He said nothing, only nodded. But his eyes hinted at a smile.

“How long have you been in the home, Mr. Bedford?” Savannah asked, surprising herself. And him, too, judging by the furrow of his brow.

“About a month now. Though I purchased the property last year.”

She remembered hearing the painful news of that sale as though it were yesterday. “Why the delay in moving, sir?”

He sipped his tea, eyeing her over the rim of the cup. “I had business to conclude in Boston. And upon first seeing the property and the house, I knew if I waited it would be gone.”

“But what he apparently didn’t know”—Miss Sinclair rose from her place on the settee and walked to the front window—“was how dreadfully dated his new home was and how much it needed a sophisticated woman’s touch. Just look at these draperies.”

Savannah did, and remembered sewing them with her mother before the war, nearly a decade ago now. They’d had such fun choosing the fabric together—a heavy rust brocade with flecks of silver that caught the light. Savannah had added the black piping and customized the elegant tie sash herself. Her first attempt on her own. Her mother had praised her for weeks.

“Honestly.” Miss Sinclair scoffed, grasping the leading edge of the curtain between her thumb and forefinger as though it were the tail of a rat. She quickly let go and gave a shudder. “Who among us with a shred of taste would choose such a drab color?”

“I like them.”

Savannah’s gaze swung to Mr. Bedford. Guarded challenge lined his expression, and though she told herself not to allow it, she felt her opinion of the man softening the slightest bit.

“You like them?” Miss Sinclair laughed. “Oh, my dear. You really must reserve your opinions for your clients and the courtroom and leave the redecorating to me.”

“Which I will agree to do.” He returned his cup and saucer to the tray and reached for the portfolio on the table beside him. “With one repeated exception. Not the slightest alteration to my study.”

AIDAN CRESTED THE HILL AND REINED IN THE STALLION, HIS breath coming hard. The thoroughbred pawed at the dirt, still wanting to run, but a firm hand persuaded him otherwise.

Morning mist still ghosted the trees in breathy white, the delicate haze draped from the branches like Spanish moss. Aidan looked out over the countryside at the endless rise and fall of meadows and hills, so green and lush, then to the city of Nashville laying a handful of miles east. A world away from Boston.

And a world he’d swiftly grown to love.

He’d asked Priscilla last night to rise early and go riding with him, but she’d declined. She wasn’t overly fond of horses. Or of nature, come to think of it. He hadn’t asked twice. So . . .

He stroked the thoroughbred’s neck. It was just him and Rondy.

Aidan spotted his foreman in the field below. Just about that time Colter raised an arm in greeting, and Aidan returned the gesture. He felt fortunate to have found such an experienced man to run things. Because as knowledgeable as he was personally about the law, that’s how inexperienced he was with farming. His education at Harvard had prepared him for many things. But farming wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t Harvard’s fault; he’d chosen to concentrate on the law. But he was determined to learn now.

Most of the attorneys he’d practiced with in Boston—and the attorneys here too—had their eyes on someday becoming a judge. He’d shared that aspiration at one time. But this was what he wanted now. Darby Farm, and to continue to practice law.

No judgeship for him. Not anymore.

He clucked his tongue, and the stallion set off at a trot. Aidan guided him down the hill and up another embankment. Their destination: his favorite spot on Darby Farm, just beyond the apple grove, and the reason he was all but certain this was the farm he’d been meant to find. He went to the meadow every chance he could to think and—

Movement through the woods caught his eye, and he reined in. He leaned down to peer through the trees. Miss Anderson, hurrying along the road to the house. She was starting bright and early this morning, and only her third day on the job. She managed a pretty fair pace too.

“She’d give you a run for your money, Rondy.” The stallion tossed his head.

Upon first meeting the young woman, Aidan had gotten the distinct impression she didn’t care for him‚ which was fine. He wouldn’t have expected her to. After learning where he was from, most Southerners viewed him as death incarnate—only with greater dread and animosity.

Smiling, he urged the blood horse on, hoping Priscilla wasn’t still abed. Then again, Mrs. Pruitt’s day was well underway. She would see Miss Anderson inside.

He dismounted before reaching the meadow and looped Rondy’s reins around a branch. He stood for a moment, drinking in the hushed tranquility of the place, the beauty of the magnolias and the stalwart majesty of the oak and cedar standing guard. To his knowledge, this field had never been tilled, and he planned to keep it that way.

An old cabin sat tucked among the trees a short distance away, and he set a path for it, the timeworn shanty already feeling like a trusted friend. As well it should, considering how he’d come to know about it.

He’d learned a little about the Darby family since moving here. One of the founding families of Nashville, the Darbys were well respected—or had been. The latest Mr. Darby, the former owner, had been killed in the war. As had happened to so many of these properties following emancipation, the farm went bankrupt and was auctioned.

That’s when he’d come along.

He’d struggled at first with buying someone else’s land and home at auction, imagining what heartache had preceded that event. And yet, someone would buy the place. And he’d paid a fair price as foreclosure and auction prices went.

He might well be pulling the wool over his own eyes, thinking his situation was any different, but he really did want to restore the place—the farm, the house—to what it had been. Only better this time.

Because they were on this side of the war.

The cabin lay just ahead, leaning slightly to one side as though resting on its elbow, and the trickling melody of the stream, just a stone’s throw beyond, worked to soothe the restlessness that was his near constant companion these days.

He peered through the window opening and caught sight of a squirrel scurrying across the remnants of the old stone hearth. What must it have been like to be in this very place when Nashville was founded nearly a hundred years ago? And what would this spot be like a hundred years hence? He’d be long gone by then. And what would he have left behind? What would he and Priscilla have left behind?

There were times, like now, when he wondered why he’d asked her to marry him. And—though this did little for his ego—why she’d said yes.

These questions, and others, stirred inside him. He leaned forward, resting his arms on the split-log sill of the window, and found his thoughts drawn back to that field in North Carolina so many years ago. The soldier’s voice was as clear in his memory as was the warble of the mockingbird in the tree above.

“If you’ve never seen the sun rise over the Tennessee hills, the city set off to the east, with the fog still clinging to the trees and the air so fresh from heaven . . . then you’ve never seen a sunrise. And my mama’s peach cobbler? Oh, sweet Jesus, let me live to taste that again. That’s the best stuff around, Boston. Better than anything you bluecoats got up there where you live.”

He’d known the Confederate soldier only as “Nashville.” That was one of the rules. No names exchanged. They went by their hometowns instead and talked about everything but the war. They traded newspapers and childhoods, shared pictures of sweethearts, and the rebels always wanted to barter for tobacco. Either that or shoes.

If someone had told him when he’d first put on his uniform that, come one summer afternoon, as opposing generals met on opposite hills to decide how best to kill Johnny Rebs and bluecoats, he’d lay down his rifle, kick back in a field, and “jaw” with the enemy, as Nashville had called it, he wouldn’t have believed it. But that afternoon, as well as what happened a handful of hours later, had changed his life in ways the Confederate soldier couldn’t have known. And that he himself had never dreamed.

Nashville had painted a picture of this setting that still resonated within him.

“There’s a meadow a ways from the house, where my grandparents first lived. It’s everything that’s best about this world, Boston. The trees, the stream, the way the sun falls across the land. Such a peacefulness to it. Not like the upside-downness of the world we’re in right now.” Nashville had smiled, a gesture that seemed to come as easily to him as breathing. “Sometimes I go there in my mind . . . and I feel finer than a frog’s hair split four ways.”

The snap of a twig brought Aidan’s head up, and—the memory settling back inside him—he saw her again through the window on the other side of the cabin. Miss Anderson was picking her way through the trees, headed straight for him. But he didn’t think she’d spotted him yet.

Curious as to how she’d found this place, he was surprised to discover he was glad she had. He waited until she got closer.

“Miss Anderson,” he said softly. But despite his best intentions, she sucked in a breath.