Widow Hussey-Spooning, a matronly woman with a large inheritance and even larger heart, took pity on the infant Rosemead and used her influence to alter church and state records in her favor. Rosemead was cast into a pool of doting servants who raised her. She enjoyed her childhood on the coat tails of the rich widow’s own daughter. The two played and learned together under the watchful eye of a rather stern governess.
When Rosemead turned thirteen, she was given to Lady Ciara Bell-Campbell as a governess for the Campbell’s baby daughter, Aidan. Rosemead doted on the little one and educated her properly. She was overly protective of Aidan and frowned on Monty McCody’s persistent presence. Her attempts to sway Aidan away from Monty were in vain. The destiny of Monty and Aidan was a foregone conclusion. When they married Rosemead felt a terrible void. She yearned for a life of her own but had none. She held back dark desires that often surfaced in strange dreams of exotic grass huts, jewels and gold, and an enormously well-endowed warrior husband. She often woke up from these dreams with tears streaming down her face yet never understood why.
Last year Rosemead made a discovery in the McCody’s attic at Hawkpen Manor that changed her life. A while back, the Major-General sent a carved statue home from India. One day while in the attic, Rosemead was drawn in the direction of the statue by a deep voice. The voice belonged to Pasha, the mystical statue that had been the warrior in Rosemead’s dreams as well as her groom in a previous existence several centuries earlier. Rosemead was finally on the path to a life of her own. Where the path would eventually lead, was unknown.
