Miss Natty, upon taking a short-cut through the woods, discovered a distressed
peddler holding an infant. Undernourished children hovered near their sickly
mother lying prone on the grass, a peddler's blue wagon nearby.
The father begged Natty to hold the infant as he tended his wife.
Sensing a dire need, she gathered the infant and ran to her cottage for milk and
bread returning to discover the wagon, and its occupants gone.
Sir Finbarr O'Bannon is not rebuilding Ashcourt Manor in his mother's memory –
he's rebuilding it to heal his own heart. Then, with a clear conscience, he intends
to sell it and be done with the past forever. He left Hawthorn Village at an early
age and ended up in Swansea, Wales working in the copper mines.
He's a strong, self-made, honorable man who holds the opinion that people are
only as good as their humanity toward others.
Miss Brianna Walsh frequently sets up an easel on the hill overlooking what was
once beautiful Ashcourt Manor. Her struggles with insecurity fade when she is
absorbed in painting the rundown exterior of Ashcourt. She embellishes the
canvas with flowers in the field, or a grinning elfin face in an upstairs window,
thus easing a feeling of rejection that lurks in the shadows of her mind. Because
like her, Ashcourt has been abandoned. She recently returned to her aunt's home
after three years as a governess in Dundalk.
Briana is an intelligent young woman who secretly struggles with insecurity
arresting any notion of a traditional future.
