As soon as she was old enough, she rode with her father through all the old Earl’s woods.
In fact she had often thought in the last year or two that she knew the estate far better than the new Earl did because he had been away for so long.
There were places in the woods that she found very precious, where she had ridden with her father, but now she had to ride alone.
There was a lake at the far end of the estate where there were excellent trout and there were trout also in the stream that ran through a number of the fields.
They were all part, Raina thought, of herself.
If she had to leave, it would break her heart because nowhere else could be quite the same. How could it be, when her father and mother were buried in the churchyard?
The memory of them lingered in every room in the h
