the town was moaning and sweating. In the de Spenser house, only Rose did not contract the sickness. She worked day and night to care for her family.
In a matter of weeks, a quarter of Loam Village was dead. Nearly everyone had lost family members, but the de Spenser house was hardest hit. Gregor, Briana, and Kenna all passed over, leaving Rose and Seamus too shocked to even mourn.
Worse, Seamus blamed himself.
Rose had survived the untimely death of her father, but this was almost too much to bear, and at the same time she was forced into dealing with business matters—as there was no one else. Seamus was too young to take over his father’s profession, and yet he inherited the house and his father’s money. Old Quentin, one of the village elders, helped Rose to sort these matters, and she was surprised to learn the size of her brother’s wealth. She and Seamus would want for nothing . . . except for their lost family.
Sometimes, later, looking back, Rose did not know how she and Seamus survived the cold, empty sorrow of those first few years together. She loved him, but she was not his mother. She was not even the mothering kind.
Still, she did her best.
They were both comfortable that he never called her “Mother” or even “Auntie,” and he always called her “Rose.”
She went on working as a midwife, and he took over some of the household tasks. She continued teaching him his numbers and reading and writing—as his mother had. Day by day, they slowly created a life together.
In his early teens, he talked her into going to a horse fair, and she let him buy two half-wild colts. He brought them home and put countless hours into training them, and then sold them to a young lord in Inverness for a decent profit.
He had stumbled upon his own path, as a horse trader.
One morning, Rose woke up and made their tea and walked out to watch him patiently training his newest acquisition, a lovely dappled gray. She smiled.
“I’ll get breakfast,” she called.
Two hours after washing the dishes, she had her first conscious painful thought that day of Gregor, Briana, and Kenna. But then she realized this was the first morning since their deaths that half the morning had passed before such pain hit her.
The next day, she did not suffer their loss until midafternoon.
And she knew she would recover.
At seventeen, Seamus had grown taller than Rose. He was strong and honest and sure of himself. Between his house and his inheritance and his growing reputation as a horse trader, he was considered by far to be the best “catch” in the village, and several families approached Rose with possible offers.
But she heard none of it.
If Seamus wished to hook himself to a girl, that was his choice, not hers.
As of yet, he’d shown no interest in taking a wife.
Perhaps he was like her, and he never would marry.
Staring into the looking glass one night, Rose wondered what had become of the girl who felt such joy at bringing him into the world, holding his squirming warm body to her breast. At the age of thirty-four, her face showed no lines, but her long, brown hair held streaks of silver.
Just as when she was a child, she knew some of the villagers were beginning to view her as strange. A peculiar spinster, obsessed with new babies, but wanting none of her own.
Why had she never married?
Perhaps because no man ever stirred her.
That all changed one night after supper when Seamus suddenly announced he felt like going to the pub.
“The pub?” she asked. “When did you ever feel like going to the pub?”
“Tonight.” He smiled. “Come with me.”
She picked up his plate. “There must be some crowd from the horse fairs visiting?” she ventured, teasing him. “Some men you want to buy a colt from cheap? Or maybe it’s a girl you’re chasing?”
He shrugged. “A few men from the horse fairs. I see nothing wrong with sharing a pint and starting a conversation.”
She laughed and got her cloak. In truth, a pint and a little company appealed to her tonight. Spring was just around the corner, and the gray days of winter would soon be past.
She did not remember what she and Seamus chatted about that night as they walked into the village proper and down the main path toward the Black Bull—one of only two pubs in Loam. She remembered going inside, feeling the welcome warmth,