Page 1 of When Hearts Surrender

Prologue

The Curse

Wraithmoor Abbey, Manhattan, New York City

October 2, 1860

Emma

The dense fog reeked of death this morning. It was so thick, she could barely see the stone steps in front of her as she climbed the winding staircase to reach the top of the grand estate.

The mansion was built on hallowed grounds, atop the ruins of an old abbey that was burned to cinders years ago. Locals rumored the land was haunted by the ghosts of those buried here, who were exhumed and moved to other places of eternal rest before the great Anderson family rebuilt on top of it.

It was bad luck, they said.

She never believed the superstitions. But now, as the sorrow in her chest threatened to cleave her in half as she reached her destination, a place that once brought her joy but now only held a lifetime of regrets, she couldn’t help but wonder if the superstitions were true.

She walked toward the edge of the rooftop and glanced around, secretly wishinghewere here. That he would stop her.

But there was nothing other than the eerie silence and the occasional cry of the black crows hovering nearby, her companions paying solemn tribute to her before she took to the skies—her final flight.

She brushed past the skeletons of wilted flowers, long laid to rest after a dreary autumn, and past the dark vines twined around a veranda, the lush green appearing black in the gloominess of early dawn. Gripping the railing at the edge of the rooftop, she slowly climbed over the ledge to the tiny sliver of stone separating this life and the next.

“Do you love me, Silas?” she whispered.

“Always, now and forever, this lifetime and all the lifetimes thereafter,” he murmured, his intense gray eyes filled with warmth as he pulled her close and sealed his lips with hers.

It didn’t matter they were forbidden. It didn’t matter she was putting everything at risk by being with him, a man far above her station. A man who could ruin her.

They were tempting fate, but it felt like destiny.

A sob wrenched from her throat. Lies. They were all lies.

Clutching her last missive to him to her chest, she teetered on the edge and stared at the rose garden far below. Her eyes skated over the murder of crows standing silently by, over the new hedges the groundskeeper put in several months ago, which had now grown at least a foot taller.

Her favorite place.

A place where she would meet with him after the house went to bed, where they would stare into the dark nights, admiring the millions of stars glittering amid the inky backdrop.

He would take her hand then, far away from the prying eyes of his wife, a woman he told her he despised but was forced to marry because his family believed a duke needed legitimate heirs to be from a lady of good bloodline.

Not a lowly servant of the household.

Someone like her.

It was the way things were done—they were both trapped in their stations, unable to escape.

But nonetheless, her life irrevocably changed the first time their eyes met in the estate’s library. She was picking a book for her new employer,his wife, to read the next day, only to find him there, flipping through a thick volume by the roaring fire.

He never minded her status. He was curious what she had chosen. The curiosity burgeoned into a discussion on philosophy, which became nightly meetings where he’d tease her as she read her romantic novels after her chores were done. He’d flash her smiles she’d never seen him wear before, his hand grazing hers when they passed each other in the halls.

“I never knew love until I met you,” he whispered in her ear months later.

He’d take her in his arms and press his lips to hers as they danced under the sliver of ghostly moonlight in the rose garden. The night chill pierced her flimsy work garments of gray wool, but every inch of her was on fire, her heart alight for the man in front of her, who, in those stolen moments, appeared to be giving her the world.

They moved to the haunting rhythms of nature, the foreboding night wind howling and the falling leaves rustling from the trees nearby, as if begging them to stop before it was too late.

But naively, they ignored the ominous signs. He’d murmur instead, “Emma, my love, my all.”

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