Sheridan's father's preoccupation with returning to Sherwyn's Glen seemed to start after her mother's death. What puzzled Sheridan for a long while, however, was exactly why her papa wanted to go back there so badly, particularly when the most important man in the village seemed to be an evil, proud, monster of a man named Squire Faraday who lorded it over everyone and who would not make a good neighbor at all when her papa built his mansion right next to his home, which was his intention.

She knew her papa had first met Squire Faraday when he delivered a very valuable horse from Ireland that the squire had purchased for his daughter, and she knew that since her father had no close family alive in Ireland, he'd decided to stay on and work for the squire as a groom and horse trainer. But not until she was eleven years old did she discover that the wicked, coldhearted, hateful, arrogant Squire Faraday was actually her mama's own father!

She'd always wondered why her father had taken her mother away from her beloved village and then spirited her off to America, along with her mother's elder sister, who then settled in Richmond and refused to budge another inch. It had always seemed a little strange that the only thing they took with them, besides the clothing on their persons and a small sum of money, was a horse called Finish Line-a horse that her mama had loved enough to bring along and pay his passage, and yet one she had sold soon after they arrived in America.

The few times her parents had spoken of their departure from England, it had always seemed hasty somehow, and vaguely unhappy too, but she couldn't imagine why that would have been so.