His wife lay on the floor, her ebony hair fanned out like a raven’s wings. Her eyes were open. Three sunbursts of blood stained her white blouse.

He dropped to his knees beside her. “No,” he said. “No.” He touched her face, felt the warmth still lingering in her cheeks. He pressed his ear to her chest, her bloodied chest, and heard no heartbeat, no breath. A sob burst forth from his throat, a disbelieving cry of grief. “Madeline!”

As the echo of her name faded, there came another sound behind him-footsteps. Soft, approaching…

Bernard turned. In bewilderment, he stared at the pistol-Madeline’s pistol-now pointed at him. He looked up at the face hovering above the barrel. It made no sense-no sense at all!

“Why?” asked Bernard.

The answer he heard was the dull thud of the silenced automatic. The bullet’s impact sent him sprawling to the floor beside Madeline. For a few brief seconds, he was aware of her body close beside him, and of her hair, like silk against his fingers. He reached out and feebly cradled her head. My love, he thought. My dearest love.

And then his hand fell still.

One

Buckinghamshire, England

Twenty years later

Jordan Tavistock lounged in Uncle Hugh’s easy chair and amusedly regarded, as he had a thousand times before, the portrait of his long-dead ancestor, the hapless Earl of Lovat. Ah, the delicious irony of it all, he thought, that Lord Lovat should stare down from that place of honor above the mantelpiece. It was testimony to the Tavistock family’s sense of whimsy that they’d chosen to so publicly display their one relative who’d, literally, lost his head on Tower Hill-the last man to be officially decapitated in England-unofficial decapitations did not count.