Also, while the settings of this book are very much inspired by the places my family and I lived in and explored around Northern England, I had to take a few liberties with the towns and other locations that required I create a fictional village, dukedom, and castle. I hope those who know the area will still see the places and landmarks they love reflected in the story that follows, while understanding why the legalities of writing around them required me to change a few names of places. All similarities to people real or imagined are purely coincidental.

Chapter One

Chapter One

Vic changed gears on the Land Rover as she pulled off the motorway and started up the steep incline that marked her turn away from the sea. The road narrowed, and her chest tightened in anticipation. Winding first past a small orchard, and then along a brook that raced over stones, she sat a little taller as she neared the top of the familiar rise. A glint of sinking sun sparked the first flash of gold against white in the distance. A flag snapped back, then waved straight out as if the lion emblazoned on it had seen her coming. It was silly and sentimental to think her family standard might be eager to see her return, but she was the only person in the car, so what did a little sentiment hurt?

Atop the rise, her breath caught at the picturesque panorama before her. She slowed nearly to a stop. The valley spread out as far as the eye could see. Trees gave way to an expansive meadow rushing over hill and dale until it rose into a slope of green, moved not by nature but man. Steep earthworks rose sharply into the classically notched sandstone fortress of Penchant Castle.

From here she couldn’t make out the cannons atop the battlements that looked low compared to the mammoth central keep they’d once protected from the threats of England’s borderlands. Those dangers had faded from the landscape over the centuries, but little about the inward bailey had changed to reflect the reduced threat. Then again, maybe the threats hadn’t vanished so much as morphed.

Vic shook her head and urged the car forward, picking up speed to match the rush of relief surging through her. As she drew closer, zipping over smaller hills and across a bridge barely big enough to accommodate her vehicle, the castle loomed steadily larger in her view. Strong, proud, imposing, comforting, and so many other things all rolled into one impressive package; she no longer tried to sort the myriad of emotions the expansive compound inspired in her. The complexities couldn’t be separated from each other any more than they could be separated from her, and today she cared less about those conflicts than ones she’d left behind her to the north.