title: A Heart Out of Hiding
author:  Jan Cline 
description: Jan Cline is a freelance writer, author and speaker from Spokane, Washington. She is also founder and director of the Inland NW Christian Writers conference and leads a writers group in her area. Her hobbies are golf, singing and her 7 grandchildren.
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  ![](images/00003.jpg)
  
  The Hidden Heart
  
  Candace Camp
  
  Mira Books
  
  Copyright 2002
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Prologue
  
  The Duke of Cleybourne was going home to die.
  
  He had decided it the night before, as he was standing in his study, gazing up
  at the
  
  portrait of Caroline that Devin had painted for him as a wedding present.
  Richard had
  
  looked at the picture, and at the smaller, less satisfactory one of their
  daughter, and he
  
  had thought about the fact that it was December, and the anniversary of their
  deaths
  
  would be coming up soon.
  
  Their carriage had overturned and skidded over the slick, icy road and grass
  into the pond,
  
  breaking through the skin of ice on top of the water. It had been only a few
  days before
  
  Christmas when it happened.
  
  He could still smell the heavy scent of fir boughs that decorated the house
  for the holiday.
  
  It had hung in his nostrils all through his illness and convalescence, like
  the cloying odor of
  
  death, long after the boughs had been taken down and b