Prologue

Sebastian Thorndyke’s brother, the Duke of Weston, and his wife succumbed to influenza in 1837. Settling in Spain and marrying Luna del Torres after the Napoleonic Wars ended, Sebastian brought his family—Luna, Antonio, and Briella—to England to meet the new Duke of Weston, his nephew, James Thorndyke and his wife Lorena.

During that visit, the Spanish Thorndykes were introduced to James’s closest neighbors—the Earl of Crestwood, his son, Hal, and his daughter, Caroline Newton.

Hal Newton and Antonio Thorndyke were both eighteen that year. Learning they were to attend Cambridge University together, the two men soon became friends.

Briella, Antonio’s sister, was an unruly child of ten, spoiled by her parents and her older brother. Born in Spain, both of Sebastian’s children learned to ride at an early age, taught by Luna’s relatives. The talented young riders rode beautiful and highly trained Andalusian horses bred on Luna’s father’s estancia in Andalucia. From their uncles, the two young aristocrats learned to ride the animals in Haute Ecole and airs above the ground as taught for many years at the Spanish Riding School in Austria.

Caroline Newton, deprived of her deceased mother’s guidance, was allowed to run wild with little restraint during a rather lonely childhood. The Earl of Crestwood, involved in London with Parliament for much of the year, was at a loss as to how to deal with his daughter’s palpable grief. He finally asked his head groom, William Hershey, to teach Caroline to ride. Very soon, the girl rode like a centaur, astride like a man, wearing breeches, her behavior and attire most improper, to say the least.

At thirteen, Caroline was metamorphosing rapidly from girl to woman, with new and frightening modifications pulsing through her nubile body and invading her emotional landscape with instability.

Intensely handsome, Antonio had a way of making her uncomfortable. He seemed to look right through her with those inscrutable pools of liquid pitch, his eyelashes so thick and black she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. When she thought about him—which was often—distracting fantasies consumed her even though she was tongue-tied in his presence.

At the time Caroline never understood why he had such an effect upon her. She didn’t even like him. She thought him conceited, haughty, unfriendly, and intimidating. Nevertheless, she never forgot her youthful flutters around Antonio Thorndyke, the cool, handsome, dark-eyed Spaniard.