Book excerpt: Laura overhears her family talking and discovers that she has an incurable illness and not much time left to live. She’s spent her whole life in late nineteenth-century England doing what her parents have asked of her and has never had a chance to fall in love. Now, with death looming, she decides to live what’s left of her life the way she’s always wanted. She’s only met the mysterious Sean once before, but she decides to ask him to marry her. Laura offers him her inheritance if he’ll help her travel and give her a taste of freedom…at least, for the time she has left.