December 1, 1819

Casphairn Manor, the Vale of Casphairn

Galloway Hills, Scotland

She'd never had a vision like it before. Eyes-blue, blue-blue as the skies over Merrick's high head, blue as the cornflowers dotting the vale's fields. They were the eyes of a thinker, far-sighted yet focused.

Or the eyes of a warrior.

Catriona awoke, almost surprised to find herself alone. From the depths of her big bed, she scanned her familiar surrounds, the thick velvet curtains half shrouding the bed, their mates drawn tight across the windows beyond which the wind murmured, telling tales of the coming winter to any still awake. In the grate, embers gleamed, shedding a glow over polished wood, the soft sheen of the floor, the lighter hues of chair and dresser. It was deep night, the hour between one day and the next. All was reassuringly normal; nothing had changed.

Yet it had.

Her heart slowing, Catriona tugged the covers about her and considered the vision that had visited her-the vision of a man's face. The details remained strongly etched in her mind. Along with the conviction that this man would mean something, impinge on her life in some vital way.

He might even be the one The Lady had chosen for her.

The thought was not unwelcome. She was, after all, twenty-two, long past the age when girls invited lovers to their beds, when she might have expected to play her part in that never-ending rite. Not that she regretted that her life had been otherwise, which was just as well, for her path had been set from the instant of her birth. She was "the lady of the vale."

The title, one of local custom, was hers and hers alone, none other could claim it. As the only child of her parents, on their deaths, she'd inherited Casphairn Manor, along with the vale and its attendant responsibilities. Her mother had been the same, inheriting manor, lands, and position from her mother before her. Each of her direct female ancestors had been "the lady of the vale."