The boy who left to fight for the Confederate army twenty years ago had been a trusting fool. He had trusted the girl who promised to wait for him. He had trusted the friend who betrayed him. Now he has come home to Alabama to avenge what they stole from him: his heart, his soul, his world.

Laurette Howard, too, lost her innocence in the cruelest of ways--with news that the boy she loved had died in the war. After a loveless marriage, she contented herself with caring for the sick, knowing her own heart could not be healed.

Then Sutton Vane arrived in Mobile, shattering her composure, releasing the wanton, passionate woman that had been locked away. She surrendered totally to a passion so scandalous, it could only be destiny.... But was it a passion calculated to destroy her...or to deliver the sweet promise of a love that refused to die?