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imitating my father’s voice so perfectly that I had to laugh.
    Damon walked out the door, and I followed, shrugging off my linen jacket. Suddenly the sunshine felt warmer, the grass felt softer, everything felt
better
than it had just minutes before.
    “Catch!” Damon yelled, finding me off guard. I lifted up my arms and caught the ball against my chest.
    “Can I play?” a female voice asked, breaking the moment.
    Katherine.
She was wearing a simple, lilac summer shift dress, and her hair was pulled into a bun at the base of her neck. I noticed that her dark eyes perfectly complemented the brilliant blue cameo necklace that rested in the hollow of her throat. I imagined lacing my fingers through her delicate hands, then kissing her white neck.
    I forced myself to tear my gaze away from her. “Katherine, this is my brother, Damon. Damon, this is Katherine Pierce. She is staying with us,” I said stiffly, glancing back and forth between them to gauge Damon’s reaction. Katherine’s eyes danced, as if she found my formality incredibly amusing. So did Damon’s.
    “Damon, I can tell you’re just as sweet as your brother,” she said in an exaggerated Southern accent. Even though it was a phrase any of the girls in the county would use when talking to a man, it sounded vaguely mocking coming from her lips.
    “We’ll see about that.” Damon smiled. “So, brother, shall we let Katherine play?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, suddenly hesitant. “What are the rules?”
    “Who needs rules?” Katherine asked, flashing a grin that revealed her perfectly straight, white teeth.
    I turned the ball in my hand. “My brother plays rough,” I warned.
    “Somehow I think I play rougher.” In one swoop, Katherine grabbed the ball from my grasp. As they had been the previous day, her hands were cold, like ice, despite the heat of the afternoon. Her touch sent a jolt of energy through my body and up to my brain. “Loser has to groom my horses!” she called as the wind whipped her hair behind her.
    Damon watched her run, then arched an eyebrow toward me. “That is a girl who wants to be chased.” With that, Damon dug his heels into the earth and ran, his powerful body hurtling down the hill toward the pond.
    After a second, I ran, too. I felt the wind whip around my ears. “I’ll get you!” I yelled. It was a phrase I’d have yelled when I was eight and playing games with the girls my age, but I felt that the stakes of this game were higher than anything I’d ever played in my life.

5
    T he next morning, I awoke to breathless news from Rosalyn’s servants that her prized dog, Penny, had been attacked. Mrs. Cartwright summoned me to her daughter’s chambers, saying nothing had stopped Rosalyn from crying. I tried to comfort her, but her wracking sobs never abated.
    The whole time, Mrs. Cartwright kept giving me disapproving glances, as if I should be doing a better job calming Rosalyn.
    “You have me,” I’d said at one point, if only to appease her. At that, Rosalyn had flung her arms around me, crying so hard into my shoulder that her tears left a wet mark on my waistcoat. I tried to be sympathetic, but I felt a stab of annoyance at the way she was carrying on. After all, I’d never carried on like that when mymother had died. Father hadn’t let me.
    You have to be strong, a fighter,
he’d said at the funeral. And so I was. I didn’t cry when, just a week after Mother’s death, our nanny, Cordelia, began absentmindedly humming the French lullaby Mother had always sung. Not when Father took down the portrait of Mother that had hung in the front room. Not even when Artemis, Mother’s favorite horse, had to be put down.
    “Did you see the dog?” Damon asked, as we walked into town together that night to get a drink at the tavern. Now that the dinner where I was to publicly propose to Rosalyn was just days away, we were heading out for a whiskey to celebrate my impending nuptials. At least, that’s what