REMEMBER WHEN
HOT ICE
SACRED SINS
BRAZEN VIRTUE
SWEET REVENGE
PUBLIC SECRETS
GENUINE LIES
CARNAL INNOCENCE
DIVINE EVIL
HONEST ILLUSIONS
PRIVATE SCANDALS
HIDDEN RICHES
NORTHERN LIGHTS
TRUE BETRAYALS
MONTANA SKY
SANCTUARY
HOMEPORT
THE REEF
RIVER’S END
CAROLINA MOON
THE VILLA
MIDNIGHT BAYOU
THREE FATES
BIRTHRIGHT
BLUE DAHLIA
BLACK ROSE
RED LILY
KEY OF LIGHT
KEY OF KNOWLEDGE
KEY OF VALOR
JEWELS OF THE SUN
TEARS OF THE MOON
HEART OF THE SEA
SEA SWEPT
RISING TIDES
INNER HARBOR
CHESAPEAKE BLUE
DANCE UPON THE AIR
HEAVEN AND EARTH
FACE THE FIRE
BORN IN FIRE
BORN IN ICE
BORN IN SHAME
DARING TO DREAM
HOLDING THE DREAM
FINDING THE DREAM
FROM THE HEART
A LITTLE MAGIC
A LITTLE FATE
MOON SHADOWS
ONCE UPON A CASTLE
ONCE UPON A STAR
ONCE UPON A DREAM
ONCE UPON A ROSE
ONCE UPON A KISS
ONCE UPON A MIDNIGHT
NAKED IN DEATH
GLORY IN DEATH
IMMORTAL IN DEATH
RAPTURE IN DEATH
CEREMONY IN DEATH
VENGEANCE IN DEATH
HOLIDAY IN DEATH
CONSPIRACY IN DEATH
LOYALTY IN DEATH
WITNESS IN DEATH
JUDGMENT IN DEATH
BETRAYAL IN DEATH
SEDUCTION IN DEATH
REUNION IN DEATH
PURITY IN DEATH
PORTRAIT IN DEATH
IMITATION IN DEATH
DIVIDED IN DEATH
VISIONS IN DEATH
SURVIVOR IN DEATH
SILENT NIGHT
OUT OF THIS WORLD
THE OFFICIAL NORA ROBERTS COMPANION
Grafting and budding involve joining two separate plants so that they function as one, creating a strong, healthy plant that has only the best characteristics as its two parents.
AMERICAN HORTICULTURE SOCIETY PLANT PROPAGATION
Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall; a mother’s secret hope outlives them all.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
prologue
SHE WAS DESPERATE, destitute, and demented.
Once she’d been a beautiful woman, a clever woman with one towering ambition. Luxury. She’d achieved it, using her body to seduce and her mind to calculate. She became the mistress of one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Tennessee.
Her house had been a showplace, decorated at her whim—and with Reginald’s money. There’d been servants to do her bidding, a wardrobe to rival the most sought-after courtesan in Paris. Jewelry, amusing friends, a carriage of her own.
She’d given gay parties. She’d been envied and desired.
She, the daughter of a biddable housemaid, had all her avaricious heart had desired.
She’d had a son.
It had changed her, that life she hadn’t wanted to carry inside her. It had become the center of her world, the single thing she loved more than herself. She planned for her son, dreamed of him. Sang to him while he lay sleeping in her womb.
She delivered him into the world with pain, such pain, but with joy, too. The joy of knowing when the pain was done, she would hold her precious son in her arms.
They told her she delivered a girl child. They told her the baby was stillborn.
They lied.
She’d known it even then, even when she was wild with grief, even when she sank into the pit of despair. Even when she went mad, she knew it for a lie. Her son lived.
They’d stolen her baby from her. Held him for ransom. How could it be otherwise when she could
But it hadn’t been the midwife and doctor who’d taken her child. Reginald had taken what was hers, using his money to buy the silence of those who served him.
How she remembered the way he’d stood in her parlor, coming to her only after her months of grief and worry. Done with her, she thought as she buttoned the gray dress with trembling fingers. Finished now that he had what he had wanted. A son, an heir. The one thing his cold-blooded wife hadn’t been able to provide.
He’d used her, then taken her single treasure, as if he had the
