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back to the house to play with her baby sister. She was playing with her in her bedroom later that afternoon, when she heard the doorbell ring, and her mother let someone in. She didn't think about it as she played dolls with Daphne, and after a while, she went downstairs to get Daphne a cookie. She saw Gérard and one of her father's chief trainers sitting in the living room, speaking to her mother, and Beata was wearing a glazed expression. She looked dazed, as she turned and saw Amadea.

“Go back upstairs,” she said tersely, which was unlike her. Amadea was so startled by her tone that she turned and did as she was told, but as she sat in her room with Daphne, she was frightened. She knew even before they told her that something terrible had happened.

It seemed like hours before her mother came upstairs, and when she did, she was crying. She could hardly speak as she held Amadea in her arms, and told her that her father had been thrown by the new stallion.

“Is he hurt?” Amadea asked, looking terrified. Even with only one good arm, he was a faultless rider. And all Beata could do was sob and shake her head. It was an eternity before she could bring herself to say the words. Neither of them could believe it.

“Papa's dead, Amadea…Papa…” She choked on the words, as Amadea sobbed in her mother's arms. Véronique came a little while later to sit with the girls, and Beata went to see him at the stables. He had broken his neck and had been killed instantly. He was dead, the man she would have given her life for. It was almost beyond bearing.

The funeral was an endless agony, and the church was filled to bursting. Everyone who had ever known and worked with him had loved him. Gérard spoke at his funeral eloquently, and Véronique sat beside Beata with an arm around her shoulders. Afterward there was a reception at the Schloss, and the main hall was filled with mourning horsemen. Beata looked like a ghost as she drifted through the room, in widow's weeds, clinging to her daughters.

And afterward, there was so much to think of. This man she had loved so much, had given up her family for, who had loved and never betrayed or disappointed her, was suddenly gone. She had no idea where to go, what to do, or who to turn to. Gérard helped her as much as he could, and Véronique never left her. There was endless red tape to cut through, and Gérard offered his own attorneys in France to help her. The fortune that had been left to him by his father only weeks before was hers now. He had already agreed to share it equally with his brother Nicolas. But the half of the inheritance that Antoine had kept would be more than enough for Beata and the girls to live on. She would not live in grand luxury, but her future was secure. She could buy a house and support herself and the girls for as long as she lived. She no longer had to worry about petty economies, nor could she indulge frivolous excesses. But in essence, from a financial standpoint at least, she had few worries. The worst of it was that he was gone, and at thirty-two she was a widow. Amadea knew she would never forget the day her father died. And as quickly as was reasonable, they had to leave the house she had grown up in. Their life was about to undergo radical changes. Only Daphne was far too young to understand them. Amadea and her mother understood them all too well. Beata felt and looked as though her own life had ended.

The title passed to Nicolas, and the lands that went with them. The château was his now. Comte Nicolas de Vallerand was a rich man, just as Antoine would have been finally, if he had lived long enough to enjoy it. He had survived his father by less than two weeks. None of this was what Beata had expected. She didn't mind losing what she'd never had, and cared nothing for. All she cared about was that she had lost Antoine.

In time, a man Antoine had known and liked took over his job at the stables. Gérard and Véronique helped Beata find a house in Cologne. Beata and the girls moved into it that summer. She received a