Love Pursued

An Excerpt From: LOVE PURSUED

Copyright ? SANDRA HEATH, 2011

All Rights Reserved, Ellora's
Cave Publishing, Inc.

Chapter One

England,
1880

It was a bitterly cold St. Valentine?s Day morning and the
telltale shimmer beyond the mist told of sunshine to come, but Miss Alice Berrington was too upset to notice as she sat beside Williams
on the dog cart. Her worldly possessions were packed into two portmanteaux
at her feet and the coins she?d saved carefully from her yearly allowance
were clutched tightly in a little velvet purse inside her muff. Her hazel
eyes were lowered sadly as the cart bounced down the misty Somerset lane toward the country railway
station. She wore a ruby velvet mantle and gray merino gown, both several
years old, and the muff had once belonged to her malicious cousin Jessica.
Beneath a simple little gray bonnet that was tilted forward above her face,
her russet curls were piled up on top of her head and allowed to tumble
heavily past the nape of her neck. It was the most wretched Valentine?s Day
she had ever known, because her foolish heart had been broken.