Squaring her shoulders, she found her charcoal-gray wool coat and slipped it on over her black bombazine gown, for protection against the chill of the winter afternoon. She was still in mourning for her father, and would have only a limited wardrobe for her wedding. The black bonnet she donned next was one she’d borrowed from Caitlin’s Aunt Winifred, and made her complexion look sallow and her hazel eyes far too large for her face.

Her hand trembled slightly as she locked the front door for the last time. Tomorrow the bank would take possession of the school.

Evan Randolf’s bank.

Negotiating the icy steps with care, Heather turned west, toward home. Evan thought he had won, but he was due for an unpleasant surprise. And she would find more than a measure of satisfaction in informing him she would no longer be a target for his determined designs.

The street widened some three blocks later, to become a thoroughfare lined with barren oaks and flanked by rows of attractive false-front stores. Deep in contemplation, Heather had just reached the corner and started to cross to the opposite side when a commotion to her right jolted her from her thoughts: a woman’s scream, followed by the pounding of horses’ hooves. With alarm she saw a pair of chestnuts galloping pell-mell directly toward her, dragging a closed carriage. The team had no driver, but the passengers within were evidently female, their cries for help echoing with pure terror.

Momentarily frozen with horror, her heart pounding as the out-of-control vehicle bore down on her, Heather could do no more than raise her hands in an instinctive attempt to slow the panicked horses. She barely had time to register how fruitless and foolish her effort was before suddenly she felt herself being wrenched backward by her arm and flung to the cobblestones.

Too stunned even to gasp, she watched dazedly as a man wearing a wide-brimmed Stetson and buckskin overcoat propelled himself past her and lunged at the side of the careening carriage. Be-numbed, she saw the superhuman effort he exerted as he hauled himself on board the brougham, into the driver’s seat.

The desperate action seemed to unfold in slow motion… His hat flying off in the wind, the man flung himself on the back of the near horse and, in a herculean feat of athleticism, stretched down and grabbed one dangling rein, while the passengers within clung fearfully to the straps.

Long miraculous moments later, he managed to wrestle the pair of chestnuts to a trembling halt, nearly a block down the street from where Heather lay sprawled.

“Thank God,” she whispered hoarsely.

She exhaled the ragged breath she’d been holding and unsteadily struggled to her feet. Absently brushing her disheveled skirts with her soiled gloves, she moved forward to offer aid as other bystanders were doing. By the time she came abreast of the brougham, though, a crowd had already formed.