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In Hold Me Fast, my hero chooses to go looking for his childhood sweetheart:

“Tamsyn is back in England,” he said, more to himself than to his brother, testing the words out loud as if hearing them would make them truer. She was still seperated from him, as much by her chosen lifestyle as by three hundred and fifty miles and seven years. But she was, at least, in the same country.

“You should go to London,” Bran said. “Find out why she stopped writing. Find out why she didn’t come home.”

She stopped loving him. The thought cut the way it always did, lacerating his heart yet again. But what else could it be? She had a ticket she could have used at any time. The Earl of Coombe might have stopped franking her letters, but he did keep his promise to make her famous. She had just been on her second tour through Europe, for crying out loud. She must have money to burn, plenty to buy her own tickets, frank her own letters.

Her silence was her message to Jowan, and all the more fool him for the hope that lingered, somewhere in the remote corners of his mind and heart.

“I must assume she changed her mind,” and if his jaw was set and his foot tapped with the tension in his frame, his voice was commendably even.

“Or she thinks you did,” argued Bran. “Look, Jowan, the girl you told me about isn’t one who would cut you without a word.”

Why was Bran pressing this? Couldn’t he see how much it hurt? “She changed,” Jowan pointed out. “Or I was wrong.”

Bran shook his head. “You are not wrong about people. You recognised me right off. In any case, you haven’t let her go. If you’re right, this is your chance to dig out the last of your hope and start to heal. If I’m right, the lady might need to be rescued.”

Jowan was still thinking about the pain of losing all of his hope, and Bran’s last few words took a moment to make sense. “Rescued?”

“If she wants to come home and can’t? For whatever reason? Yes. Rescued.”

Jowan shook his head. “How can I leave? We haven’t finished the shearing and then it will be planting time. I’ve the plans to sign off for the new mine.” He shrugged. “You know the list as well as I.”

“And how to make it all happen,” Bran pointed out.

Jowan put his knife and fork down while he thought about that. Bran was right. He could stay here with Jowan’s authority, and do everything Jowan would do himself. “I could go to London,” he said, testing the words on his tongue.