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CHAPTER 1

The shrieking hipped her tangled black hair into her eyes as the sea crashed and foamed onto the rocks behind her

Ignoring both, Helena Lambarth kept her face turned inland toward the two laborers in the field beneath the cliffs, digging steadily into the stony soil

The grave was almost ready

Euphoria sent her spirits swooping like gulls on an updraft A joyous burst of laughter trilled from her throat as she finally let herself believe it

He was truly dead She was free

Though she knew any sound sheseabirds, one of the grave diggers paused to glance up As he raised his ar over his face, he crossed himself and batted bis companion's hand back to his shovel An instant later the two or

Did they think her a ghostie? Helena wondered, her lips curving in a wry s nine years ago when she'd ed to escape Lambarth Castle and flee to the

10 THE UNTAMED HEIRESS

village, only to have a group of townsmen, deaf to her pleas for help, quickly return the "poor, irl" to her father

For a , within a circle of wary onlookers who , dirty face and disheveled hair

"Such a wee lass"

"Mind's coone, her papa says"

"Heroff like that"

Her lip curled as a fah her Papa's lies would keep her a prisoner no longer Today she would leave this accursed place and search for the mother from whose side she'd been ripped just as they were about to leave her father's land The mother who, Helena believed with all her heart, had never stopped loving her

A ht her attention back to the present The grave diggers stood, shovels in hand, as the funeral procession picked its way down the narrow track fro lect but for this new grave and one other, just inside the rusted iron gate

A pang pierced Helena's chest as her gaze rested on that still-unsettledthe boundary wall, its occupant an interloper in death as she had been in life If "Mad Sally," the old hermit medicine woman dead two months now, had not lived in Lambarth's woods, Helena mused, she probably would not have survived her captivity

Would Sally have been happy for her today? Helena wondered Though the old woman babbled nonsense most of the time, in her occasional lucidwith so Sally's help when the local doctor's efforts failed, Helena had also prized the woman's uncanny talent as a healer

Others believed the chanting crone possessed dark powers and avoided her—which hy her father, ever the coward, had let the woh, had never known Sally to use her skills except to succor and heal

Another pang squeezed her heart Vac ant-headed or not, Mad Sally had been her only friend, and Helena still missed her keenly

She took a deep, steadying breath With the demise of her father, Helena hoped that the patrol he'd set to monitor the perimeter of Lambarth land would also have departed But whether or not she uards, she vowed, only her own death would keep her another night at Lambarth Castle

Thus sworn, she watched the funeral procession file into the graveyard Two far black robes identified him as the vicar, and Holmes, her father's baliff

Not expecting any other mourners, Helena was sur prised to discover another person trailing the coffin A ure drew nearer Someone she'd never seen before

The vicar's assistant, perhaps? Since she'd not been off Lambarth property in nine years, there were probably several newcoe she hadn't met

The h, held her attention Rather than focusing on the preacher, whose un the funeral service, the raveyard, as if he were searching for so

Or so eyes met hers

Defiantly, Helena held his gaze After regarding her steadily for several minutes, he nodded

Curious now, she nodded back The stranger gave her a brief smile, then turned back to the preacher