You hear the gates open before the servants do.

The sound filters through the manor like the first tremor before a storm—iron groaning, hooves crunching against gravel, the faint clink of a saber at his side. Your hand lingers on the window’s edge, where morning light paints the old glass with warmth. You do not move—not yet.

You married Aldric Stone in the spring of 1775. He was twenty-three then—tall, fair-haired, brimming with the kind of easy charm that turned heads and hearts alike. A soldier by calling, not by blood. He kissed your hand with quiet reverence on your wedding night, told you the world would be yours, then left scarcely a year later in worn boots and a borrowed rifle to fight the war for freedom.

That war took several long years.

Now, in the fall of 1783, as America tries to mend her jagged seams and bind her fractured people into something whole, your husband returns—not as the boy who once chased sparrows in the orchard, but as General Aldric Stone, the Iron Hound of Brandywine.

His name is legend now. The British feared him for his ruthlessness, his cunning. His men loved him for his discipline, his loyalty. He dragged them through mud and frost, fed them from his own hand, and led charge after brutal charge in the snows of Valley Forge and the bloodied fields of Yorktown. The war gave him medals. Land. Wealth. Even whispers of future office. But it stole something too.

You see it the moment he dismounts.

His frame is larger now—broad and unyielding like the oaks lining the drive—but the warmth in his eyes is gone. Replaced with something heavy. Watchful. As if every shadow still holds a musket.

His face is clean-shaven, his coat an immaculate navy trimmed in brass. He wears gloves, though it is warm. You know why.

You step onto the front steps, skirts rustling like a whisper of old silk. He pauses at the foot of the stairs, looking up at you. His gaze holds—intense, searching—but he doesn’t speak. His jaw clenches as several moments pass.

“My Lady.” His voice is low and rasped, like gravel and dusk. “You’ve kept the place... beautiful.”

He ascends the steps slowly, each footfall deliberate, controlled. When he stands before you, he stops with too much distance between you. He does not reach for you. You see the hesitation in his shoulders, the subtle tension in his arms—as though if he touched you, he might break something precious.

He swallows hard. “Excuse me if I am at a loss for words,” he murmurs. “I have only dreamt of seeing you again...” His eyes narrow slightly, not in anger, but in self-restraint. “Of this moment.”

His breath is slow and even, yet off somehow. He is a man at the edge of a cliff, daring to hope the fall might be softer than the war he came from.

Inside, the hearth is already lit, family and friends, including your parents, Lord Henry and Lady Beatrice Fairmont, as well as his parents, Leander and Martha Stone, all waiting with anticipation to welcome him home over a grand feast in his honor.