Ren left for London the next afternoon. I would have begged him to take me with him. I wanted to go with him and leave all this behind. But I knew if I went, he'd never heal, and the mystery and suspicion between us would always be a barrier.

Instead, I clung to him desperately in front of his car. "Come back to me. Come back to me soon."

"I'll be back Friday afternoon." He pulled me tightly to him. "I wish you'd come with me to London. I can't entice you?"

"I'm enticed. Every minute. It would be so easy to just chuck it and live with you in your beautiful house of glass. But someone has to stay here and oversee things. The contractors arrive tomorrow. And the ghost hunters—"

"The ghost hunters." For some reason, those amused him. "So they can catch shadowy, blurry images on video, and EVPs to play for the guests?"

"Skeptic."

"Be careful, Bliss. I— I don't want you to get hurt."

"I have no intention of being hurt."

After Ren left, I was left to myself. Even with Harris and Libby living in, I felt alone in the castle. It was that large. A castle was never really meant to be occupied by a single couple. I didn't know how Manly stood living alone there for so long. I was eager for the contractors to show up, for the noise of modern equipment and the bustle of people around. I was eager for the rooms to be filled with guests and the castle with staff. I wanted this place to be alive again.

But none of that would begin to happen until the morning. Which left me alone with my thoughts and at odds. I had plenty to do. Plenty to plan. But I was drawn to the white lady's room.

I supposed, given everything that had happened in that room, all the tragedy and deaths, and all the spooky things that had happened to me, that I should be afraid. Instead, I was oddly at peace. It felt like the answer to all my questions was here.

I took out my phone and brought up the patterns of Ren's closet. I was intent on matching them to the walls of this room. I found, as I did, that Ren must have created the patterns from memory. They weren't exact. They were close. It made sense—he'd told me the room had been closed for years and that he hadn't been back to the castle until the wedding. Given that, his memory was surprisingly accurate.

I followed the patterns along one wall and the next, looking for the numbers on the stones that marked the secret hiding place in Ren's closet. I didn't find it on my first pass of the room and closet. On the second pass, I remembered Ren's speech at our wedding reception and the tapestry hiding his childhood scribbles. I looked behind the paintings and wall hangings. I found the bricks hidden behind a faded tapestry.

I was so excited, and nervous, that I trembled. But unlike in Ren's closet, there were no telltale lines indicating a hidden door to a hidden compartment. I frowned. I'd been so certain…

I stood back and studied the wall. When I did, I noticed something startling—the grout between the stones made a square the same size as the hidden space in Ren's closet. It looked to my untrained eye that the grout was modern, a slightly different color and compound.

Ren, what are you hiding?

That night in bed, I studied the effects of cocaine. Ren's description of it was common to what most people experienced. As Ren said, the high was short. And powerful if you freebased. The physical euphoria was matched by an emotional one that made all your problems seem insignificant. You were happy and optimistic. And confident you could do anything. What could possibly go wrong? But the comedown could be hell. It was easy to see why people wanted more. They became addicted to the way it made them feel. When freebasing, the dosing was unpredictable, too. So easy to overdose. No wonder Will had. But the question on my mind was this—if Ren wasn't high, why was Zoe driving that night? Why hadn't Ren driven? And why wouldn't he say?

I couldn't help myself. I got out of bed and went to the white lady's room. I sat there in the dark, listening to the echoes of time, hoping something came to me. I was surprisingly unafraid. But neither the white lady nor inspiration came to me. That square of wall, however, haunted me thoroughly.

The contractors and craftsmen arrived early the next morning, along with my ghost hunters. My life became a happy, busy blur. Activity everywhere I looked. Fires to put out. This was the kind of chaos I'd learned to thrive off. I'd thought I was done with it, that I wanted a quiet life in the country. And maybe I did. But for now, I needed the distraction.

The contractors began with the east wing and the guest bedrooms that needed the most work. After consulting with the ghost hunters, who had thoroughly studied the information from both journals, we all decided to concentrate on the most haunted areas—the lake, the dungeon, and, because I insisted, the white lady's room. I argued that she might not be the most sighted haunt, but she was certainly one of the most intriguing. They set up three teams, one for each location, filling with eager volunteers from all over the world. The plan was to spend the next month watching for paranormal activity. The team was excited. Construction often stirred up paranormal activity. The stage was perfectly set.

Both my days and nights became ludicrously busy. I spent my days with the contractors, event planners, website designers, accountants, and lawyers—everyone needed to set up a bed and breakfast. I spent my nights hunting ghosts and slept very little. We caught some promising events—some EVPs, a shadowy presence that moved across the dungeon. A chair that moved on its own. And a glimpse of a figure rising from the mists of the lake.

But the white lady eluded us. I reluctantly agreed that the ghost-hunting crews should move their cameras from the white lady's room to the east wing. But I continued to sit in her room night after night, staring at that wall and wondering what was in there. What had Ren—I was sure it was Ren—hidden there? Why didn't he want me to see it? Was whatever was behind the wall my personal Pandora's box? Bluebeard's room of dead wives? If I opened it, would I unleash all kinds of mayhem?

The temptation was extreme. I was surrounded by men with hammers. Men who knew how to take down stone walls. Men with imaging equipment that could see into stone walls. I had one of my brick contractors examine the wall. He agreed the grout was new, compared to the ancient walls of the castle.

"Can you image it?" I asked him.

"I can, duchess," he said. "But it will cost you."

"I don't care about the cost." I studied the wall. I'd seen some of the images of the other rooms and the concrete floors. The images showed rebar and other building materials. But could they show what I wanted to see? "How distinct will the image be?"

He scratched his head and took another look. "Eh, brick and stone are tricky. Brick emits radiation. Not much," he added, and then launched into a technical discussion of the difficulties.

"You're saying you won't get a good image of what's in there?" I asked.

"I'll be able to tell you if there's a void, certainly. If there's gold doubloons in there, they mightn't be so distinct."

Gold doubloons! If only.

He dragged the imaging equipment in. By the end of that afternoon, I had my answer—there was indeed a void there. Maybe it was a vault. It was something. And, best he could tell, there was some sort of box, or rectangular item, in there. He needed more expensive equipment to get any finer granulation.

"Do you want me to dig it out, duchess?" He looked eager to take it on. It was a bit of a treasure hunt, after all. "I can work it into my schedule."

I put my hands on my hips and studied the wall, debating with myself. If I opened the wall, Ren would surely notice. "If you opened it, could you put it back exactly like it was? Completely restore it?"

"Oh, aye," he said. "Not a problem."

"So that no one would notice? So that it would be completely indistinguishable from how it is now?"

"I'm a master mason," he said, chest puffed. "I can take it out stone by stone until we have enough space to pull out whatever's in there. Might take a day or two, all told."

I ran my gaze over the wall. "I'm undecided. Let me think on it."

He nodded and turned to return to work.

"Don't tell anyone I asked you about this," I said, trying not to sound as urgent as I felt. "Especially not the duke. If there's something in that wall, I want it to be a surprise for him. I'd like to tell him myself."

He winked at me. "Certainly, your grace."

And now all I had to do was wrestle with myself.

On weekends, Ren came home to the castle. He'd arrive Friday afternoon to view the week's progress and talk to the contractors and construction crews before they closed up for the weekend. Then we had the weekends mostly to ourselves to plan and make love. And make love and plan.

We walked the estate. Ren showed me the land he wanted to turn into housing and sell off. His passion about it was catching. I agreed he should move forward immediately, feeling guilty for going against Manly's express wishes. But I knew it was the right thing to do. Ren loved the estate as much as I did. As much as Manly did. Greed wasn't driving him. This was his vision for keeping the estate relevant and healthy.

We filed for permits. We dreamed of the beautiful community we'd make and how it would revitalize the village. We hired a surveyor to plat the land and planned community. Ren began designing plans for the houses and showing them to me on weekends. They were wild and brilliant, but practical, affordable, and livable. His houses would be in great demand. I added my little ideas.

The project made Ren truly happy. I was happy to be part of his creative process, part of the genius. But mostly I was deliriously happy when he was at the castle, more in love with him each minute we spent together, all my fears forgotten.

He gave his thoughts on the bed and breakfast and helped with the big Halloween event I was throwing—a ghost tour of the lake, a costume party, followed by a late-night castle ghost tour for the overnight guests. I tried to convince Ren that we had to dress as the knight from the lake and the white lady. I got him to agree to be a knight and for me to be a lady.

"But not the white lady," he insisted. "And not the ghostly version of the knight. Living knights and ladies, Bliss. In full color. The lord and lady of the manor. Nothing ghostly."

I couldn't convince him that the lake knight and white lady were the perfect themed couple's costumes for our party. They were the castle's most famous, most tragic couple. They were the ghosts we'd be hunting.

I hired a top costume designer to make our costumes, and a movie set designer Ren knew to design the decorations for the ballroom. On a whim, I decided to surprise Ren with his house gargoyles sitting on pillars around the room, and on the railing up the stairs to the castle. The castle's real stone gargoyles were huge and too high up to get a good close look at. Not concrete statues, of course. Styrofoam. And a couple of stunt ones, the kind you could bash someone over the head with. I had the idea I might like to push one off its perch to give the guests a good scare.

My Halloween event sold out within hours.

During the week, Ren and I talked every day. I excitedly shared the latest ghost news and the progress being made. Ren shared his day and stories from life in London. Hanging up and ending the connection always took great effort.

But it was me who was changed in the long days when he was away in London. I longed to hear three little words he wouldn't say—I love you. Me, who tripped on my tongue trying not to tell him how I felt. Me, who struggled with the literal wall between us. Me, who had the doubt and suspicion about him, the morbid curiosity. Me, who'd fallen headlong for him and felt the curse of the white lady as Zoe had. Me, whose love for him loomed, tragic and doomed to be unrequited. If not for my periods of doubt, it would truly have been honeymoon days.

I was working too hard and too many hours. Not getting enough sleep. Not eating enough. Losing weight. Getting fatigued. Becoming emotional. I was burning out and didn't realize it.

Late the Monday evening before Halloween, on one of my solitary vigils in the white lady's room, I fell asleep on the bed. A chill woke me. I felt a presence, someone watching me. When I opened my eyes, the white lady was at the end of the bed, staring at me.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. She was terrifyingly beautiful, but her eyes were ice. She looked right through me. If I survived this viewing without my hair turning white from shock, I'd be lucky.

I was frozen, completely unable to move or call out. She turned and started walking, her long medieval gown flowing. I expected her to head for the window. I was strangely terrified she would jump or fall "to her death." That she'd spent hundreds of years re-creating it. Instead, she walked straight through the wall and disappeared. Straight through the wall at the spot of Ren's marked bricks and void.

I tried to convince myself I'd been dreaming. That, in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, I'd imagined her. She was exactly as Manly described her. But maybe my subconscious had crafted her based on that description. Whatever she was, she'd given me a sign. Two, really. I was hit by a sudden wave of nausea. I ran to the bathroom and made it just in time. Which was when I realized I hadn't had a period in well over a month. I'd been too busy and too stressed to notice. I was very late. Maybe stress alone wasn't responsible for my fatigue and nausea.

The next morning, I ordered a pregnancy test with same-day delivery. Then I found the brick contractor and asked him to open the wall. Immediately.