My thanks to Sandy Robb, for helping to set me on the path to Duddingston.

Appreciation and a drink are owed to Ian Rankin, who, among his many kindnesses, gave me the visual details I needed for my winter scenes at Duddingston, including the swan that was trapped in the ice.

Having been, for the best part of my life, one of those people found lining the walls on most social occasions, it has been both a quiet surprise and a pleasure to find myself part of a writing group in middle age, and my friends Elizabeth Boyle, Kathy Chung, Eileen Cook, Crystal Hunt, Mary Robinette Kowal, Liza Palmer, and Nephele Tempest have been, and continue to be, a constant support.

To my agents, Felicity Blunt and Shawna McCarthy, thank you for always believing in me.

The editing of this book was very much a team effort.

Thanks to Clare Hey at Simon & Schuster UK, Laurie Grassi at Simon & Schuster Canada, and Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks for their combined work in making this novel the best it could be.

Thanks to Heather Hall at Sourcebooks and Gretchen Stelter for their meticulous copyediting, to Jeff Miller of Faceout Studios and Heather VenHuizen of Sourcebooks for the beautiful cover, to Hannah Strassburger of Sourcebooks for designing the Graeme family tree, and to the sales team, publicists, and all the team at Sourcebooks who work tirelessly behind the scenes to bring my books to life. Your work may not always be seen, but it is very much appreciated.

To the booksellers, a special thank-you from the little girl in me who helped my mother in her bookstore and is always grateful for the work you do on my behalf.

And thank you so much to all the librarians who, with reviewers, bloggers, and so many others, help connect my stories to their readers.

To those who gave me help whose names I didn’t think to ask, and those who helped but whom I have forgotten to acknowledge here, please know I’m in your debt.

Finally, to my own family—my mother who always reads the stories first and helps to shape them, my father who with this one helped me find my voice for Adam, and my husband and my children who endure my living in another age for two years at a time—I give my thanks, for all their love and patient understanding.

About the Author

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Susanna Kearsley is a former museum curator who loves restoring the lost voices of real people to the page, known for interweaving historical intrigue with romantic adventure in twin-stranded storylines. Her books, published in translation in more than twenty countries, have won the Catherine Cookson Fiction Prize, RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards, and National Readers’ Choice Awards and have finaled for the UK’s Romantic Novel of the Year and the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel. She lives in Canada, by the shores of Lake Ontario.