Forbidden Stranger [antikvár]

PROLOGUEYorkshire, England March, 1895The first time Marissa saw the stranger, she was not quite ten years old. But she knew from the moment she saw him that she'd never forget him.It was cold that day. It was always cold in the small coalmining town, for the fires were meager, and they never seemed to warm the little one-room hovels where the miners hved. Or maybe it was cold because there was no glass in the windowsthey were covered in the winter and spring with whatever newspaper or sacking could be found.And spring had brought heavy rain that year. But not even the rain could wash away the continual pall of black that seemed to hang over the town. The coal dust from the mines seemed like a miasma that clouded just the land that belonged to the mine. To Marissa, the very color of the air was different, and where the black cleared away was freedom. A different world. And her whole meaning in life came to a longing to escape the cloud of black.The rains merely turned coal dust to mud.On that day she saw the stranger for the first time, she had donned a clean dress and a pinafore she had studiously scrubbed herself, determined that it would be white. And she had brushed and braided her hair. It was wild hair, a deep red blond in color. Uncle Theo said it was like a sunset, but when she had first come to the coal-mining town, the children had laughed and called her carrot top. She was as tough and determined as any of them, and they'd eventually come to re-