CHAPTER 1

The disappointment was too much for her to bear with calm decorum. Seizing the first cloak that came to hand, Miss Daphne Summerhayes threw it about her shoulders and stormed from the elegant manor house into the cold January morning. Too overset to wait for the carriage to be brought around, Miss Summerhayes sped through the park and briskly climbed over the stile into Seven-Acre Field. In the gleaned field, under heavy winter skies and with only noisy sparrows to witness, she let loose the temper that matched her bright auburn hair.

"'Tis unfair!" she cried, stamping across the frost-crisped barley stubble. "'Tis completely and excessively unfair! And all for a come-out!

No voice answered; even the sparrows stilled as Daphne plunged into Howey Wood. She strode along the narrow, twisting path, her half-boots crunching through an occasional thin patch of snow, her gloom deepened by the moan of the wind in the tree tops. For the first time in her life she was blind to the beauty of ruby-red hawthorn berries and bare beech trees gray as smoke among the conifers.

'Twas prodigious unfair, but, as her papa said, what could one do in the face of family duty?

"I am of a dutiful and accommodating nature," Daphne stated aloud, choking back tears of frustration and disappointment. Had she not happily and capably supervised Weldern Manor for her papa and brother since her mama's death nine years previous? Was she not always sensible and helpful?

"But must I always oblige?"

A rook cawed derisively from a tree branch just above her head. "'Tis not that I begrudge Sophie her come-out," Daphne assured the sooty-feathered bird, "for I most assuredly do not."

Far from it. 'Twas a most thrilling time in a young girl's life, and Daphne was not so long in the tooth as to forget the fun and excitement, the flirtations–

Cold as the winter wind came recollection of her own come-out at seventeen and Sir George Sowerby, to whom she had been introduced at a masked ball at Vauxhall Gardens. Devilishly handsome, smooth of speech, adept at poems comparing Daphne's eyes to rare emeralds and her skin to rose petals, by the end of her Season he had quite turned her inexperienced head and almost won her young heart. All to render another lady jealous enough to accept his suit!

She was sure that Sir George's betrayal had not soured her disposition nor turned her nature at all cynical. If her innocent trust was bruised, the damage was of short duration. Although, she admitted, maturity had brought a more skeptical angle to her eye. She would never again be so easily bammed by a gentleman's winsome words.

Mayhap that was why, with her twenty-fourth birthday fast approaching, she was yet unmarried. Her friends knew her single state was by choice. Those less charitable claimed it was because she was too hard to please or too witheringly direct for any gentleman's taste. Then, too, her papa, happy with her competent management and fond of his comfort, was only too glad to have her remain unwed.

The rook cocked an impudent eye and flew off, and Daphne continued her march and glum thoughts. She was delighted to visit London, for the pain of Sir George's defection had long since passed, and she quite loved the city. 'Twas a pleasant change from her quiet though busy life in the shadows of the Chiltern Hills.

"But not this year!"

Beyond Howey Wood, the full force of the wind tugged at her cloak as though to tear it from her shoulders. Her hood blew back, letting the cold wind flow down her neck.

"Blast!" she muttered, pulling the hood up and fumbling for its ties with hands chilled to the bone. One tie was missing, and Daphne realized that in her haste not only had she forgotten her fur-lined gloves but she had blindly thrown on the old red woolen cloak she used for such tasks as overseeing the gardening or gathering apples.

"Oh, blast twice over!"

No matter, her indignation kept her warm, and she knew that Julia Todhunter, her dearest friend, would not be offput by her attire. Julia would be as overset at this catastrophe as Daphne.

Daphne hurried on, almost losing a boot in a ditch's muddy bottom. The mired hems of cloak and gown flapped wetly about her ankles when at last she reached the hedge bordering the road. Opposite the hedge was the entrance to Todhunter Park.

The hedge appeared a solid, interwoven mass, towering seven feet in height, but Daphne and Julia had, over years of visiting back and forth, created their own secret passage. Impatiently, Daphne pulled aside some branches, bent low through a tunnel-like aperture, and burst out on the road.

Wrapped in misery as much as in her cloak, Daphne heard, too late, the crunch of carriage wheels and the drumming of hooves. A woman screamed, and a man's deep voice shouted a single, sharp curse. Startled, Daphne looked up, but the horses were upon her, neighing frantically. The off-sider, a big bay, reared high.

Daphne cried out, arching back and throwing up her arms in frail defense from the bay's flailing hooves. The animal's eye, white-ringed, rolled wildly. Suddenly, the horse's head was wrenched aside. Foam flew from the bit as the great beast swung away. Its shoulder struck Daphne, knocking the breath from her body and sending her spinning hard to the ground. A wheel scraped past, barely missing her leg but tearing a great rent in her cloak.

Copyright © 2002 by Patricia Harrison