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PART I

CHAPTER 1

There had always been something about the steward’s daughter.

Despite his better judgment and his determination to keep the daughter of his father’s employer at a respectable distance, it was an impossible task for Harry Ashcombe to accomplish.

Perhaps it was her unseemly persistence.

Perhaps it was her insistence that he needed a friend.

Perhaps she presented to him everything his life was missing.

Whatever it was, he’d been hopeless to fight it right from the very beginning.

They had first met after the chit had quite literally barreled into the eight-year-old heir to the Ravenshire Earldom when he was on his way to the kitchens. He’d been hopeful that he might have a chance to pilfer a sweet from Cook’s secret jar in the back of the larder while everyone was occupied with supper’s preparations, but those plans had been quickly dashed as he tumbled to the floor. At one full year older and nearly a head taller than he, the collision with the girl had knocked Harry onto his bony little arse before he knew what had happened.

Unscrewing his eyes, he’d looked up to find a girl with wild chestnut curls sticking free from her twin plaits, round cheeks, and eyes so green her heritage appeared to lean more toward nature sprite than human. He’d never seen her around the manor before—surely, he would have remembered.

“Sorry!” The girl giggled and helped him to stand, her remarkable eyes darting about distractedly. “I did not see you ‘round the corner.” She practically danced on her toes with anxious energy. Noticing this, Harry stopped brushing out his clothing—a miniature version of his father’s midnight blue coat and breeches—and his expression grew serious.

“Is someone after you? Do you require assistance?”

The girl looked back at him and wrinkled her nose. “Assistance?”

“Yes!” Every speck of his boyish bravado puffed up his little chest as he’d prepared to defend this girl against any foe.

Sensing his ferocity, the corners of the girl’s wide mouth lifted in a grin. Her smile revealed one missing tooth in the very front of her lower jaw. “The Stinson boys are on the hunt, and I’m determined to outlast them this time. They are rotten cheaters when it comes to seeking and hiding, and I’ll not lose to them again.” Her eyes darted to his hand a moment before she grabbed it and immediately began to tug him back the way he’d come. “You can play, too! Hide with me!”

Any protest died in Harry’s throat; any thoughts of Cook’s sweets melted away like sugar granules on his tongue. From that moment on, he was swept along in the formidable wake of Miss Wilhelmina Fletcher.

The two of them may not have fared well against the Stinson brothers (who were, in fact, cheaters who both peeked between their fingers and began seeking out their quarry well before they should have completed counting), but Harry and Mina still managed to form an instantaneous bond. Following basic introductions—during which Mina made it clear that she would refuse to answer should he call her “Wilhelmina” because, as she put it, only her father addressed her by her full name—they learned they shared love of the books in his father’s library, both were incapable of drawing anything recognizable when handed a stick of charcoal and piece of parchment, and that they had both lost their mothers far too soon.

“Mine died in childbirth with my brother,” Mina had explained that first afternoon as they lay in the western fields watching the sun inch closer to the horizon. Harry had been struck by the softness with which she’d presented the death of her mother. While not emotionless, it held no evidence of the searing pain Harry still felt each time he thought of his own departed mother.

Turning his head toward her and examining the girlish curves of her profile as she watched the clouds, Harry had asked, “How long ago was that?” Perhaps it had been years ago rather than the past six months, when Harry had been left with a raw, gaping hole in his life without his mother’s smile and her laughter to fill it—that might explain the acceptance he sensed in her.

“In May,” Mina had replied with a sigh and jackknifed into a seated position to hug her knees to her chest.

Harry frowned and sat up as well; it was only June.

“That is why I am here. I used to spend my days with Mama, and then my Aunt Mary, but she had to return to her own family. Now, Papa has permission to bring me here with him.” Her unabashed grin was cheeky in the most delightful of ways. “He has forbidden me from bothering Lord Ravenshire or disturbing the household. I am not disturbing you, am I, Harry?”

He was helpless to do anything other than shake his head.

“Good,” she replied with a resolute nod. “Then I will be allowed to stay. And I quite like it here.”

And Harry was glad for all of it. It warmed him that she liked his home. It thrilled him that she seemed to enjoy his company. For the first time in what felt like forever, Harry did not feel like a nuisance or an obligation; he felt appreciated and chosen.

“I am peckish; are you?” Mina chirped suddenly.

Before Harry could stammer a reply, she leapt to her feet and yanked him along.

Harry wasn’t certain what made him follow the girl back to the kitchens, nor what gave him the temerity to create a distraction while she swiped freshly baked sweet rolls from behind Cook's back. Harry felt bad about the spilled bowl of recently pitted prunes and made a silent promise to himself that he would come down later and ask if he could help her prepare another bowl as penance. These thoughts were quickly dispelled when the girl took his hand yet again and bustled him out the door and into the shelter of the back garden’s high wall. There, tucked between an ancient, twisted oak tree and the moss-coated stone wall with its crumbling mortar, the girl plopped down to her rear and patted the gnarled tree root beside her.

“Sit,” she commanded.

Harry hesitated for a moment. He’d been born and raised to become an earl; he currently possessed the courtesy title of Viscount Ashcombe; despite his young age, there were very few people in the world who ordered him about. This girl, apparently, had decided to count herself amongst their ranks. It should have rankled him. He should have put her in her place—he strongly suspected his father would be annoyed if he learned Harry had allowed such familiarity to slide by—but there was something refreshing about being treated in such a way. It felt the way he’d always imagined normalcy would.