That was the past, as cold and gone as Edmund himself. He left her with this house, a small income and just enough knowledge for her to help in some small way the people of her dale.

As well as newcomers to Swaledale. She looked down at her unconscious companion. Her days had been much the same for a very long time. She worked hard and it was rewarding work. She told herself that she was fortunate, reminded herself that many a widow had been left with nothing but sad memories and a sadder lack of prospects.

The magnificent newcomer, with his air of mystery and obvious urban sophistication, was like a change in the wind. She felt on edge, something long buried in her spirit stirring.

Jittery … as if she felt a storm brewing.

Perhaps it was not the stranger himself that disturbed her, but simply the reminder of a world outside the Dales, a world where people like the ones that she used to know laughed and talked, drank tea together, sang and danced, made love in the dark of night, made children, made families.

She had once believed it was her duty to mourn Edmund eternally. Now she found herself less sure of that.

Perhaps I am not so terribly old. There might still be something like that for me somewhere.

Yet how could she leave here? How could she go beyond these dales to find companionship of the sort that she did not have here? Should she leave before Jennie birthed her child, with no one but Shepherd Gosling and his silver-haired mother to help her?

The spring storms were coming and the river would swell. It was a dangerous time for the children as well. Could she walk away from the broken bones and the childhood fevers and leave her people with nothing?

For they were her people. She'd not been born in the Dales, but far away in Cambridgeshire. She was no duchess, no lord's wife. She had not been born into a position of noblesse oblige. Her father had been the Head Librarian for Cambridge University. A learned gentleman indeed, but not one to concern himself with stature.

Yet here she was, the accidental Lady of the Dale, dispenser of medicines, binder of wounds, birther of babes. And here she must stay, or she could never again meet her own gaze in a looking-glass, knowing she had deserted a community that needed her so desperately.

The Lady of the Dale. Alone in her castle — well, rambling manor house, with a leaky roof and far more rooms than needed. Her acres were rented out for grazing and farming and she was not terribly forceful about receiving those rents, especially during the recent lean years. All those sons who had not come home had left their families so profoundly bereft of help and hope.