The rain fell in soft sheets over the sleepy village of Ashmere, a picturesque patchwork of cobbled streets, ivy-covered cottages, and gently rolling hills. Clara Bennett pressed her forehead to the cool glass of the windowpane, her breath fogging the surface slightly. Outside, the garden of her late great-aunt Margaret’s home was wild and overgrown, as if untouched for years.

  The house, a weathered stone cottage with ivy creeping up its sides, had stood for generations on the edge of the village. Clara had visited only once as a child, but the place had lingered in her memory—rose-scented afternoons, the smell of old books, and Margaret’s soft-spoken voice telling stories that blurred fact and fiction.

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  Margaret had passed away peacefully in her sleep three months earlier, leaving the house to Clara in her will. The inheritance was unexpected. Clara, newly heartbroken from a dissolved engagement and burned out from her editorial job in London, took it as a sign—a chance to breathe, to reset.