Chapter One
Cape Colony, January, 1817
Trepidation filled hisentire being as the coastline and port grew closer in view. Sterling Wynd, Earl of Wyndham, had not suffered such discomfort when he boarded the ship in Southampton, nor when he traveled the length of France and Italy, sailed to Greece, and then back to Spain, where he trekked across land again and through Portugal. His unease only began when he boarded this last ship—the one bound for Cape Town. Now, seeing the lush, green landscape, beaches without end, bright flora and fauna, and Table Mountain in the distance, he should have been awed and amazed. Instead, his stomach knotted. He knew who waited, but was uncertain of the reception he would receive, or how he would greet her.
Once he disembarked the ship, Sterling hired a man with a wagon to take him to Wyndview Farm, the place of his birth.
As they rumbled along the dirt road, he looked out over the landscape, once familiar and hardly changed, and considered what he would say when he saw her again. Sterling had rehearsed speeches in his head several times over, but none of the words were ever right. He had but one question. Whatever answer she gave would not suffice.
As the wagon pulled up to the stately whitewashed mansion, rising two stories with long ornate gables and a high thatched roof, memories flooded him from a time when he had been happy here.
Sterling closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he prepared for the meeting before he marched forward and knocked. He was as prepared as he was ever going to be.
A moment later, it was opened by the same butler who had served the family for decades. “Hello, George.”
The man’s eyes widened as some of the color fled his cheeks. “Lord Wyndham?”
“Yes,” Sterling answered simply.
George stepped back and opened the door wider so that he could enter.
“We… well…we were not expecting you.”
That had been Sterling’s intention, but he had not anticipated the distress or perhaps panic in the old butler. George practically stammered.Odd!
Sterling stepped into the white, plastered entry, marble floors beneath his boots and glanced around. It was just as he remembered. “Where is she?”
“At the back of the house in the lavender sitting room.”
Sterling remembered it as the place she missed the most after they moved to England. She had longed for the sunlight that often filled the room, and how it caught the ocean breeze when the windows were opened and the sweet scents from the gardens set out and away from the house.
With determination, Sterling strode down the corridor, turned left and stopped just inside the door to the sitting room.
She was as he had remembered. Hair, still golden, pulled away, braided and with curls appropriate for her age, high cheekbones, narrow nose, blue eyes intelligent and questioning even as they widened in surprise at the sight of him. She had always been beautiful and a day did not go by that Sterling had not glanced at her portrait. It was nearly impossible not to since it hung over the large fireplace in the library at Wyndview Hall in Southampton.
Sterling’s heart constricted with the pain of betrayal, which he pushed aside. She was the one who had left him.
“Sterling?”
“Hello, Mother.”
*
“Lord Sterling Wynd,the Earl of Wyndham, has arrived,” George quietly informed her.
Caroline Sutcliffe paused in her writing. She could not have heard correctly.
She prayed that she had not.
She slowly looked up from the ledger where she had been calculating the costs and income for Wyndview Farm to finalize the quarterly report to be sent to Lord Wyndham at the end of the week. “What did you say?”
“Lord Sterling Wynd, the Earl of Wyndham,” he repeated.
Her heart started to pound against her chest as a tightness developed in her throat. A Wynd had not visited the property in years. Not since her family had arrived with the former Earl of Wyndham in 1806. Well, other than Lady Wyndham, who had remained behind, making Wyndview Farm her home instead of returning to England with her husband.
“Why?” Her question came out in a whispered breath.
“I do not yet know,” George answered, equally quiet.
