Part I, Chapter 1

                                    

                                              


                          


                          
March 1818

                          
Weldon Manor
                          
Manningtree, Essex
                          
	Felicia hummed as she used her trowel to work up the semi-frigid soil, periodically placing a flower bulb into the ground, mentally visualizing the dahlias in full bloom. She loved the spring, with its promise of life and hope and anticipation of idyllic summer months ahead. The long, barren, winter months were finally over, and the earth was ready to burst with life once again.
                          
This spring was especially joyous to Felicia because she was no longer alone. She smiled as she thought of her beautiful young daughter, restored to her arms after four years of painful separation. Years of hopelessness and loss and seemingly endless disappointments, when she had been tempted to give up and succumb to despair, but ultimately did not because of her conviction that she had a child somewhere who needed her.
                          
The sound of children's laughter came to her and she looked up to see four-year-old Cynthia and Peter, the housekeeper's son, chasing one of the hounds around the grounds behind the house. Peter grabbed the stick from the dog's mouth and threw it as far as his six-year-old arm could throw, and it landed on the shore of the lake, only a few feet from the water.
                          
"Make sure they don't get too close to the lake, Alice!" Felicia called to the nursemaid who accompanied the children. She was still more than a little fearful of the possibility of losing Cynthia again so soon. Children died all the time from accidents or illness and Felicia had fought too long and hard to find her to be able to contemplate the thought of losing her again.
                          
"Yes, ma'am," replied Alice, a young woman in her mid-twenties only a few years older than Felicia. "Come children, let's go walk in the orchard for awhile."
                          
Peter stopped running and beamed with delight. "C'mon, Cynthia, there's an old apple tree that's great for climbing. If girls can climb trees, that is."
                          
Cynthia was indignant. "I can climb it if you can," she insisted.
                          
Felicia wasn't so sure about tree climbing either, but she didn't want to be too over-protective. She had enjoyed climbing trees herself at Cynthia's age, and one couldn't keep an active child penned up inside all day.
                          
"Be careful, poppet."
                          
"I'll watch them," promised Alice. "Don't worry, Mrs. Hammond."
                          
As Felicia returned to her bulbs, she heard the sound of horses' hooves in the driveway. Multiple horses. Presumably a carriage and not a delivery vehicle, since it pulled up to the entrance of the house.
                          
"Drat," she said aloud. "Who could possibly be calling on me now?"
                          
In her dirty smock and old straw hat, she looked more like a servant than the lady of the house. Certainly not fit to receive company.
                          
A maid in a black uniform and a clean white apron ran from the house. "You have visitors, ma'am. It's Mrs. Horace Prendergast and the Misses Prendergast from Litchfield Hall."
                          
These were not Felicia's favorite neighbors, but they were prominent enough in the community that she couldn't afford to offend them. She stood up reluctantly and removed her gardening gloves.
                          
"Well, it appears that I'm not going to finish planting today," she said with a sigh. "Maria, please ask Hodge to put away these things for me, and then advise the Prendergasts that I will be with them shortly."
                          
As she made her way to the back stairs of the stately manor that had been her home for the past eight months, she marveled that her life had taken such a dramatic turn for the better. She felt a fierce pride that she was no longer dependent on the patronage of any man, nor woman either. Nor would she have to ever be again, she reflected, wiping away the sudden tears welling in her eyes as they always did when she thought of the gentle man whose unexpected bequest had made it possible for her to escape the bonds of the demimonde and live in quiet respectability in the beautiful county of Essex. She styled herself the widow of a non-existent Charles Hammond, but it was due to her position as the former mistress of Charles Jamison, the late Lord Kendall, that she had managed to take up a life in the world of respectability.