Prologue

April 1772
Derbyshire, England

Who was he?

Evan.

Just Evan.

Sophia had been too foolish, too enchanted to ask more. But he had been exactly as she would have expected an Evan to be. Humorous. Irreverently so. Thick midnight hair, worn naturally. An unreserved smile that crooked with his jests. Impeccable suits, never wrinkled, tailored for a gentleman. Long fingers that punctuated his whispers of love with a graze of her cheek. Her lips.

A rogue, a rake, a libertine with a hint of inattention that made it all the more rewarding when he had pledged his love to only her.

Evan. Without a family name.

All Sophia had ever dreamed of.

At the window overlooking the vicarage grounds, Sophia tugged at her bottom lip. As sure as Lantern Pike vaulted high and untamed in the moonlight, Evan was gone forever.

Evan wanted to be gone forever.

A lusty cry brought the letdown of pins and needles to her breasts. With a gentle hand, Sophia soothed Olivia’s downy blond hair. Her daughter was having none of it, pealing for a meal with a well-aimed fist when Sophia kissed her cheek.

“You are a hungry girl.”

As if she hadn’t eaten an hour before, Olivia bloomed redder than a rose.

Sophia took her to the bed and settled Olivia at her breast. She reveled in the pull of her daughter’s hungry mouth, the spent bliss of motherhood, the fractured sleep, the tethering of oneself to another soul, the obsession with every sniffle and blemish.

Evan was gone forever, but Olivia was hers. Forever.

“You are my little glutton, aren’t you?” Sophia walked her fingers up Olivia’s linen gown and ended with a brush of her nose. She giggled as her daughter’s brown eyes fluttered shut and opened again in satiated reverie.

Olivia’s cherry mouth slack at her breast, Sophia changed her napkin and threaded her arms into a fresh gown. She delighted in the plump creases at her elbows, at her thighs. She kissed the birthmark on her back, just below her right shoulder. An angel’s brand, shaped like a kiss in the shade of a strawberry.

She tugged a cap over Olivia’s golden down lest her aunt accuse her of neglect and snuggled into the pillows with her daughter lying over her, her sweet breath warming her chest.

Whatever Sophia had wrought with her recklessness, she would never regret it. Here was a gift to make up for a thousand heartaches.

Life was precarious. It had shown itself to be not so kind. Her father had died when she was seventeen, leaving four daughters and no son to inherit. Her mother had always been fragile, driven by afflictions no physician could heal. And Evan had left her in the garden.

But life, which she had once cursed, had finally redeemed itself with Olivia.

All the things Sophia would be for her daughter rose up in a chorus of promises too voluminous to be identified singly. She captured them in her journal when they came to her.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I will always, always love you.”

Sophia closed her eyes, lulled into sleep with her hope and the scent of it. Linen and milk and rose water. A sleep that was deliriously heavy. It was glorious just for being, when before she had taken it for granted.

She had no dreams that she could account for. She simply slept and awoke with a start, lying in the same position on the pillows.

Her arms were empty.

Aunt Margaret had taken Olivia, of course. Insistent on Olivia sleeping in her cradle, appalled when Sophia unwrapped the swaddling and allowed her daughter the freedom of exercising her limbs.

The cradle was empty. Her breasts ached with milk. The sun was halfway to its zenith.

There was no reason for the panic lighting her limbs, speeding her down the stairs without a care that she was in her night shift. Olivia would be starving.

She halted in the entrance hall. No wails pierced the rooms.

“Where is my daughter?” she asked Alice, a maidservant.

Alice fumbled at her reply. She pointed to the sitting room.

Sophia rushed to the room, glaring at the sun coming in from the garden and halting at her mother sitting amidst it.

Her aunt and uncle sat beside each other on a settee. They never shared the same seat.

“Where is Olivia?”

Handkerchief dabbing at her eyes, her mother embraced her. “Sophia. I have missed you, my golden girl.”

Sophia stiffened at her mother’s touch, her lemon perfume.

Why was her mother here? She had sent Sophia off after two months of missing her course, written her once to detail how Sophia’s disgrace had harmed her sisters’ chances of securing suitable husbands.

Her aunt rang a bell, and Alice closed the sitting room door. Her mother caressed her cheek.

Sophia swallowed back a thick terror forming in her throat. “Where is Olivia?”

Her uncle drew the spectacles from his nose and cleaned them in the silence. “We have searched for him. From Scotland to Rome. They have found no Evan. No man who fits your description who can be traced back to London when…”

When I had been ruined by a rake.

Sophia forced the words between her teeth. “Where is Olivia?”

Her aunt fixed her with pity. “Sophia, you cannot raise a child without a father.”

“Think of what it would do to your sisters,” her mother said.

“No. No, I will not think of that. Olivia is my daughter, and she requires a mother more than my sisters require an advantageous match. Where is she?”

“It was always our hope to find him for you,” her uncle said. “For Olivia. But the child is nearly five months old. It will only make it more difficult the longer we wait.”

“Wait?” The terror expanded to encompass her chest, her stomach. It was rapidly overtaking her legs. “Wait for what?”

Her mother flushed, a delicate hand gripping the skirt of her traveling gown. “If you do not care for your sisters, do think of what the girl would be forced to bear without a name. You do not even know his name.”

“Olivia is her name. Not girl. And he is Evan. He is a gentleman. He exists.”

Her uncle cleared his throat. “Yes, clearly he exists. But without him, your situation remains.”

“And he is not a gentleman,” her mother added.

Tears, roaring and hot, singed her eyes. “Where is Olivia?”

The three gazed between each other.

At length, her mother spoke. “We have found her a most loving mother and father who will raise her as their own.”

She hadn’t heard correctly. She was distraught. Perhaps she was still sleeping. She’d had bad dreams before.

Still, the terror stripped down to her feet.

“It will be most distressing for you,” her mother said. “A mother’s love is strong. So very deep. But it also wishes the best for her child, and this is the best.”

Sophia let go of a sob. “Where is she? Where have you taken her?”

“She is gone, daughter. To a better life. One you cannot provide for her.”

The terror unleashed itself in a scream.

She screamed from the room, from the house, out past the gate to the drive where someone had, only hours before, stolen her child.

~End of Excerpt~