Colin, who’d been such a misfit himself, had understood. He’d been kind to her from the beginning, kinder than he’d been to her classmates, who were frequently the target of his sharp, cynical tongue. Still, the girls had daydreamed about him. Heidi, with her passion for historical romances, was the one who’d come up with his nickname.

“He reminds me of this tortured young English duke who wears a big black cape that snaps in the wind, and every time there’s a thunderstorm, he paces the ramparts of his castle because he’s still mourning the death of his beautiful young bride.”

Colin had become the Duke, although not to his face. He wasn’t the kind of teacher who inspired that sort of familiarity.

The men began to wander in, drawn by the smell of food and a desire to hear their wives’ reactions to the news of Sugar Beth’s return.

Merylinn flapped her arms at them. “Y’all are in the way.”

The men ignored her, just as they always did when it was time to eat, and the women began their familiar dance around them, carrying the food from the kitchen to the late-eighteenth-century sideboard that occupied one wall of Winnie’s graceful formal dining room.

“Does Colin know Sugar Beth’s back?” Merylinn’s husband, Deke, asked.

“He’s the one who told Winnie.” Merylinn shoved a salad bowl in his hands.

“And you sweet thangs complain because nothing ever happens in Parrish.” Amy’s husband, Clint, had grown up in Meridian, but he knew the old stories so well they sometimes forgot he wasn’t one of them.

Brad Simmons, who sold home appliances, chuckled. He was Leeann’s date for the evening. Leeann didn’t really like him, but since her divorce, she’d been working her way through every eligible bachelor in Parrish, along with a few who weren’t eligible, but none of them talked about that because Leeann had it hard. With two kids, one of them handicapped, and an ex-husband who was always behind on child support, she deserved whatever diversion she could find.