PROLOGUE
August 12, 1808
The parish kirkyard
Pettercairn, Scotland
The boy was weeping.
Lady Isla Kinsey might be only fifteen years of age, but she recognized the signs of a goodgreit.
He knelt before a grave—palms braced on the ground, spine hunched—the earth beneath his knees still black and fresh. Even thirty feet back and peering between tombstones, Isla could see gusting sobs wrack his shoulders. They were quiet things, those sobs. Dramatic visually but soundless. As if the young man were accustomed to grieving in silence.
The thought ached and sighed through her bones.
She recognized him, of course. Even if the grave marker had not proclaimed his identity, his reddish hair, the expensive superfine of his coat, and the black mourning band tied around his right arm all but shoutedhis name—
Mr. Tavish Balfour.
Isla placed a gloved hand on the wall of the parish church beside her.
She should leave.
No good would come of him seeing her here.
And yet . . .
She had wandered the churchyard often enough to know the words etched into the grave marker before him:
Mary Balfour, Lady Northcairn
Beloved wife of Douglas Balfour,
8th Earl of Northcairn
Born May 22, 1768
Died February 10, 1808
Tavish Balfour wept for his mother, gone these six months.
Something raw and scalding lodged in Isla’s throat. Her eyes darted left, seeking out her own mother’s grave in the opposite corner of the kirkyard. Unlike Lady Northcairn, Mamma’s grave loomed over the other tombstones—a rectangular, granite box raised four feet off the ground and covered in carvings of vines and angels.
Isla had cast off her mourning blacks over two years ago, but the passage of time hadn’t lessened the sting of her mother’s death. It was why she was here today, was it not? Why she had cut a large slice of Cook’s brandy-soaked pound cake and wrapped it in a handkerchief before slipping out the door, unnoticed.
Today was Isla’s fifteenth birthday—the third birthday without Mamma’s cheery laughter and rose-scented gifts. A third birthday spent in the echoing silence of her loss.
But Isla still wished to pass a part of today with her mother, leaning against the cool stone of her tomb, eating cake and listening to the starlings quarrel overhead—
She glanced down at the piece of cake in her hands. It truly was monstrous. Decidedly enough to share.
Mr. Balfour was sitting back on his heels now, scrubbing at his eyes with both fists.
Isla’s father, the haughty Duke of Grayburn, would be furious werehe to learn she had spoken with a Balfour under any circumstance, not to mention alone and unchaperoned.
Normally, Isla would never disobey her father.
But the wordscompliantandtimidcircled like vultures above her head.
