She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, then lingered, making her mouth available to him. When he didn’t respond, she moved closer, yet not even the brush of her body against his stirred his desire as it once had.

And she knew it.

Early on, he’d found these games she played mildly intriguing. Not so anymore. Aidan planted an obligatory kiss on her forehead, unable to reconcile this distance between them and the growing unease he felt when they were together. She sensed it, too, he knew.

Hence why she was trying so hard.

But he was trying as well. He knew how painful it was to lose both parents. Her father, a good man he’d greatly respected, had passed last fall. Her mother a month later. The adjustment had been difficult for her. Especially as an only child.

“Give it time,” a trusted colleague had told him. And he was. He only hoped things smoothed between them soon.

“I believe I will go for that ride,” he said gently, sensing subtle triumph in her eyes. “It’ll give me a chance to check with the foreman before leaving for town. The office is expecting me midmorning.”

She smoothed a hand over his lapel. “That sounds splendid, Aidan. And when you return, I’ll give you a full accounting of everything Miss Anderson and I have discussed.”

“Which will contain far more detail than required, I’m sure.”

All smiles, she preceded him into the hallway where Mrs. Pruitt, his housekeeper from Boston, was busily dusting the marbleized pier table. When he’d told the older woman he was moving to Tennessee, her request to move with him had caught him off guard, something which didn’t happen often. But widowed and childless, Mrs. Pruitt seemed almost as happy to be here as he was.

Besides her skills, there was another reason he was grateful for her presence. Though he was no prude, and Darby Farm was likely too far from town to draw gossip, he was grateful to Mrs. Pruitt for playing the role of chaperone during Priscilla’s visit. The housekeeper’s quarters were on the main floor, while the rest of the bedrooms were aloft on the second story, but having her in the house fulfilled the letter of the law. And for the time being, at least, his present feelings toward Priscilla more than fulfilled its spirit.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pruitt,” he offered, noticing Priscilla didn’t even look her way.

“Good morning, Mr. Bedford.” The housekeeper offered her customary smile, curtsying to them both. “Will you be taking lunch here today, sir?”

“No, Mrs. Pruitt. It will be only Miss Sinclair today. But I’ll be back for dinner.”

“Very good, sir.” She moved on to the small study.

“Aidan, before you go . . .” Priscilla paused in the entryway to the central parlor. “Have you given further thought to the date?”

Knowing to which date she referred, he resisted the urge to look away. “Not since we discussed it last night after dinner.”

Her pouty smile said she’d caught his meaning. “I know I’m being a trifle impatient, dear. But it’s only because I want to be with you. As your wife.”

The response he knew she wanted to hear, the words he would’ve said to her only a few weeks earlier, wouldn’t come. “You’re not being impatient. I said we’d set a date for the wedding before you return to Boston, and . . . we will.”

With effort, he pushed past the doubt inside him, trusting it would fade and trusting in the wishes of so many they’d known in Boston who’d said how splendid they would be together. He hoped they were right. Because in asking her to marry him, he’d given her his word, something he didn’t do lightly. He’d never gone back on a promise yet, and he didn’t intend to start now.

Priscilla’s expression brightened. “So within a month I’ll know when I’m going to become Mrs. Aidan Gunning Bedford.”

He smiled, but the gesture felt traitorous.

Remembering his portfolio in the study, he retrieved it and was on his way to the front door when he caught sight of Priscilla in the parlor. She ran an index finger over the draperies, the settee, the chairs, even the mantel over the hearth, then cast a frown about the entire room, including the Persian runner beneath her feet, as though she wished she could make it all disappear in a blink.

He’d told her she could redecorate, and he’d meant it. After all, what harm was there in allowing her to make a few changes? But sensing the woman’s fervor . . .

“One request, Priscilla, as you meet with this Miss Anderson this morning.”

She looked up, her expression first conveying surprise, then guardedness.

“Not a single change to my study.”

Savannah stared up at the house, her heart heavy as the gap between the present and the past swiftly evaporated. Seconds slowed to a crawl.

The last she’d seen her family home it had looked so neglected and lonely, with the grass gone to seed and the weeds leggy and wild, the occasional shutter hanging at odds with its window. But now the grounds were neat and tidy, grass clipped, weeds tamed, all shutters behaving nicely. She’d even seen workers in the fields.

Her gaze moved beyond the house to the apple grove, then, in her mind, to her favorite part of the farm—the land that had belonged to her maternal grandparents. “Meant more for beauty than for farming” is what her grandfather had said, so neither he nor her father had ever planted it.

Her legs like lead, she managed the climb to the front porch that wrapped the house like a hug. Colorful pots of coleus and fragrant mint adorned the steps, similar to the flowers and herbs she’d glimpsed growing on the second-story porch above.

The house had sat untended for so long she knew she should be pleased to see it being loved and cared for again. But the discovery only brought a lump to her throat.

Her gaze went to the porch railing, and her throat tightened as memory conjured an image so clearly in her mind’s eye. She could see Jake, her eldest brother, balancing on the top rail, her father laughing as her mother commented with feigned worry that the balusters might not support his weight. But they did. And Jake had sung one of his silly made-up songs as he strode back and forth before ending the performance with a faultless backward flip off the porch, landing flat on his feet as he always did.

Oh, how she missed him. Adam too. She didn’t know the details of her brothers’ deaths in the war, or her father’s. Only that they’d been killed in battle. She hoped, as she’d done many times before, that they’d somehow been at peace in those final moments, even in the midst of such unfathomable carnage.

A breeze rustled the leaves of the oak and poplar trees overhead like a whisper from a ghost and sent a hushed murmur through the magnolias. The sound resembled susurrations from the past, and she reached for confidence beyond herself and prayed that, by some stroke of mercy, God would see fit to saying yes this time to her heart’s desire—to helping her find what her father had hidden—instead of responding with His customary silence.

Even a definitive no would be better than that. Because at least then she’d be assured He was listening.

A squeak drew her attention, and she looked to her right.

The swing her father had crafted from poplar wood—the same swing in which she’d read, studied, and dreamed as a girl, in which she had curled up tightly, swallowed by grief, following her father’s and older brothers’ passings, then her mother’s—swayed gently, carefree in the breeze.

Savannah stepped up to the front door, hearing the echo of Miss Hildegard’s parting instructions. “Don’t you dare let that couple know you once lived there.”

She had no intention of telling Mr. Bedford or his fiancée she’d lived here. But how hard would it be for them to put two and two together? Her last name was Darby, and this was Darby Farm.

Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door and heard the muffled sound of voices coming from within. Her stomach knotted, and memories dearly cherished but firmly packed away suddenly tugged at frayed emotions, threatening to undermine her confidence.

Leave propriety on the porch. Leave propriety on the porch.

She’d scarcely drawn her hand away before the door opened.