Scotland, July 1765
It was as the carriage bumped around a bend and the decrepit castle loomed into view in the dusk that Helen Fitzwilliam finally--and rather belatedly--realized that the whole trip may've been a horrible mistake.
"Is that it?" Jamie, her five-year-old son, was kneeling on the musty carriage seat cushions and peering out the window. "I thought it was 'sposed to be a castle."
"'Tis a castle, silly," his nine-year-old sister, Abigail, replied. "Can't you see the tower?"
"Just 'cause it has a tower don't mean it's a castle," Jamie objected, frowning at the suspect castle. "There's no moat. If it is a castle, it's not a proper one."
"Children," Helen said rather too sharply, but then they had been in one cramped carriage after another for the better part of a fortnight. "Please don't bicker."
Naturally, her offspring feigned deafness.
"It's pink." Jamie had pressed his nose to the small window, clouding the glass with his breath. He turned and scowled at his sister. "D'you think a proper castle ought to be pink?"
Helen stifled a sigh and massaged her right temple. She'd felt a headache lurking there for the last several miles, and she knew it was about to pounce just as she needed all her wits about her. She hadn't really thought this scheme through. But, then, she never did think things through as she ought to, did she? Impulsiveness--hastily acted on and more leisurely regretted--was the hallmark of her life. It was why, at the age of one and thirty, she found herself traveling through a foreign land about to throw herself and her children on the mercy of a stranger.
What a fool she was!
A fool who had better get her story straight, for the carriage was already stopping before the imposing wood doors.
"Children!" she hissed.
Both little faces snapped around at her tone. Jamie's brown eyes were wide while Abigail's expression was pinched and fearful. Her daughter noticed far too much for a little girl, was too sensitive to the atmosphere adults created.
Helen took a breath and made herself smile. "This will be an adventure, my darlings, but you must remember what I've told you." She looked at Jamie. "What are we to be called?"