"Father. This isn't something we can take lightly."

The castle of the Hales earls. The study.

Arthur, the eldest son, turned a worried look on Earl Rupert.

Isabella had gone back to London — something urgent had come up.

That left Rupert and his two sons in the study.

Crackle. Crackle-crack.

A log fire was already burning in the fireplace.

October 3. Eight degrees in Scotland that morning.

A cold wind carrying damp swept the fields, one pass after another.

Even at midday the temperature sat around fifteen.

Under a gray sky, the old castle and the woods around it had turned the colors of autumn before anyone noticed.

Centuries of weather had gone over the castle, and it had been patched and rebuilt more than once.

Even thick stone walls couldn't shut out the Scottish cold that drove in this time of year.

So the fires at the Hales castle were lit earlier in the season than anywhere else.

"Arthur, is it that bad?"

Edward, the second son, put the question seriously.

His older brother rarely let that much worry show.

Over the harvest festival the family had hunted deer in the estate woods, the way tradition required.

The hunt was an old family occasion of the Hales earls, handed down generation to generation.

Tonight was the night the hunting ended.

They would also sit down over whatever the house had outstanding, before they all went back to work.

The three Hales men were rarely in one room together like this.

Isabella carried Hales blood too.

But the old traditions of the house still drew a clear line between the men and the women.

The earldom and the estate pass to the eldest son, and always have.

The world had moved on, and Isabella had earned one of the pillars of the Hales boutique for herself.

Go back a few generations and a daughter of the earl's house was married off to seal an alliance with some other noble family.

Crackle. Crackle-crack.

Earl Rupert sat in the rocking chair in front of the fireplace. A thick wool blanket lay…