Nashville, Tennessee January 12, 1871

Rebekah Carrington stood shivering across the street from her childhood home, satchel heavy in hand, cloak dusted with snow. She counted the strides it would take to reach the front door. How could such a brief distance feel so insurmountable, so much greater a course to navigate than the ocean she'd just traversed? She wished she could blink and be back in Vienna.

After ten years, Austria felt more like home than the city in which she'd been born and lived the first half of her life. But the letter delivered nearly four weeks ago, only days before Christmas, had changed every —

The front door to the house opened.

Rebekah pressed into the shadow of a nearby evergreen, its pungent pine needles sharp and prickly with cold. She lowered her head to peer through the icy branches — breath fogging, hanging ghostlike in the air — and her stomach turned with something more than hunger.

It was him.

How many times since leaving Nashville had she pictured the man?

Yet looking at him now, a decade later, through a woman's perspective, he seemed so different than when she'd peered up at him as a girl of thirteen. Though thicker through the middle with age, he was still tall, standing nearly six feet, and still possessed a commanding presence.

But he wasn't quite the towering figure her memory had conjured.

For years, recollections of the encounters — and that one night, in particular — had haunted her. With time and distance, she'd moved beyond it. She was no longer that young, naive girl, and she wasn't afraid of him anymore.

So why was her heart all but beating out of her chest? She straightened her spine, pulling her courage up along with it.

Her stepfather climbed into a carriage, one far grander than what she remembered him and her mother owning years earlier. Perhaps a purchase he'd made with money he'd gained in a recent inheritance.

That possibility only deepened her resentment toward him, and made her question, yet again, the untimeliness of her grandmother's recent passing.

Not a word from Grandmother Carrington about feeling unwell, much less being ill, and then the shocking news of her "sudden and tragic death." It didn't make sense, and the ache of loss reached deep.

Rebekah eyed the carriage, and the silhouette of the man inside.

Barton Ledbetter was not an honorable man, she knew that well enough. But surely he wasn't so devoid of morals that he would have dared to —

"Who you hidin' from?"

Rebekah jumped and spun, her thoughts veering off track.

A young boy peered up from beneath the bill of a ragged red cap, his belligerent expression repeating the question.

She frowned. "I'm not hiding from anyone."

The tilt of his head told her he thought differently.

"I was merely ... considering my plans." Hedging the truth, she found the tug at her conscience easily allayed by the fact that her actions were decidedly none of this boy's business.

A half-empty sack of newspapers hung from a slim shoulder. And as though he sensed an opportunity, he whipped one out, rolled it up in a flash, and offered it to her as though presenting the crown jewels of the Habsburg family.

"Nickel for a paper, miss. Make it two" — a smirk tipped one side of his mouth — "and I'll keep quiet 'bout what I seen."

Rebekah eyed him. "And what exactly is it you think you've seen?"

"I caught you spyin'. On that family what lives right there." He pointed to the house.

She looked back at the carriage. It was about to pass her! Her stepfather looked up, seemingly straight at her. And she froze. He and her mother weren't expecting her until tomorrow. She'd arrived a day early due to fair weather while crossing the Atlantic, but —

She pressed into the spiky secrecy of the pinon pine, realizing she wasn't ready to face him after all. She needed time to plan her next steps — steps that would take her away from him. And sadly, from her mother too. Unless ... she could persuade her mother to leave with her.

The carriage continued, and only after it turned the corner did Rebekah breathe easier.

"Well, lady? What's it gonna be?"

She turned back to find the boy still there, watching her, triumph in his expression. Recognizing an opportunist when she saw one, she leveled a stare. "You don't even know who resides there, young man."

"Yes, I do!" His tone and set of jaw were almost convincing. "That man there" He pointed in the direction the carriage had gone. "Him and his wife. That's their place. I see em comin' and goin' all the time."

Judging from his meager height and frame, Rebekah didn't think the boy more than seven or eight years old. He was on the lean side, as though regular meals were a scarcity, and his threadbare coat was tattered at the collar and absent its buttons. But he had a shrewdness about him she recognized. Similar to that of boys his age who'd grown up on the streets of Vienna. It was a savvy she both admired and pitied.

No child should be without a home, a safe place from the world. And yet having a home didn't necessarily guarantee a child's safekeeping, she knew.

An idea came to her, and she set down her satchel. She hadn't been raised on the streets, but neither was she an innocent. She reached into her reticule, deciding that — either way this went — the decision about her homecoming would be made for her, and she would accept it.

"I'll purchase one newspaper for myself." She met his scowl with a firm stare. "Along with another. And I'll give you an extra nickel if you'll agree to do something for me."

His eyes narrowed. "What's it you're wantin' me to do?"

"Deliver the second newspaper to that house across the street. Knock on the door, and when the housekeeper answers"— which Rebekah felt certain she would —"ask her to deliver the paper to Mrs. Ledbetter. If Mrs. Ledbetter is at home."

A grin split his face. "Told you, you was spyin'!"

She stared. "Do you want to earn an extra nickel or not?"

He adjusted his cap. "What if she ain't home? You gonna try 'n cheat me outta my money?"

"Not at all. You'll still get three nickels either way. Do we have ourselves a deal?"

He held her gaze, then nodded once, slowly, as though considering another, unspoken, alternative. "I'll do it, just like you said."

Rebekah took the newspaper from him and pressed three coins into his grimy palm. His brown eyes lit, and she gripped the hem of his coat sleeve, having seen how swiftly these boys could run. "I warn you, young man, I'm fast on my feet. Keep your word or risk being chased down the street by a girl."

He snickered. "You ain't no girl. You a lady. And ladies, they never run."

She narrowed her eyes. "This one does."

His expression sobered as he turned, but Rebekah was certain she glimpsed a trace of amusement — and admiration — in his eyes.

From her niche behind the tree, she watched him pause at the edge of the street, waiting for conveyances to pass. She pulled her cloak collar closer around her neck as the flutter of nerves resumed in her stomach, same as happened every time she imagined seeing her mother again after all these years.

Her grandmother had managed to visit Austria every two years, staying a handful of months when she did. But...