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Chapter 1
K Cty, Mu
Early April 1870
I 
have no intention o Lydia inheriting any o Father’s money,”
Mitchell Gray announced. “She’s nothing to this amily—anoutsider imposed upon us ater the death o our mother. She’s
entitled to nothing.”
“Hush,” his younger sister, Evie, replied. “She’s just in the
next room.”Sitting alone in the ormal parlor that had displayed her hus-band’s closed con only hours earlier, Lydia Gray rocked quietly.
She allowed the hatred o his grown children to wash over her
and numb any concerns or ears she might have otherwise given
credence. With exception to Evie, they had hated her rom the rst
moment she’d entered their home—not that Lydia could blame
them. She’d hated nearly everything about her twelve years o mar-
riage to Floyd Gray. Nothing would change their eelings now.
 
10
TraCie PeTerson
And so she rocked.
I’m only twenty-eight
, she reasoned. Twenty-eight years old,
and nearly hal o those years had been spent in an abusive mar-riage to a man who treated his horses better than he’d treated hiswie. His
 second
wie.Lydia glanced up at the portrait o the children’s mother. The
oil painting had been commissioned at Charlotte Gray’s request or
her husband’s Christmas git in 1858. Ater presenting it to him in
the morning, Charlotte promptly excused hersel rom her amily’s
revelry and leaped to her death rom the widow’s walk. She hadbeen thirty-seven years old and had let behind two grown sons, atwelve-year-old daughter, Jeannette, and our-year-old Eve.
The sorrowul gaze o the blond-haired Charlotte stared down
rom the wall. Her lonely expression had haunted Lydia since
she’d rst come to this house—it bore a look o pain that Lydiaunderstood rsthand. It was almost as i the two shared a bondthat crossed between the living and the dead. Many had beenthe time Lydia had come to this room just to rock and stare at
the painting.“The will can be read immediately, and once we see what thathas to say,” Marston, Mitchell’s twin, announced, “we can be rido her. I can’t imagine that Father would have let her anything.I believe we should give her until the end o the month to settleher aairs and leave. It’s not like she has much to concern hersel with. Father never gave her anything o her own. It all belonged toMother. The jewelry, urnishings, and servants will stay here.”
“Then why give her until the end o the month?” JeannetteGray Stone questioned. Jeannette had resented the intrusion o 
her ather’s second marriage. It wasn’t that she missed her motherall that much, but she didn’t like her position as lady o the housebeing usurped by a stepmother—especially one only a ew yearsolder than Jeannette hersel.
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