Chapter One
Lincolnshire, 1810
Not bothering with her shoes, Cassandra Cooper bolted out of her bedchamber and sprinted down the hall. Cotton stockings slid along freshly polished hardwood with a high-pitched squeak as she rounded the corner to the staircase. Taking the steps two at a time, she barreled toward the first floor. The chime of the grandfather clock echoed through the house.
She paused and counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
Three in the afternoon.
The Earl would be there any minute!
Gathering her skirts about her, she hastily maneuvered through darkened hallways with time-weakened floorboards. Matthew had promised to fix them once he gained the funds, but he had made many such promises concerning Cooper House.
Such as fixing the door hinges!
Aged hinges and unbalanced pressure turned the house into a wind tunnel on days such as today. One powerful gust of wind would set off a chain reaction through the narrow halls, slamming doors open or closed as the air shifted. Another fix to add to the estate’s ever-expanding list of needs.
But change was in their future—she could feel it. The family’sprosperity depended on the meeting that would take place that afternoon.
Stomach churning with nausea, she had tried to stay busy by writing her thoughts down in her diary. All of them. Ink trickled in thin looping strokes from her quill to the pages in a rapid stream of words that only stopped when she came tothat.
Cassandra had never ushered it aloud, had never written it down, but there it was, clear as day.
That.
Once written, she could scarcely read it again. A thought crossed her mind—what if someone else read it? The question turned to acid in her stomach. Nothing was safe with Caroline around. Snooping and nosy, her younger sister would read it, tell Matthew, and Cassandra would never hear the end of it.
No simple disposal would do. No amount of scribbling out or tearing into shreds would erase the words on the page. It would need to be burned.
She ripped the page from her diary, folded it into thirds, and placed it on the desk at the same time that someone opened the front door. Air shot through the house in a crescendo, blowing her bedchamber door open. The parchment zipped out of her window, twirled high, and tangled itself in the upper branches of the oak tree in the backyard.
Oh,whycouldn’t she leave well enough alone?
Heart pounding, her strides lengthened. The back door was mere steps ahead.
As was Matthew, exiting from the kitchen.
Reflexes activated and Cassandra skidded to a halt inches from her brother, leaning up on her toes to avoid a collision. He stumbled mid-stride, his brown eyes widened and his mouth worked open, closed, and open again.
He let out a startled yelp as she shouldered past him.
“Cassandra?!”
Cringing, she threw over her shoulder, “I’ll be right back!”
“Cassandra!”
She burst through the double doors and hopped across the cobblestone terrace. The wind whipped fiercely around her, pulling tendrils of sable hair loose from her chignon. She came to a stop in front of the old oak tree. A looming titan covered in emerald leaves, its long branches reached skyward and spread, creating a protective canopy over the two story home. The folded piece of parchment waved at her mockingly from the upper branches.
Taking a solidifying breath, she steeled herself for her plan. Climb the tree. Retrieve the page. Burn it. And what did it matter that she hadn’t climbed a tree since she was a child? It wasn’t as if one forgot how.
Right?
