Cecilia, five years and nine months before

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Cecilia stared down at her phone, seeing her outgoing call list full to the brim.

None of which had been answered.

She sat in the bridal suite, her makeup as flawless as she could manage and her hair done up in braids that weren’t as nice as her mother-in-law had done a few days before, but still looked pretty damned good thanks to several hours of tutorials on YouTube.

She’d been in the chapel for several hours.

Alone except for the priest.

Who kept assuring her that everyone must be on their way. The weather was the reason for the delay. That was all.

Except . . . the day was clear. The roads weren’t bogged down by mud or at a standstill because of an accident. She’d checked. There was nothing stopping anyone from coming.

And she was by herself.

The priest hadn’t even been able to keep the doubt out of his voice the last time she’d come out to check and see if the pews had magically filled. They hadn’t and her dread was growing by the second.

“Stay as long as you need, dearie,” he’d told her.

What if Colin had been hurt? She had no way to get back to him. She knew the Stewart estate wasn’t far, but she didn’t even know the direction of the McGregor lands. If she’d driven herself, she would know, but she hadn’t either time and now she was stuck and disoriented and alone.

And worried.

God, why couldn’t someone return her calls or texts?

She had to know if Colin was okay.

Dammit, this was ridiculous. Her wedding was supposed to have taken place a full hour before. Something had obviously gone wrong and so she was going to take off this beautiful dress, put on her jeans, and strike out for the main house. One of the Stewarts would certainly be able to get her to the McGregor estate.

She was just slipping into her button down when there was a knock on the door. But whoever was on the other side didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead, they pushed through and strode into the bridal room.

CeCe held her breath. Colin had come. Everything would be fine—

Except it wasn’t Colin.

A man she’d only seen in pictures paused when he saw her shirt was only half-buttoned. He was taller than she’d expected, but his brown hair and eyes were the color of Bowen’s mane. It was pretty on a horse, though a little plain on a man.

“Och. Sorry.” He whipped around to face the door as she did up the rest of the buttons.

“I’m okay now,” she murmured and he rotated to face her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was getting worried and planned on heading back to the main house to find out what’s going on.” Straightening the sleeves of her wedding dress on the hanger, she said, “You’re Ewan, right?” A nod in response. “Colin showed me your picture.”

“We’re old school friends,” he agreed, shutting the door behind him.

The prickle of unease she’d been feeling grew exponentially. “From primary school, if I remember correctly?” She chuckled and fussed with the lace on the skirt of the dress, smoothing out the minute wrinkles, making sure it was perfectly flat and even. “It’s funny. In the states, we call it elementary school, but then again a lot of terms are different. University and college. Nappy for a diaper. You even add extra letters in words like color and flavor.” Another awkward laugh when Ewan didn’t reply. “Crazy, isn’t it?”

Ewan sighed. “Cecilia—”

“I-uh—” She scrambled for something to say because he couldn’t be about to tell her that Colin was hurt or . . . No. He was fine. Everything was going to be perfectly fine. “And take food, for instance. You guys are so much closer to Italy but, frankly, your pizza sucks.”

Ewan had started to open his mouth, but at her statement he closed it and tilted his head, studying her as though she were a tick under a microscope.

“I’m sorry.” She finally got it together. “I ramble when I’m nervous sometimes, and I’m really worried about Colin. Is he okay?”

“I don’t know if he could possibly be okay, given the circumstances.”

The harsh words made her knees buckle. She hit the floor hard, probably bruising her knees to hell and back.

But Colin was hurt and that was a much worse pain.

“Oh, my God,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What happened? How badly is he hurt?”

“What do you mean what happened?” Ewan snapped. “Of course he’s hurt. You’ve broken him.”

Cecilia blinked, her eyes burning. “I don’t understand.”

Ewan’s expression was unfeeling. Cold. “You succeeded, you treacherous little bitch. He trusted you and y-you broke him.”

Slowly, she climbed to her feet. “I. Don’t. Understand.” She grabbed onto Ewan’s lapels. “I need you to take me to him. I need to see he’s okay.”

He roughly knocked her hands away. “Of course he’s not okay.” His face was in hers. “And it’s your fault.”

“And I don’t understand how that could possibly be!” she screamed, having had enough. Ewan jumped back and she snatched up her purse, pushing through the door, and all but sprinting down the hallway.

Ewan recovered quickly because she heard his footsteps chasing hers, pounding against the old wood floor. CeCe didn’t stop, just pushed outside and started running in the direction of the huge house she could see in the distance.

And got all of two steps before Ewan had grabbed her arm and yanked her to a stop.

“Oof,” she gasped as she found herself shoved against the church’s stone wall.

“I’m not letting you go until you tell me why,” Ewan hissed. “How could you hurt him so badly? Why go after his money when he would have given you anything you asked for? Because he was young and stupid and broke your heart once upon a time?”

By now Cecilia was hurting, confused, and more than a little pissed.

So she put one of the skills she’d learned in her college self-defense class to good use and kicked Ewan straight in the groin.

He dropped like a stone, but she didn’t pay any attention to his writhing, groaning form, or the fact that she’d physically assaulted someone on church grounds.

Her eyes dropped to the object that had fallen out his pocket.

Her journal?

The private one she’d kept stashed under her sketchbook. The one she wrote her deepest darkest thoughts and worries in.

She opened the cover, saw her name inside. In her handwriting and then turned the page to read. And gasped. Then read on with a mental curse and the sickening ball of dread growing larger and larger in her stomach.

“Colin believes that I think this?” she asked as she scanned through another horrible diatribe against the man she loved and his family. “He actually believes it?”

Her heart ached. How could he know her so little? They were supposed to love each other, trust each other more than anyone else on the planet.

“It’s in your hand,” Ewan said, climbing to his feet with a wince. “Is it not?”

“It certainly appears to be. But then again”—Cecilia pointed to a word—“then again when was the last time a normal American girl called an apartment a flat?”

“I—”

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “Never. And I wouldn’t call the trunk of a car a bonnet or say that our honeymoon was a holiday. We go on vacation in the States, and a bonnet is an old-fashioned hat.” She shoved the book back into his hands. “So yes, this may appear to be in my handwriting, but I can assuredly tell you that this is not my journal. I love Colin. I want to marry him. I just don’t understand how he could—”

“Olivia,” Ewan said, horror tingeing his words. “She must have somehow gotten this. She’s a crack hand at copying, even used to forge our notes to get us out of school.”

“But why would she do this?” Cecilia asked. “I don’t even know her.”

Ewan shook his head, hesitated then took her arm. “Their fathers have always wanted Colin and Olivia to marry. Recently, she decided that was what she wanted as well.”

“And Lana, apparently.” CeCe remembered now, Lana going into her drawer to borrow the sketchbook. Her eyes slid closed and she asked a question that she really didn’t want to know the answer to, but had to find out anyway. “Who gave Colin the journal?”

A beat. “From what I understand, Bridget is the one who discovered it this morning. Said you’d pressured her for an expensive wedding dress, ridiculously expensive food for the wedding breakfast—”

“She ordered the dress. Wouldn’t take no for an answer when I told her it was too much,” CeCe said with a sinking feeling. “And she made all of the menu choices.”

Ewan continued, “She also provided a bank receipt for withdrawals from Colin’s accounts totaling more than ten thousand pounds and a recording saying you weren’t looking forward to standing up in front of everyone.”

“What?” she shrieked.

“The account was in your name. The recording in your voice.”

“It was only half of my sentence.” Bridget had conveniently left off the part about her being thrilled to be marrying Colin.

Cecilia dropped her head into her hands. All the information swirling around her skull was making her mind spin.

“Here.”

Her eyes flashed up and she saw a phone extended in her direction. “Call him,” Ewan said.

She shook her head. “He’s not taking my calls.”

Ewan pressed a button and the phone began to ring as he pressed it to her ear. “But he’s taking mine.”

Another ring. Then finally, “H’llo?”

Colin’s voice was slurred as though he’d been drinking. “Hey,” she said gently. “It’s me. I think some stuff has gotten—”

“You fucking bitch!” he screamed so loudly that CeCe jumped and held the phone away from her ear. “I did everything for you! I gave you a place in this world. I made you more. Something other than the sniveling piece of American trash you came here as.” There was a slurp and then the sound of glass breaking. “And you fucking betrayed me.”

“Colin,” she said. “I didn’t, baby. I swear. I don’t care about your money or what happened two years ago. I love you.”

“No,” he spat.

“Yes,” she said, desperate now. “Someone—Olivia, your mom, your sister? I don’t know, maybe all of them. They’re trying to tear us apart. Please don’t let it—”

“I should have known better. If you were worth anything at all, your parents wouldn’t have disowned you.”

Words weren’t supposed to be able to wound, but Colin’s hurt so much that CeCe half-expected to be flayed open when she glanced down at her chest. She wasn’t, of course, but the physical blow of his words, the agony it unleashed in her heart was real.

“The only thing I’m guilty of is loving you.” Her voice was steady, thank God for that single miracle. “But don’t worry, I won’t make the mistake of doing that again.”

She hung up, wanting to chuck the phone across the grassy knoll outside the church, or maybe better, to turn and smash it against the rocky exterior walls of the chapel.

But it wasn’t hers.

And so she calmly handed it back to Ewan who said the two most useless words in the English language. “I’m sorry—”

She ignored him and picked up her purse before heading in what she hoped was the direction that would take her off the estate.

“Where are you going?”

Cecilia paused for the briefest moment. “Away from here.”

Ewan snagged her arm when she started moving again. “Come on.” He tugged her in the opposite direction, and she saw the black car that had driven her to the chapel that morning. “I’ll take you wherever you need to go.”