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Prologue

Eyemouth, Scotland, 1863

LAVINIA LAY IN her bed, her secret keeping her warm against the night’s chill.

She giggled but quickly bit her tongue, even though there was no conceivable way Mamma or Papa could hear her all the way on the opposite side of the thick-walled vicarage. The old house she’d lived in for all of her sixteen years had its quirks—some helpful, like the secret passage off the library where she and her brother, Caleb, had played hide-and-seek as children, and others annoying, like the insistence of the third stair on the first flight on creaking no matter how she tried to fix it.

Tonight, however, she would avoid that stair altogether and opt for an altogether more inventive method of escape.

Three whistled notes, so soft they might have been a trick of the wind, sounded in the night. It was time.

Slipping out from between the covers fully dressed, she collected the black leather boots she’d hidden under her bed earlier that day, shoved her feet into them, and laced them up. Then she crept to the window and lifted the sash. It glided up on its track with nary a sound—coaxed by many applications of oil she’d stolen from the gardener’s shed. With a grin, she slung her leg over the sill and began her descent. Really, if Mamma and Papa hadn’t wanted her to climb out the window at all hours, they shouldn’t have ordered the installation of the trellis that stretched so conveniently to her window.

The ball of her foot hit the ground, and her grin widened. The evening was going exactly as planned, and it would only improve. She’d make sure of that.

A layer of frost crunched under her feet as she slipped out through the garden gate and pulled her thick woolen shawl closer around her shoulders. She probably should’ve donned a coat, but she hadn’t wanted to risk the bulk weighing her down as she climbed. Besides, her anticipation would keep her warm.

When she was almost to the end of the street, a figure stepped out from behind a dark hedge, and Lavinia broke into a run toward the man. It had been a struggle convincing him to agree to meet her at night, and she wasn’t going to waste a moment of it.

“Andrew!” Her arms looped around his neck and she was kissing him—right here in the lane. His lips were soft and warm, and when they moved over hers, she shivered with delight.

Lavinia was sixteen and in love with the best man she knew. There was nothing better.

“Shh, you’ll wake the entire town.” Andrew tried to scowl, but when she arched a brow, he kissed her again swiftly, his lips curving into a smile against hers. “You made it out without being caught?”

“It was nothing,” she said, waving her hand dismissively.

“What of Caleb?” he asked. Her younger brother—fifteen to her sixteen—was Andrew’s friend, but that didn’t mean he would approve of her sneaking out of the window at night. It was fortunate, then, that what Caleb didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“He’s fast asleep. He only just arrived home from school last night. Come along and stop stalling,” she said, tugging Andrew’s arm. “This will be such fun.”

Stifling giggles, they raced down the street and took a left to the footpath that led to the edge of town. The night was silent save for their quick breaths and fast footsteps, and the sound of waves crashing against the shore.

When they were clear of the last house, the path became narrower, and Andrew hugged Lavinia to his side to make sure she didn’t stumble on the hard, frozen dirt. This close, the scent of him was intoxicating. Andrew always had the comforting smell of the sea on him, fitting for a boy who’d been sailing merchant vessels since the age of twelve. Today, however, he wore an ocean spray earned while working with his father, ferrying people back and forth between Edinburgh and Eyemouth. It clung to his hair and had dried on his skin—hair she could touch, skin she could lick, if only she dared.

That night she’d dare.

“There it is,” Andrew murmured, lips against her ear.

Atop the hill above them a huge house rose up out of the darkness.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

Andrew chuckled. “Only you would look at a house that’s been abandoned twenty years and think it’s beautiful.”

“But it is. And one day it’ll be ours.”

“That it will,” he said, his voice a little less sure than hers. No matter. She could dream enough for both of them.

Veering off the path, they pushed their way through the overgrown bushes that surrounded the once-grand merchant’s house. The grounds had been left to go wild for as long as Lavinia could remember, and a few years ago she, Andrew, and Caleb had found a gap in the hedge next to a side gate they could squeeze through. It had become their own personal playground until Caleb had been sent to school in Edinburgh in anticipation of his reading law, and Andrew had sailed out. Since then it had become the place where Andrew and Lavinia met for quiet moments alone in those blissful weeks when he was at home, waiting for his next voyage. Tonight it would become so much more.

After pushing through the weed-choked lawn that might once have been the site of teas and games of croquet, Andrew shouldered the rotted drawing room door open.

As soon as she shut the door, Lavinia slipped her arms around his waist and pressed a kiss to the hollow where his throat and collarbone met.

“This is all I’ve been able to think about all week,” she whispered against his pulse.

A low rumble sounded in Andrew’s throat, but he deliberately took a step back, putting her at arm’s length. “You’re sure of this?”