Harriet dropped her arms back to her side. “Ophelia, you try. You’ve a way with animals and this one is horribly frightened.”

Ophelia walked slowly toward the horse, talking in a low, quiet voice. Though he made a tired show of tossing his head, this time he didn’t move when approached. Ophelia reached out and easily caught the reins. “There you go,” she crooned, patting the animal’s neck.

“I wonder if he’s one of the new horses Baron Whitfield just purchased,” Harriet said. “Tie him to the back of the cart for now, and we’ll stop by there on the way to town.”

Ophelia sighed. “I wish we could claim him. Wouldn’t Stephen be so jealous if we found—”

BAM! The sharp sound cracked the air about them. The horse half reared, but Ophelia kept a tight grip on the reins. Max whirled to face the forest, his ears lifted.

“That was a gunshot,” Sophia said into the silence that followed.

“It certainly sounded like it,” Harriet said. “Someone must be hunting nearby.” She climbed into her seat.

Max lifted his nose to the faint breeze and growled, his teeth flashing whitely. The sheep stirred uneasily.

Ophelia tied the horse to the back of the cart. “I wonder what’s wrong with Max? Do you think he’s caught the scent of a wolf?”

“Just keep him in check, for I’ve no wish to go chasing him through—” Before Harriet could finish the sentence, Max lunged forward, barking madly as he raced down the road. The sheep began to bleat loudly, urging him on.

“Max!” Harriet called, standing up and watching with a sinking heart as Max swerved off the road and disappeared into the woods. “Oh, piffle! We have to catch that silly dog before someone shoots him. From a distance he looks just like a large deer.”

Blast it all, it had seemed a fairly simple project that morning, to take three sheep to the market. Harriet tied off the reins and prepared once again to climb down from the cart, her irritation growing. “Come, Ophelia, you and I will gather Max. Sophia, you stay here until we return.”

They were never going to make it to market. Never going to sell their sheep. And when the time to gather wool came, there would be no money to hire an extra hand, so they wouldn’t be able to pay the bank, and Garrett Park would be lost forever.

“Not while I’m alive,” Harriet said through gritted teeth. She marched toward the woods, her booted feet slapping forcefully on the packed-dirt road, Ophelia trailing behind.

It was a furious way to die, the cause of madness and broken dreams. And Chase St. John had suffered enough of both to welcome the impending blackness.

One moment, he was riding down a narrow dirt lane, a supposed shortcut to the main road to Dover where he was to take a ship to the continent. He knew this area only a little; his brother Devon owned a manor house somewhere nearby, and Chase had once come to hunt. All he could remember of the experience was that it had rained the entire time.