sir Jarvis. Give our regards to the Queen." The Norman family returned the courtesy with textbook propriety, seeing the hook-nosed gentleman off into his carriage as it vanished in a cloud of dust.

The dust the carriage kicked up had not yet settled when Father — Edward Norman — rolled his eyes back, let out a great "Aughhh," and fainted dead away. Lady Norman, the butler, and the servants scrambled in a flurry to hold him up.

"Oh, Edward, pull yourself together!" Lady Norman patted Edward's cheek.

"Darling, I cannot pull myself together." Tears streamed down Edward's face as he beckoned to Audrey Norman standing to one side. "Otty, my sweetheart — I'd wager there isn't a purer, kinder child in all the Principality of Ceylon than you. How could the Queen choose you to marry Duke Spencer!"

At these words, grief welled up in everyone's hearts, and Audrey began to cry as well. "Papa..."

Lady Norman's nose stung with tears: "Don't be so cruel, Edward — don't remind me again that I'm about to lose one of my precious daughters."

Audrey threw herself into her mother's arms: "Mama..."

The butler and servants wept too, and the whole company dissolved into tears together — all except... Isabelle Norman.

Rubbing her ears, which ached from the sound of all the weeping, Isabelle gently waved her feather fan, a flicker of amusement passing through her ice-blue eyes.

Sigh. What a family made of water.

Before transmigrating, Xu Lisha had been a genius in the ordinary sense — erudite, widely learned, famous from a young age, devoted to carving out a career in every field she touched. In her philosophy of life, so long as one had wit, there was no obstacle that couldn't be overcome.

But since transmigrating into the book and becoming Isabelle, the Norman family's eldest daughter, she had — over these twenty-odd years of growing up — witnessed an entirely different life philosophy: cry a little over little things, cry a lot over big things, and for the truly earth-shattering troubles, cry it all out, wash up, and go to bed.

Just like now. The Queen's decreed marriage — sending Audrey off to wed into Duke Spencer's household — fell squarely into the category of earth-shattering trouble.

The Norman family were down-and-out nobility of the Principality of Ceylon. Edward Norman had inherited his ancestors' baronial title, but with his considerable talents had managed to squander the family fortune entirely. Now only the crumbling shell of respectability remained — just barely enough to scrounge an invitation to a high-society ball.

The Spencer family, by contrast, were genuine great nobles. Not only had their ancestors' honor and wealth carried down to the present day, but the current head of the house, Heinrich Spencer, still held firm grip on real power — he was one of the seven Prince-Electors of the Principality of Ceylon.

By all rights, marrying into Duke Spencer's household was a stroke of fortune an ordinary family wouldn't dare dream of. But here was the catch — Heinrich himself was the subject of one truly dreadful rumor: he was a wife-killer.

To date, this young, handsome, powerful Duke had already had four fiancées drop dead — all young ladies of noble birth.

Attaching oneself to the powerful was all well and good, but if it meant a daughter's life would be taken, most respectable gentlemen still balked. Of course, there were a few families in dire enough straits who might have wanted to take the gamble — but they never got the chance.

The Queen, fretting over the young Duke's marriage prospects, had been selecting a suitable noble young lady from within the Principality. This "honor" had now descended upon the Norman family — and where some rejoiced, others despaired. For the Norman parents, who loved their daughters more than life itself, it was decidedly the latter.

"Oh! Poor Otty — listen to me, you absolutely must not marry Duke Spencer, or you'll be swept up in his misfortune!"

In the distance, a carriage suddenly came racing up, and a plump woman in a sapphire-blue crinoline gown and a wide-brimmed lace hat began wailing and shouting before she'd even climbed down.

This was Lady Norman's youngest sister, Anna Cavan.

"Aunt Anna." Audrey wiped her tears and curtsied to Anna.

Anna kissed Audrey's cheek: "Poor child."

Lady Norman, helping Edward inside to rest, sighed: "Anna, dear sister, forgive me for not receiving you properly. The truth is, misfortune has already fallen upon our heads. A marriage decreed jointly by the Queen and the Pope — we cannot resist it."

"No, no, no, Jane, dear sister — if you knew how terrifying the Spencer family is, you could never bear to push Otty into that pit of fire! Even if God Himself decreed the match!"

Aunt Anna, panting and flushed from the heat, followed Lady Norman into the drawing room and plopped down onto the sofa, whose springs groaned under the strain with a teeth-grating creak.

A maid stepped forward to help unfasten her hat, then brought black tea and refreshments: "Lady Anna, please enjoy."

"Mm, good girl — still my favorite flavor." Anna couldn't wait to slather jam onto a scone and tucked in ravenously, choking herself in the process, hastily washing it down with a gulp of tea. Only once she'd finally filled her belly did she resume holding forth. "In Hank County I know a gypsy woman — she has the most formidable powers of divination, and she once visited the Duke's estate, Charleves Manor. She says the Duke's fiancées all sickened and died one after another because of a curse!"

Lady Norman — that is, Jane Cavan — wore a face of disbelief. "A curse?"

"Yes — a curse! This generation's Duke Spencer once served in the naval forces. They say that back when he fought against the Principality of Hesland, his methods were utterly brutal — everyone knew him for his terrible temper!" Anna crossed herself over her chest and said, all mysterious: "The gypsy woman told me the Duke had committed so much slaughter that he was once possessed by the Devil. After leaving service he fell gravely ill and nearly died. The local priest went to visit him — and was throttled to death by the Duke in the throes of an episode!"

"What?! Good God!" Jane and Edward exchanged a glance, unable to hide the shock on their faces.

Audrey shrank back in fear and clasped Isabelle's hand. The latter's face, however, remained perfectly composed.

"So — what Auntie is trying to say is that his fiancées' deaths were caused by the Devil's curse? And that Audrey, once she marries in, will surely follow those poor girls to the same fate?" Isabelle waved her fan, a faint smile on her lips.

"That's exactly it, clever girl!" Anna nodded, then, looking at Isabelle, a hint of displeasure crossed her face. "But that expression of yours... this is hardly how a sister who pities her younger sister's fate ought to behave, dear Bella."

"Thank you for the reminder, Auntie, but..." Isabelle shrugged. "Rather than believe a gypsy woman's nonsense, I'd sooner believe that Papa has a discerning eye — that the railway he invested in will turn red-hot overnight and earn us a full twenty thousand Ceylon coins. What do you say, Auntie?"

Anna's aged face flushed red, and she hurried to hide behind her teacup.

Hearing this, Edward once again buried his face and sobbed pitifully: "Boo-hoo-hoo..."

Mother Jane did not approve of her daughter's biting humor, and shot her a chiding look. "Bella, your father is upset enough already."

Only Audrey burst out laughing, and secretly gave her sister's hand a little squeeze. Isabelle returned the smile and wiped her sister's tears dry.

Still, joking aside, everyone knew that what Isabelle said was rarely far off the mark.

The Norman family was now penniless — precisely because Edward, unable to withstand Anna's urging, had invested in the railway trade of the Elme Federation.

At the time, Anna had claimed that her husband — a merchant who had talked his way into marrying a country squire's youngest daughter — had a reliable line on investment, and so she'd egged her sister and brother-in-law's household into getting rich together. Back then, the Norman family had only that last little bit set aside as their daughters' dowry. The ever-timid Baron had, with great difficulty, worked up the courage to take a gamble — hoping to win back the money lost to years of poor management. The result: not only did he lose every penny, he ended up saddled with an enormous debt. And Anna's unreliable husband, upon learning the investment was a total loss, absconded with the family assets and vanished — no trace of him to this day.

As the instigator of it all, Anna was of course ashamed to hear the old affair dragged up again. Yet in this whole family of glutinous-rice dumplings, no one was willing to blame her — no one except the hard-hearted Isabelle.

In truth, Isabelle rarely meddled in any of the Norman family's affairs, mostly letting things run their course. For one thing, to her, this was only a book. For another, she hadn't read it carefully before transmigrating — she didn't even know who the protagonist was; she only remembered the plot summary.

Having grown weary of the elite life of her previous existence, lying flat and taking in the everyday of the nineteenth-century West was rather nice.

Though Isabelle wasn't entirely sure it was the nineteenth century.

The novel had a fictional, alternate-history setting; the Principality of Ceylon didn't exist in the real world. The local customs and manners here resembled England, but the historical backdrop resembled Germany and France. For instance, the upper echelons of the empire still had the Prince-Elector system, and wars between nations were frequent. As the daughter of down-and-out nobility, the occasions Isabelle could access were limited, so she could only judge from the social landscape that this was roughly equivalent to the nineteenth century.

If she could avoid getting involved in the plot, Isabelle would happily live out her days in this leisurely way. The Norman family wasn't wealthy, but the family was decent — Papa, Mama, and little sister, three sweet simpletons who between them couldn't scrape together a single ounce of guile. Every so often a foolish aunt like Anna added a bit of chaos to life.

But the arrival of the ducal marriage announcement formally reminded Isabelle: the plot had begun.

She recalled that the original book's summary went like this: two sisters, driven to opposite ends of the earth by their marriages, each fell into a miserable fate. The simple-hearted younger sister receives the Queen's decreed marriage and weds into Duke Spencer's household. Outside, she is tormented by all manner of villains; inside, she is despised and cast aside by the Duke. In the end, she becomes a sacrifice in the ducal household's power struggles, freezing to death one snowy night.

The clever elder sister, on account of the family's debts, marries the upstart and becomes a decorative vase to dress up his image. The ambitious capitalist loathes her haughtiness, and once he's squeezed out her usefulness, discards her like a worn-out shoe. The proud, aloof elder sister sinks into despondent gloom, unable to fend off the ravages of illness, and dies of sickness on that very same night.

On the brink of death, the two sisters, without prior agreement, both begin to sing the lullaby from the story's opening — the song their mother had sung by their ears since childhood. Far away in their hometown, the parents had never basked in any glory from their sons-in-law; if anything, targeted by the villains, their lives grew ever more wretched. Upon receiving news of both daughters' deaths, the couple — who loved their daughters more than life itself — fell into utter despair and took their own lives at home.

The ending was the usual bit of moral elevation, saying the book reflected how a backward marriage system oppressed women, produced the tragedies of the age, and so on.

She hadn't read it carefully at the time, and after transmigrating, the sisters undone by marriage all around her were too numerous to count — so Isabelle had assumed she was just an unremarkable extra, some passerby "Character A."

Now, looking back, it turned out she'd transmigrated into one of the protagonists — and was indeed about to come face to face with tragedy.

Duke Spencer's marriage announcement had already arrived. Could the upstart be far behind?