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of Arts was founded in 1768? She’d studied the paintings of Gainsborough and Reynolds but preferred the work of Hogarth, whose dark, satirical scenes of life she found more intriguing. She had liked the enrichment her studies provided but truly, what good could they do her, other than enabling her to teach history, perhaps? Or become a historian? Neither of these options appealed. She hardly needed the money.
    She’d returned to Wales for the long summer break, but had rejected her parents’ suggestion to join them at their holiday cottage in Brittany in favour of taking up her cousin’s invitation to visit Cornwall and enjoy some summery days inPenzance, where she could think and make decisions. It was there that she’d decided she would answer the nagging voice in her mind and set out on the journey that she’d not discussed with anyone yet: writing a novel. It was such an exciting notion it seemed truly all-consuming. She felt ready to sit down and write. It would be fiction, of course. Historical fiction? She wasn’t sure.
    She hadn’t known what she wanted to do with her life four months earlier. Did she want a career? Did she want to remain in academia? Did she want to join the family retail business? Or did she just want to travel for a year? She could, for her allowance from her parents was generous, plus they’d offered to buy both their daughters a house or an apartment, whichever they preferred, in any city they liked. She was embarrassed that her life was so easy and had hesitated to go hunting for property, despite her father’s urgings.
    ‘London, New York, Paris, Rome … Cardiff,’ he’d quipped over the phone. ‘Just find what you want and let’s get you settled into a place of your own.’ She could hear her mother coaching him in the background, no doubt forgetting just how sensitive phones were today. Jane loved her for it, could hear how much her mum wanted to encourage her to spread her wings, even while feeling the umbilical cord straining, wishing she could keep her child close.
    ‘… and dowsers are getting quite a following,’ Will was saying beside her. ‘But then, water is energy, and animals and birds have followed instinctive pathways for centuries. Which of us can categorically say that they aren’t tapping into some energy line that guides them to a watering hole, or fruitful feeding grounds, or nesting sites?’
    She blinked herself out of her thoughts, smiling at him. ‘It’s a tough one,’ she said noncommittally.
    ‘I don’t believe you’ve heard anything I’ve said,’ he chastised.
    ‘I hang on your every word, William Maxwell of Nithsdale.’
    ‘Have you been looking into my history?’
    She shrugged. ‘No, but maybe I should learn more. Do you know anything about him?’
    Will paused outside a shop selling outrageously priced shoes and handbags. The shop had Jane’s instant attention.
    ‘Know about him? My mother dines off him, Jane. Scottish noble, fought at the Battle of Preston, thrown into the Tower by the King of England, sentenced to death as a traitor … yadda yadda.’
    ‘You’re kidding!’ She turned from the black patent-leather loafers that she’d been studying in the shop window to look at her fiancé.
    He grinned. ‘I’m not.’
    ‘So, yadda yadda?’ Jane shook her head slightly. ‘What happened?’ His background had genuinely pricked her interest; which student of history wouldn’t be sucked in by that ancestry?
    ‘I’m bored with it,’ he said, waving off her curiosity. ‘My mother tells every girl I’ve ever gone out with that we’re related to the famous Nithsdales. And you know how we Americans love even the vaguest notion of a royal link to Britain. I think some women have hung around me not because I was fascinating them, but because they loved the whiff of noble ancestry.’
    ‘Sorry for mentioning it,’ she said. ‘Hate to be like all the others,’ she added, feigning a pointed tone.
    He ignored the barb.