The crisp black taffeta skirt of her mourning gown rustled as she walked out of the dress shop a few doors in front of him.

Reese Dewar froze where he stood, the silver-headed cane in his hand forgotten, along with the ache in his leg. Rage took its place, dense and heavy, hot and seething.

Sooner or later, he had known he would see her. He had told himself it wouldn't matter, that seeing her again wouldn't affect him. She meant nothing to him, not anymore, not for nearly eight years.

But as she stepped off the wooden walkway, a ray of autumn sunlight gleamed against the jet-black curls on her shoulders and anger boiled up inside him, fury unlike he had known in years.

He watched her continue toward her sleek black four-horse carriage, the crossed-saber Aldridge crest glinting in gold on the side. She paused for a moment as one of the footmen hurried to open the door and he realized she wasn't alone. A small, dark-haired boy, nearly hidden in the voluminous folds of her skirt, hurried along beside her. She urged him up the iron steps and the child disappeared inside the elegant coach.

Instead of climbing the stairs herself, the woman turned and looked at him over her shoulder, her gray eyes finding him with unerring accuracy, as if she could feel his cold stare stabbing into the back of her neck. She gasped when she realized who it was, though she must have known, in a village as small as Swansdowne, one day their paths would cross.

Surely she had heard the gossip, heard of his return to Briarwood, the estate he had inherited from his maternal grandfather.

The estate he had meant to share with her.

Their eyes locked, hers troubled, filled with some emotion he could not read. H