Prologue
Ashland, Ohio
The church smelled of wildflowers and beeswax candles.
Anna Foster stood in the second pew, her gloved hands clasped in front of her.
It was clear from her face that she was trying very hard not to cry.
She had promised herself she wouldn’t. She had made the promise somewhere between the rattling of the train carriage and the frantic pinning of her hair in the cramped station, having arrived with barely ten minutes to spare.
There had been no time for tears then, and there was certainly no time for them now. Not when Jane looked so radiant, so happy, so alive.
Her sister stood at the altar in a gown of ivory cotton and lace, her chestnut hair swept up beneath a crown of small white roses, her green eyes shining with a joy that Anna had only ever read about in the novels she kept tucked beneath her pillow at home.
Liam Hunter stood opposite her, broad-shouldered and dark-haired, his hazel eyes fixed on Jane’s upturned face as though the rest of the world had simply ceased to exist.
Anna was the complete opposite of her sister.
She had dark brown hair and dark brown eyes.
And she always seemed to lag a little behind her.
While her twin had found love and a husband, Anna’s own beau, Ethan, was always dragging his feet.
But she was beyond happy for her twin, nevertheless, despite a pang of yearning.
Anna’s heart felt like it would burst.
She blinked. Rapidly. Several times.
You promised yourself.
The pastor’s voice rose and fell in gentle cadence, filling the little church to its raftered ceiling, and Anna let his sonorous words wash over her.
Outside, Ohio was wrapped in the gold and amber of early autumn, the maples beginning to turn along the roadside, the sky pure azure.
It was, by any measure, a perfect day. A perfect wedding.
A perfect beginning for two people who deserved every happiness the world could offer as they took their first steps into the rest of their lives. Together.
Anna smiled so big her cheeks ached.
It was somewhere in the midst of her determination not to cry that she became aware of him.
He stood to the far left of the church, apart from the other guests, his back nearly to the wall. Everything about him said that he didn’t want to be approached.
He was tall—taller by a good few inches than most of the men gathered—with dark hair that fell carelessly across his forehead.
It was clear from the way he held himself that he was strong; probably, he worked outside.
He had a horseman’s build and bearing. He wore black, which struck her as a curious choice for a wedding.
And he wore it with an unselfconsciousness that suggested it was simply what he always wore, no matter the occasion.
Anna’s gaze lingered on him for only a moment before moving back to the altar.
Then it drifted back again.
He didn’t seem to be paying particular attention to the ceremony.
He was watching it, but in the distant, detached manner of a man enduring something rather than enjoying it.
His jaw was set. His arms were crossed loosely over his chest. His expression gave away precisely nothing, but if Anna were to guess, she’d say his thoughts were elsewhere, galloping across some open plain perhaps.
Undeniably handsome, some unhelpful part of her brain piped up. And completely unaware of that fact, the more sensible, skeptical part of her mind supplied.
She pulled her attention firmly back to her sister.
Jane was crying now—happy tears, the best kind—and Liam was laughing softly as he reached up to brush one away from her cheek. The congregation let out an adoring murmur. Anna pressed her fingers to her lips.
She absolutely was not going to cry.
***
The reception was held in the meadow behind the church, where long tables had been dressed in white linen and strung with paper lanterns that swayed in the breeze.
A gentle tune began from the makeshift stage against the barn—a fiddle and a guitar, a man with a harmonica who played with more enthusiasm than skill. And there was food galore, enough for twice as many guests—apple cider, corn bread, roasted squash.
Anna found Jane the moment the ceremony ended, wrapping her arms around her sister so tightly that Jane laughed and protested that Anna would rumple her dress.
But Jane held on just as fiercely. They hadn’t seen one another since the spring.
Anna buried her face in Jane’s shoulder and breathed her in—rosewater and something warm and familiar that she had no word for except, perhaps, home.
“You look absolutely beautiful,” Anna said, pulling back to hold Jane at arm’s length. “It was all I could do not to sob my heart out.”
“Well, I’m sure there were tears,” Jane said, her green eyes dancing. “I saw you dabbing at them from the altar.”
“There were not. That was… perspiration. It was awfully warm in there.”
Jane laughed and squeezed her hands, and for a moment they simply looked at one another, the way twins do.
They listened attentively to everything the other hadn’t said.
Jane’s happiness was so complete, so luminous, that it seemed to radiate from her like heat from the sun.
And if there was something a little wistful in Anna’s answering smile, well, that was no one’s business but her own.
“Who is that man dressed all in black?” she asked her sister in hushed tones.
“Oh, you mean Luke. That’s Liam’s brother.” Ah, Anna thought, so this was Liam’s brother.
“He seemed a bit lonesome, stood apart like that.”
“Ah, that’s just his way.”
Anna nodded thoughtfully.
She found herself glancing at him more and more often, drawn to him in a funny sort of way. She made up her mind to seek out the man in black before the afternoon was done. Something about him had snagged her curiosity.
She found him near the edge of the meadow, where the grass gave way to a rough post-and-rail fence. He had a glass of something amber in one hand, his gaze fixed on the middle distance with an intensity that made it look like he was thinking about somewhere else he’d rather be.
Anna smoothed her skirt, lifted her chin, and walked over.
“You must be Luke Hunter,” she said brightly, extending her hand. “I’m Anna. Jane’s sister. I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to introduce myself before the ceremony—my train was running late, and I practically fell through the church door.”
He looked at her. His eyes were dark—very dark, shadowed beneath the straight line of his brow—and the look he gave her was brief and assessing but perhaps not entirely unimpressed.
“I know who you are,” he said.
Anna waited for the rest of it. The It’s a pleasure or the Jane speaks of you often, or even the simple courtesy of a returned introduction.
It did not come.
She lowered her hand slowly. “Well,” she said. “Lovely to meet you, too.”
His expression didn’t change one bit, but there was a slight shift in his stance, and his grip tightened around a glass he was holding. He looked once again back into the distance, as though the fence post twenty yards away required his full and immediate attention.
Anna felt a flicker of irritation tangled up with amusement. She was saved from having to decide which it was by the sudden appearance of Jane at her elbow, slightly breathless and wearing the expression of a woman in the early stages of a minor crisis.
“Thank heavens,” Jane said, gripping Anna’s arm. “I need both of you. Right now. One of our gifts has gone missing, and I’m just beside myself.”
***
The gift, as it turned out, was a carved wooden box—a keepsake chest, made by one of Liam’s ranch hands.
It had been set down somewhere during the scramble of the morning’s preparations and had not been seen since.
Jane was certain she remembered seeing it near the side entrance of the church.
Liam thought it had been put in the stables for safekeeping.
Luke said nothing, but fell into step behind them with a long, unhurried stride as Jane told her flustered tale.
“I don’t have time to search,” she said imploringly, “so if the two of you wouldn’t mind, I’d be so grateful. We both would. It would be terrible if it were lost.”
“Of course we will,” Anna said, squeezing her sister’s hand.
Jane hurried away, back into the joyous throng of her wedding day. Anna turned to Luke.
“Will we now?” he drawled, amused.
“You don’t want to find your brother’s missing gift?”
“Well, you got me there. Let’s go.”
The stables were behind the church, cool and dim and smelling of hay and horse. Dust motes drifted in the strips of light that fell through the high, narrow windows. Anna stepped inside and paused a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness.
“If someone put it here, I bet it’ll be on one of the shelves along the back wall,” she said, moving deeper into the stable. “That’s where I’d put something for safekeeping anyhow.”
“You’d put a wedding gift on a stable shelf,” Luke said from behind her. It wasn’t a question. His tone conveyed, in just nine words, that he found this both predictable and incorrect.
“I’d put it somewhere logical,” Anna said, not turning around, “which is apparently more than can be said for whoever moved it.”
“Liam said it was here.”
“Liam also said the train from Columbus ran on time. We’ve established that isn’t always the case.”
She heard something that might, in a more amenable man, have been the beginning of a laugh. In Luke Hunter, it never got further than a breath, quickly suppressed. Nevertheless, she found herself quietly pleased to have provoked it.
She checked the back shelves—bridles, a tin of salve, a folded horse blanket—but nothing resembling a carved wooden box. She turned and found him checking the opposite wall, running his gaze along each shelf from top to bottom before moving to the next.
“It’s not there,” she said.
“Not yet checked.”
“It won’t be there. Who’d put a gift on the same wall as the feed buckets?”