Page 1 of To Follow her Heart

Prologue

London. 28th July 1814.

I perceive, at last, that I must be a very selfish kind of man. Fate has intervened and given me a position in life I neither expected nor feel worthy of. Soon—if I do as Trevick expects and wishes—I will add great wealth to my good fortune. Any other man of my position must look upon such a change in circumstances as the hand of a beneficent god.

Why, then, do I feel so cheated?

―Excerpt of a letter from Mr Luke Baxter to an unknown correspondent. Never sent.

1st July 1800. Ballyhill House, Armoy, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Luke ran as fast as he could. He ran away from the large house, with its empty, echoing rooms, away from his weeping mother and his father’s fury. Why Father was so cross, Luke couldn’t fathom. It was all his fault. They’d lost everything, not that there had been much to lose, but Father had frittered away the only thing left with any value: his honour.

It was a dreadful scandal. What exactly the scandal was about Luke wasn’t certain, except that woman had been a part of it. He was only nine, so his thoughts and feelings counted for nothing. All he had gleaned through a few snatches of overheard conversation was that his father had disgraced the family. The head of their illustrious line, the Earl of Trevick, was displeased, and so had dispatched his youngest brother, Mr Derby, to deal with Luke’s father.

They had been banished within a matter of days, threatened with being cut off from the family and snubbed if they did not leave until the horrid affair died down. Mr Derby said it might take years.

Decades, even.

Years stuck in this faraway place, far from his school and his friends, from anything at all. Those years stretched out before Luke, a vast expanse of nothingness and uncertainty.

The house in which they would live out their exile was dirty and smelled of decay, though it had been grand once. There were mice scuttling in the walls and cobwebs everywhere. They couldn’t afford enough staff to right it and run it as it should be run, but those they’d brought had set to trying to find some order in the chaos. The dust still clung to the back of his throat and prickled his nose. Luke didn’t like upsets and chaos, or disorder, or change.

He’d liked his life, his school, his pals. He’d liked the predictability of knowing what would come each day, just the same as the one before it.

Scrubbing his sleeve over his face, he scolded himself for crying. He wasn’t a stupid baby. He hated his father and couldn’t bear his mother’s tears, and he’d lost everything, but he wouldn’t cry about it. It wouldn’t change a thing; that was a lesson he’d learned long ago. His father ignored him whether he cried or shouted, or behaved impeccably. His mother was too busy crying herself, forever at the mercy of her nerves. Luke had a healthy terror of his mother’s nerves. Anyway, there was no point in fighting fate; it only fought back harder.

“What’s the matter?”

Luke jolted, having believed he’d run into the middle of acres of nothingness and was all alone, a state he must endure for years to come. The soft voice—gentle, with a lilting accent—startled him half to death. He spun around, confronted at once with a girl.

She was slender, with a cloud of thick black curls that surrounded the sweetest face, as delicate as a fairy’s. Her eyes were enormous, almost as dark as her hair, and thickly lashed. There was the faintest touch of pink at her cheeks, and her delicate lips were just a shade darker. He thought perhaps she was a year younger than he was; two at most.

He’d seen nothing as beautiful as her in all his life and, for a second, he wondered if she was real. There was a local woman working at the house who’d told him stories of the Sidhe, the good folk who could bless or curse you on a whim. She’d said they were beautiful beyond belief and that, once you’d seen them, your life would never be the same again.

In that moment, Luke believed it.

He would love her and follow her anywhere she led if she asked him.

His heart made an odd little thump in his chest and he hated himself for thinking anything so thoroughly nauseating. She was only a girl, not a tricksy fae, not a beautiful Sidhe princess. His friends would have pounded him if they’d known.

“Why are you crying?” she asked, her accent so unfamiliar and impenetrable it took him a while to comprehend.

“I’m not crying,” he retorted, indignant at the accusation, no matter how accurate.

“My, don’t you talk funny,” she said, her dark eyes bright with interest.

“Not as funny as you,” he retorted, stung by the observation.

She watched him for a long minute, as though studying a foreign entity, something she’d never seen before and wanted to understand. Her pretty head tilted to one side.

“Your hair is so red, red as garnets when the sun’s on it.” Her gaze was full of admiration as she added, “I like your freckles too. You’ll be a handsome fellow one day.”

Luke blinked as a flush burned over his cheeks. He’d spend a goodly amount of his school life pounding bullies for teasing his red hair and freckles. Ginger, carrot-top, poison-pated, bran-faced….

She liked them.

He’d hardly begun to get to grips with this strange phenomenon, and the stranger feelings that her reactions provoked, before she returned to her original question.