Some are born on this earth to learn their darkness. Then there are others who possess it already in their hearts, an inheirited legacy like brown eyes or a proud chin. Linet and Rose were of the later.

There are places in the hills where the sun hovers on the horizon at dusk and time stands still. The McCoy homestead, the former foundation burned to the ground beside a new house, was one of these spots. Linet and Rose were wary of it from the moment Jim McCoy left them at his father's house. Uncle Jim's wife didn't like their influence over her daughter so Nancy McCoy's orphaned girls had to go.

That first night they slept in the loft over the rickety barn. Randall McCoy locked them in there with the rest of his livestock. Though he had long fallen from the straight and narrow, he still believed that the sins of the mother carried on in her daughters.

Females were weak to the devices of the devil. A strong hand was needed in dealing with them. Perhaps if he had done so with Roseanna, she might not gave died adulterous and shamed. That was what he'd drunkenly slurred at his nieces as he snapped the padlock.

The snake hiss of the wind in the trees was interrupted only by a pair of owls in the night. Rose shivered and tucked herself closer to her sister. Linet was rigid with rage. Randall McCoy, the rheumy eyed old man, had said that she'd spoken out of turn. He sent them to bed with no supper. She had argued that Rose should be allowed to eat as she had stayed silent. Then he'd struck Linet across the jaw. It wasn't the first time that she'd been beaten, but Linet was reaching a point where she swore the next time would be the last.

"You hear that?" Rose whispered in the dark, their wool blanket not enough to stave off the October chill. "Whip-poor-will. Bad omen."

"Not for us." Linet pressed a kiss to her younger sister's forehead. "Don't you worry. His time will come."

"Yes. It will," Rose agreed.

After three years, their prophecy came true. The barn was locked from the outside, with the girls in it, as Uncle Randall's cabin went up in flames. He screamed and railed against God and death, firing his pistol as he burned alive. He tumbled out of door and into the dusty yard. His body, black with burns, shuddered as he fell to the ground. Linet and Rose witnessed the event through the cracks in the barn walls, unable to open the doors.

That was what they told the Justice of the Peace, Rivers Hatfield attorney-at-law, when he arrived with his deputies at dawn after receiving word of a fire in that part of the forest. On McCoy land, it was better for Rivers to go with caution. He was a practical man, first and foremost.

But now, there was no practical choice for where the girls could live next. That was when Cordelia Hatfield offered their home, out of consideration for her friendship with Jim McCoy. Cap begrudgingly agreed, his reason dogged with the grief of burying his own newly dead father.

Rivers Hatfield, keen eyed and shrewd, was not in favor of that act of charity.