WHISPERS OF THE FORGOTTEN HEART

CHAPTER TWO

Ella Whitmore had always been perceptive. It was a skill perfected from years of observing people, studying their habits, their gestures, the way they spoke when they were telling the truth and when they were hiding something. And the stranger who had arrived in Evermere? He was hiding something.

She hadn't meant to linger on him after their brief encounter, but something about him unsettled her. He wasn't like the usual travelers who passed through town. He moved differently, carried himself with a quiet strength that didn't belong to a mere tradesman. His hands, though roughened from travel, weren't the hands of a man who had labored his whole life. And then there were his eyes - deep, calculating, but also weary. Like a man carrying a weight too heavy for one soul

Ella had seen suffering before. She had lived through her own.

Standing in front of her bookshop, she absently twisted the silver ring on her finger, a habit whenever she was lost in thought. The wind rustled through the market square, carrying snippets of conversation from vendors and customers alike.

"Who do you think he is?" Rosalind, her younger sister, nudged her playfully. "He's rather handsome, don't you think?"

Ella shot her a look. "You're too young to be interested in such things."

Rosalind laughed, her bright auburn curls bouncing as she folded a length of finely woven fabric. "I'm old enough to know when a man is catching stares," she said. "And believe me, half the women in Evermere are already whispering about him."

Ella sighed. "I doubt he'll stay long."

"Perhaps. But he's interesting." Rosalind wiggled her eyebrows. "You think so too, don't you?"

Ella shook her head, but she couldn't deny the truth. Yes, he was interesting but not in the way Rosalind meant. She sensed danger around him, though not the kind that made her want to run. Instead, it made her want to look closer, to figure him out.

Why had he come here? And what was he running from?

××××××××

Across the Market Square

Xander had felt the woman's gaze on him long before he turned to meet it. Ella Whitmore.

He had learned her name from the whispers around town. A healer, well respected but guarded. The daughter of a man accused of treason. Someone who, like him, carried ghosts from the past.

Standing near the blacksmith's forge, he tightened his grip on the package he had just collected, some simple tools he needed for the work he had taken at the inn's stables. It was temporary, but it would allow him to move freely, to observe, to plan.

He hadn't expected to attract attention so quickly. He had spent years mastering the art of blending in, yet something about this town and about her made him feel seen. And he wasn't sure if he liked it.

As he turned to leave, their gazes locked again, just for a moment.

Ella didn't look away.

Neither did he.

××××××××

By nightfall, the whispers had already begun to grow louder. The stranger, James Turner, was polite enough, but he was too careful with his words, too skilled with his hands to be an ordinary worker, and too well-mannered to be a common man.