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the Kimbell and Allen families, had never done anything to deserve his younger brother’s revenge. Despite Frederick’s one flaw—his one perverse weakness—he’d been a good man. If anything, he’d been too good, too trusting.
    And too easy to take advantage of. At that, Dillon’s thoughts returned to the woman who now claimed to be Frederick’s widow.
    She had certainly looked the part, he decided as he rubbed the stallion down. She’d been covered in tightly laced black bombazine from her chin to her toes. By contrast, her skin had appeared pale to the point of translucence. Her dark hair had been pulled back so tightly that her cheekbones had shown prominently. Only her eyes, dark and wide, had given life to her face.
    Still, there had been something about her. For all that she had appeared the mousy schoolteacher, timid and prudish, he’d nonetheless noticed a spark of fire in her. Beneath that facade of deep mourning, he was certain she was a grasping little thief. If she’d married Frederick— if —she had surely done so to inherit the considerable estate he had left.
    But he still doubted that Frederick had ever married. If he’d wanted a wife—even if just for appearance’s sake—he’d not have waited until such a late date in his life. No, she was a complete imposter. She wanted to get her hands on Frederick’s money and had made the entire story up. Frederick was not a man to marry. There was no doubt in Dillon’s mind about that.
    As he made his way out of the cavernous stable, an old black servant drove up in a wagon. The man nodded slightly, but then he peered more closely at Dillon and pulled the team up hard. With round staring eyes he gaped at Dillon, but still he did not say a word.
    “Do I know you?” Dillon asked as the man continued to stare.
    “N-no, suh. You surely don’ know ol’ Leland.”
    “Perhaps it’s you who knows me, then.”
    Leland nodded slowly. “You’s Mr. Frederick’s—his daddy’s other boy.”
    “Now, how would you know that?”
    The old man shrugged, but his morose expression had begun to lift. “I don’ know. You just got that Kimbell look.”
    Dillon rocked back on his heels, and his brow creased into a frown. “You’re seeing things, old man.”
    “I don’ mean you looks like Mr. Frederick,” Leland hurried on, “or even your daddy, Mr. Miles. But ol’ Mr. Miles, your granddaddy. You favor him right well.” He smiled faintly, showing several long yellowed teeth as he nodded his head.
    It was Dillon’s turn to stare hard at the old servant. This was something he’d never heard before, and somehow it disturbed him. “You’ve been around here that long? I don’t remember my grandfather.”
    “No, suh. You wouldn’t. You was too young. He took ill about the same time you was born. He didn’t go out fo’ a long time before he died.”
    That was just as well, Dillon thought sourly, for he would have been sickened unto death by his son Miles’s callousness. Then Dillon’s eyes narrowed speculatively.
    “If you’ve been around that long, you must know everything that goes on around this place.”
    “Yes, suh. Yes, suh, I surely do. Why, before he died, Mr. Frederick had ol’ Leland to help him with everything.” The old man’s smile slowly faded. “I surely do miss Mr. Frederick. Ain’t nothin’ ’round here been the same since he gone.”
    “No, I don’t suppose it would be.” Then he gestured back into the stable. “Why don’t you show me where things are around here?”
    With a sickening feeling of doom, Lacie watched Dillon Lockwood approach the house. She had seen Leland go into the barn while this man was in there. What had they spoken of in the endless minutes that had dragged by?
    She jerked the heavy brocade curtains closed with a frustrated gesture, then turned abruptly from the window. But she could not shut out the image of the man who was even now bearing down on her, nor her dreadful feeling of