Chapter 1Late Spring, Fairleigh Hall, Yorkshire, 1802
“Hullo! Are you lost, or are you honestly looking for Fairleigh Hall? Which you might be, we are expecting someone, and we hardly ever expect anyone, so it’d be a rather impressive coincidence if you decided to drop by at the same time as someone else, wouldn’t it?”
Kit Thompson, knee-deep in snow and cranky about it, regarded this improbable enthusiasm from the front steps of the sprawling ancestral manor in question. The enthusiasm, in the form of a young man with distressingly broad shoulders and hair made of wayward sunshine, waved at him from the white-heaped lane and then hopped over a gate and ran his way.
Kit gazed at all that sunshine as it bounced through the snow. Thought, well, he doesn’t look like a cold-hearted magical
