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matter of time before I come to my senses.”
    “Don’t be discouraged. Prove them wrong. You’re in a most unique situation, Ravensmoore.” Melton clapped a hand on Devlin’s shoulder. “You have a foot in two very different worlds.”
    “And it’s likely I’ll never be accepted in either.” Devlin sat back in his seat and considered his dilemma for the hundredth time. Surely he hadn’t miscalculated God’s plan. Had he?

     
    Despite the ache in her arm, after breakfast Madeline walked to the family chapel and resting place. She’d not slept well because of the pain, and her dreams had left her unsettled and restless. This was the only place she felt the presence of the beloved family that she missed so much, and the peace and quiet there were a balm to her soul.
    The path to the chapel took her to the east side of the house. She followed a red brick trail leading through a garden that would bloom with roses and tulips at the right time. Perfect yellow daffodils sprouted up through the rich soil, a sign of an early spring, she hoped. Still, her breath showed itself in a steamy vapor every time she exhaled. And for some reason that made her think of God. She wondered if God was like her breath in the light morning breeze— always there but only visible under certain conditions.
    She’d been filled with doubts after her father’s death. Doubts that she kept to herself for fear of criticism from her mother and even Hally. Fear that her faith wasn’t strong enough to be useful. Fear that she would offend God. Madeline had frequently wondered about death. What did it feel like to be dead? Would she become a spirit, or would she feel like she still had a body, only better? In the quiet solitude of prayer she’d imagined all of them together in heaven and wondered why the Lord had spared her and her mother.
    Hally had recommended that she quit coming to the chapel because she descended into sadness after each visit. But without her visits she felt she might go mad. Only here was she free to indulge her questions and tears, free to cry out to the God who seemed to have shut Himself away from her.
    “Why do I live? What is my purpose, Lord?” she asked aloud.
    The morning light streamed through the stained-glass windows, spreading rays of gold, blue, and green through the chapel like painted ribbons of prayer. She angrily wiped the tears off her face. Madeline wrapped one hand around the spindles of the crypt’s cold iron gate that separated her from those she’d lost. “Why did You take them from us?”
    A length of engraved marble inscribed with each family member’s name upon it indicated his or her presence in the crypt.
    Madeline placed her hand on the cold marble wall, touching each name, feeling the chill of where her brother and sisters now rested with their father. The chiseled date of each death remained a vivid reminder of her loss.
    Her eyes came level with the inscription in front of her. Be not afraid. She reached out and laid her hand on the words, trying to absorb them into her soul. Be not afraid.
    Miriam, her baby sister, had died in infancy, after being bled by a well-intentioned doctor. Madeline shivered at the memory of the sweet babe dying in her arms. “Be not afraid, little Miriam,” she whispered.
    Her gaze roamed over the other names, her younger brother and sister, Timothy and Catherine, both dead from smallpox. The doctor had refused to come near them, being afraid himself of the deadly and disfiguring disease. Her mother and she had cared for them both, but they died within days of each other.
    She slid to her knees, laying her head against the gate. “I don’t know what to do, Lord,” she wept. “Please help me. Papa always said I could do anything I wanted to do, but I cannot move forward without his strength.” If only you were still here, Papa… if only—
    A hand touched the tears on her cheek. Madeline gasped and lurched away, wrenching her sprained arm. She