Patricia Cabot is the author of the critically acclaimed romances A Little Scandal, An Improper Proposal, Portrait of My Heart, and Where Roses Grow Wild. "It is a true joy to listen to Patricia Cabot's unique voice," raved Romantic Times, and readers everywhere can look forward to Educating Caroline, the next thrilling novel from this rising star, coming soon from Pocket Books. She is also the author of two series of young adult novels, which have been optioned for film and television. Patricia Cabot lives in New York City with her husband.

Chapter 1 Lyming, ScotlandFebruary 1847 The ferryman was dead.There was no doubt about it. The fellow had no pulse. His skin was like ice. His pupils were dilated, his eyes glassy and staring. Reilly Stanton didn't need a medical license to tell him that this man was no longer among the living.But Reilly wasn't the one who needed convincing. It was the wizened fisherman stooped over beside him who seemed to be suffering from some doubts."What's ailing him, then?" the old man asked, his breath turning instantly to steam in the cold winter air."Aye." The fisherman's question was echoed by several of his peers, all of whom had come to stare down at the corpse, as well as at Reilly, who'd had the ill judgment to plunge into the frigid water after the drowning man."I'm afraid," Reilly said, lifting his dripping head from the dead man's equally sodden chest, "that he's gone.""Gone?" The eldest of the fishermen blinked down at him. "What do you mean, gone?""Well, passed on." Seeing the blank expressions on the faces around him, Reilly tried again. "Expired."The wordexpiredhad always worked well enough on the families of Reilly's patients back in Mayfair. It was clear, however, that delicacy was wasted on these particular fellows, and so Reilly said, enunciating with difficulty through teeth that were beginning to chatter with the cold, "I'm afraid your friend is dead.""Dead?" The old man exchanged incredulous glances with his companions. "Stuben's dead?"Reilly rose to his knees -- no small feat, since his once fine breeches were stiff with frozen saltwater -- and looked longingly toward the alehouse. At least, itlookedlike an alehouse. It was the structure nearest the pier where they now stood, and through the fog Reilly could see that there was a sign swinging above the door, and warm and welcoming lights in the windows. An alehouse, a whorehouse, Reilly didn't care what it was, so long as he was soon in it, drying off and warming up before a fire, preferably with a glass of whisky in his hand.But first, of course, there was the dead ferryman to be seen to."But that canna be," the toothless fisherman insisted. "Stuben canna be dead. He's never died before.""Well, that's the nature of death, isn't it?" Reilly managed a sympathetic smile. "We tend to do it just the once.""No' Stuben." Around the corpse, shaggy gray heads nodded emphatically. "He's gone under many a time, has Stuben, and he's no' died before now.""Well." Reilly tried to picture some of his more learned peers -- Pearson, for instance, with his ubiquitous cigar, or Shelley, with that ridiculous silver-handled cane he didn't need -- standing on this desolate pier, arguing the semantics of death with this motley group, and failed.Well, Pearson and Shelley had too much sense to have signed on for such an assignment. Too much sense, and nothing like Reilly's blue-eyed, golden-haired impetus.He said, "Well, gentlemen, I'm afraid he didn't make it this time. I'm very sorry for your loss. But he was clearly intoxicated -- "This was, of course, the grossest of understatements. The ferryman had been so blind drunk Reilly had almost asked if there wasn't some other boat he could hire for the trip across the water. But he'd stopped himself at the last minute. What was the worst, he'd wondered, that could come of a drunk ferryman? That the boat might run aground, or worse, sink?So he'd drown in the frigid and tumultuous waters off the coast of the Scottish Highlands. So what? It wasn't as if he had anything much to live for, anyway. Christine, back in London, would hear of his drowning and would have to live with the knowledge that Reilly Stanton had died in an effort to win her love...Of course, when the stupid man had lost his footing and slipped into the sea just as they were docking, Reilly hadn't given a thought to his own safety, much less to w