CHAPTER 1

Nora Elliot was halfway down the aisle of the white-steepled hall beautifully decorated for her wedding which she'd always thought was a touch too smug for it's own good before the sheer insanity of what she was doing really hit her.

She felt her knees wobble alarmingly beneath her, somewhere underneath all that billowing white fabric that was draped around her and made her look like a wedding cake, and she almost stopped right there. In front of hundreds of witnesses her brothers -- yeah brothers! They basically waited for my dad to pass away. I knew that they hate me but I never knew it would be to the point they force me into marriage. I hate them--had decided it was necessary to invite to this circus show.

"Don't you dare stop now," her second eldest brother hissed at her, his face wearing a genial simle he always used in public never dimming in the slightest as his body tensed beside her."I'll drag you up this aisle if I have to, Nora, but I won't be pleased."

This shows how much brotherly love and support as she could expect from Nicolas Elliot, who collected money and girls the way other brothers collected candies, chocolate; and Nora had never been any good at standing up to him anyways.

That had always been her other brothers and his girlfriend department.

I hate my father for dying, living me in the midst of these familiar strangers but I hate my mom more who left me more like abandoned me here since I was 10.

Anyways, she was doing this for her late father, who had earnestly believed that Nora should give her brothers another chance and had made Nora promise to him on his deathbed last summer that Nora would-- but had left Nora some paper works with money and properties with his lawyer in case that chance does not go well.

Nora reminded herself to dutifully keep moving trying hard not to think of the fact that her brothers got her 2 sizes down her size because the dress might be a preposterous monstrosity of filmy white material, but it was also much -much- too tight. They got her the size of their skinny as multiple girls who were at least three inches taller than Nora and had breast of a preteen boy, all the better to swan around in bikinis as they pleased. And if Nora let her self get furious, by thinking to hard about it, should pop right out of this annoyingly tight dress that didn't fit her at all, right here in the middle of the hall. It would serve her brothers right, she thought grimly, but it wouldn't be worth the price she'd have to pay.

She concentrated on the back of the man who she was getting forcefully married to, his back reeks of power. I seriously don't know what happened that makes this man want to marry me -- a nobody.

Nora had always prided herself on her particality, a vastly under used virtue in the Elliot family, but she had to admit there was a part of her that took in the sight of her waiting groom's broad, finely carved shoulders and that deliciously height he wore so easily and wondered what it would be like if this was real.

Then Nora's mind drifted to her wedding gown, glad that she was wearing the irksome heavy veil that had hod her away from views so that none of the assembled onlookers could see how foolish her imagination was, which would no doubt be written all over her face. The curse of a natural redhead, she thought balefully. Hair that she only wished was a mysterious shade of glamorous black or brown instead of what it really was. Red. And her ridiculously sensitive skin to go along with it. Thinking back to when she was in high school,when her school mates called her freak!- urgh they really took a trough on my self confidence back then- leading her into depression.

She wondered how her groom looks like by judging from his back view, he must be handsome. She wondered if he would appreciate her for her or would call her freak. I seriously dont know why I want his opinion though.

But she stopped thinking about her skin and things that might or might not be splashed across it in all those telling pinks and reds she couldn't control , because they reached the alter at last.

Nicholas played out his part of the stupid ceremony, announcing to all that he gave away this woman with perhaps an insulting amount of brotherly eagerness. Then she was handed over to her groom, who had turned to face her.

She didn't even bother to look at him but from his demure she could guess it was as if he was deeply bored. Or so mentally and emotionally removed from this absurd little exercise that he thought he actually was somewhere else entirely.

And Nora remained veiled as if she was participating in an actual medieval wedding and not a forced one.

"How charming," Nora had said drily. "A fairy tale of a wedding, indeed."

Nicholas has glared at her with that flat ugly look of his that she went to great lengths to avoid under normal circumstances.

"You can save the smart remarks for your new husband, assuming you manage to pull this off," Nicholas had said coldly. As was his way, especially when talking to me, the sister he'd always called a waste of Elliot genes when she'd been a particularly ungainly and unattractive thirteen years old. "I'm sure he'll be more receptiveto them than I am".

Nora ignored him, keeping herself busy with practicing her polite,"Just married to a complete stranger" smile and pretending she was perfectly fine with the fact that this dress didn't fit her at all.