Prologue
He rode through the dead of the night, laughing, sometimes weeping, his black cloak whipped out behind him from the wind of his speed. The nearly full moon gave him enough light to see by and his horse certainly saw quite well. At a dead run, he rode, his madness following him, ever keeping pace. Of course, he knew he was mad, as insane as the King himself. However, unlike the King, he kept his madness reined in, on a short leash, mostly silent and subdued, save for times like these.
Laughing hysterically, he spurred his horse to greater speed, scattering flocks of sheep and cattle. His mount leapt a low stone wall with the grace of an African gazelle. He galloped on, dodging large rocks and thickets of bramble. “I will have what is mine,” he screamed into the night. “I will have what is mine.”
Blood flecked his spurs. Flattening his neck, his ears back, the madman’s horse reached an even faster pace, foam lathering his neck. On the gelding raced, urged on by his rider’s insanity. Another stone wall rose in his path and, yet again, he soared over it as though possessing the wings of Pegasus himself.
Half blinded by the tears he wept, the man laughed, shrieking, “They cannot stop me, theywillnot stop me, I will have my due.”
Lights glimmered in the distance. A house. By the sheer number of lights glowing in the darkness, it was a very large house. Slowing his mount to a hard gallop, the man reined toward it. Even at this hour, lamps were lit along hallways and corridors, glowing through the windows. He laughed again, recognizing it, even as he knew this was his destination all along.
The Willowdale estate.
“I will have what is mine,” he repeated, muttering now, sunk into the depths of his own mind. “Hewill not stop me.”
Throwing back his head, he howled like a wolf, his voice echoing across the black hills. Over and over he laughed, then broke into coarse, heavy sobs before howling to the moon again. Screaming wildly, he galloped his horse in circles, staring at the house and dreaming of his possessions inside it.
At long last, his fit of madness left him. His throat raw, he wiped the tears from his face with his hand. Reining his blowing horse to a stop, he let the animal rest for a moment or two as he gazed, now quiet, at the Willowdale home. “None of you can ever stop me,” he whispered as the night breeze ruffled his hair, drying his sweat and his tears. “I swear it, Willowdale. You cannot keep me from what is mine. I will not let you and I will do whatever it takes to have my due. Even if it means your death.”
Turning the horse around, he nudged the beast into a ground-eating trot. He knew he had pushed the horse too hard, but his madness would never permit him to feel guilt over it. His obsession with Willowdale consumed him – he could think of nothing else, even when his fits of insanity had not sent him over the edge.
“I swear I will kill you,” he muttered. “Do not make me kill you, Willowdale. Give me what is mine.”
Chapter 1
Thea Miller stared at her older brother, stunned and incredulous. “Surely you are jesting, Freddie. Father and Mother have not been in their graves a month.”
“Why does that have anything to do with it? You are nine-and-ten now, Thea, it is time to find you a husband.”
The stiff breeze off the lake, a beloved area of the Willowdale estates for time out of mind, whipped her hair across her face. Black as a raven’s wing, Thea tended to break social protocol by leaving it loose and unfettered, to fall like a silken river to her waist. Her light brown eyes studied Freddie as he gazed out over the waves lapping at the gravel on the shore.
Though he was three years older and over a foot taller than she, they could almost be twins, she had often thought. His hair coloring and eyes were, like hers, both inherited from their mother. Their father, the late Viscount of Willowdale, had been short and stout, with the blue eyes and blond hair of a Viking. Of course, family jests abounded that the Lady Martha Willowdale and her children were true descendants of the native people who lived among the former colonists across the ocean.
“Then why do you not get married, Freddie?” Thea asked. “You have to carry on the family name.”
Freddie finally looked at her, his handsome lips bowed in a slight frown. “I will, little sister, in time.” He glanced down, away from her, as though uncomfortable. “I am still getting used to being the Viscount of Willowdale. I feel much too young for such a heavy title, and the responsibilities that go with it.”
Thea tilted her pert nose up, a trait she knew had irritated her parents to no end, and one she used on her brother almost as often. “I am not ready to get married either.”
Walking to the edge of the lake, she gazed out at the tiny whitecaps pushed upward by the wind, wondering if her father had made such plans for her marriage before he died so unexpectedly. “I suppose you already have a candidate picked out,” she said, her voice hard, her back to him.
“Of course not.”
Thea heard the crunch of his boots on the gravel as he stepped up to stand beside her. Bending, he picked up a rock and threw it out as far as he could, the stone skipping across the water’s surface before sinking at last. “Why are you being so hard headed about it? You have to get married eventually.”
“Why are you so quick to sell me to the highest bidder?” she retorted, glancing sidelong at him through thick tendrils of her hair.
Though Freddie tended to be more tidy and conscientious about his appearance than Thea, his ice blue cravat had loosened to the point it would soon flap under the force of the wind. With her hand on his arm, Thea turned him toward her.
“Here,” she said. “Let me fix that.”
Freddie raised his chin to grant her access to his cravat, his pale brown eyes amused. “Perhaps I should keep you around as my valet. I swear, sometimes I believe Nicholas would serve better sweeping the stable.”
“The man does his best,” Thea replied tartly. “You should have more patience with him.”
Freddie’s full white teeth gleamed, even under the muted sunlight as he grinned down at her. “You are always running to the defense of the servants, Thea. One might think you have an affinity for them.”
“And why should I not be?” she inquired, her eyes snapping in annoyance. “They have no advocate, can be dismissed without a word and turned out into the gutter at a moment’s notice. Someone should behave as though they cared.”
