Standing on the landing at the top of the stairs with her husband behind her, his arms circling her just below her breasts, and the marquess beside her, Portia could not have been more pleased. “What do you think, Father?” she asked.

“Beautiful, my dear. It’s just as it was the last time that Linnie and I held a Christmas ball here. Of course, we had an abundance of guests then.”

She’d saved the tidying of the ballroom for last, and this was her gift to Marsden. Every room in the manor was now absent cobwebs and dust; every room had been set to rights.

“Will you host a ball here?” he asked.

“We thought in the new year, if you’ve no objections.”

“You’re the lady of the manor. It’s your decision.”

“If you’re not comfortable with so many people—”

“It’ll be good to see old friends. Will you dance with me now?”

She smiled at him. “We don’t have an orchestra.”

He patted his chest. “The music is here. You don’t mind, do you, son?”

“Not as long as I get the last dance.”

“Will you dance with me, Papa?” Maddie asked from her crouched position where she was peering through the railings.

“Absolutely,” Locksley said, lifting his daughter into his arms as she squealed.

It always touched Portia deeply to see the love he showered on their daughter. She was truly his, no doubt about it.

“And me?” their three-year-old son asked, his mop of black hair unruly, his green eyes filled with mischief.

“And you.” He scooped his heir up with his free arm before jogging down the stairs, the children clinging to his neck and laughing.

“He’s a good father,” Marsden said as he escorted Portia to the dance area.

“You set a good example.” She squeezed his arm, leaned against him. “Thank you.”

His white bushy eyebrows shot up. “For what, my dear?”

“For giving him to me.”

“All I did was place the advert. You answered it.”

“Thinking I was to marry you.”

“But I told you it would be better if you married him.”

“Indeed you did.”

When they reached the center of the room, he took her in his arms and swept her over the floor with an ease that she imagined had characterized his moves in his youth. While she couldn’t hear the music, it was obvious that he did, a tune that had no doubt played when he danced with his beloved.

“Thank you for my heir,” he said quietly, smiling.

“You’ve thanked me enough.”

“I shall thank you as often as I want. I love both those children. They’ve been a great gift. Although you must watch the boy carefully. I caught him climbing shelves in the library the other day.”

Since Maddie’s birth, Marsden had begun to spend less time in his bedchamber. He was a more active part of their lives, especially the children’s. It had been years since Locksley had turned the key in the door to his father’s bedchamber. None of the rooms in the residence were locked any longer.

Portia smiled brightly. “He is his father’s son.”

Marsden grinned. “He is that.”

The patter of running feet had them stopping, and just in time. Both children slammed into Marsden’s legs.

“Grandpapa, will you read to us?” Maddie asked.

“I will, but only one story.” He leaned down. “Father Christmas is coming tonight.” Taking their hands, he began leading them from the room.

Watching them go, Portia felt a joyful ache in her chest. Her children knew love, so much love.

“Dance with me.”

Turning into her husband’s arms, she found herself gliding once more over the floor.

“You’ve made him very happy,” Locksley said.

“I think the children do that.”

“You, the children, the way the manor is once again bright. I love you, Portia.”

“Good, because I love you, too.”

He lifted her into his arms.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“After all these years, you still have to ask? I’m taking you to bed.”

“Not until the children are asleep.”

“Father will see to them. I told him I was planning to give you another child for Christmas.”

Laughing, she pressed her head to his shoulder. “That must have made him happy.”

“It made him ecstatic.”

“Wait until you see what I’m giving you for Christmas.”

“What would that be, my little vixen?”

“I think it’s high time I taught you how to take me upside down.”

Locke awoke to see the barest hint of dawn easing in through the windows. He could see gently falling snow. The children would be delighted. His father would no doubt take them outside to build a snowman.

Snuggling up against his wife’s warm body, he buried his nose in the curve of her shoulder, inhaling her jasmine scent. After all this time, it still had the power to incite his desires. If she hadn’t worn him out the night before—

Suddenly he became aware of two things. The howling wind was not the high-pitched shrieking he was accustomed to, which was odd, as it was always worse in winter.

And a ticking clock.

Alarmed, he shot straight up in bed, threw back the covers, and rolled to his feet, crossing over to the mantel. The time showed twenty minutes past seven.

“What is it?” Portia asked sleepily.

“The clock is ticking and the time”—he looked toward the window—“the time could be accurate.”

He crossed the room, snatched up his clothes from the floor, and began to don them.

“Killian, what’s going on?”

“Go back to sleep. I just need to check on something.”

“Your father.”

He stilled. Deep down in his heart, he knew what he was going to find. “Something’s not right.”

“I’ll come with you.”

He wanted to argue with her, urge her to stay in bed, where it was toasty warm, but if he was correct, he was going to need her. When they were both dressed, they went down the hallway to his father’s room. The door was open, the room empty.

“I think he’s gone to her,” he said quietly.

“He could be downstairs playing Father Christmas.”

He shook his head. “No, he’s gone to her, for the last time. That’s why the clocks are ticking. He started them up before he left.”

He headed back to the bedchamber, grabbed his coat and her pelisse, and held it out to her. “You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not going to let you face this alone.” She turned and he draped the heavy cape over her shoulders.

They went down the stairs. In the foyer, the grandfather clock gonged the half hour. Taking Portia’s hand, he led her outside. The wind and falling snow whipped around them as they trudged toward the ancient oak tree and his mother’s grave.

And there was his father, lying prone over the mound of earth, one hand resting against the headstone as though he’d been caressing it. He was covered in a light dusting of snow. He hadn’t been here long, not long enough for the cold to have done him in.

Crouching beside the body, Locke pressed his fingers against his father’s throat. There was still a hint of warmth, but no pulse. “I think his heart gave out.”

“Do you think he knew it was time?” she asked softly. “Was his starting up the clocks a parting gift to us?”

“Perhaps.”

She knelt beside him and leaned against his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I know this is hard. No matter a person’s age . . .” She tightened her grip on his arm. “Killian, look at his cheek. It looks as though he was kissed by an angel.”

On his father’s cheek was a spot where the snow was not quite as thick, a spot whose shape very much resembled the outline of a mouth. “It’s a paw print.”

“There are no others on him or around him. I think it’s as he always said. Your mother was waiting for him.”

“Ghosts don’t exist.” Although he couldn’t deny that the wind was quieter than he’d ever heard it.

“If I were to die before you, I wouldn’t leave. Believe it is the mark of an animal if you wish. I choose to believe it was your mother welcoming him back into her arms.”

Turning to her, he wanted to believe in a love that strong, a love that could transcend death. Out of the corner of his eye, a movement caught his attention, a shadowy image, two people holding each other close, walking away. Only when he looked squarely in that direction, he saw nothing at all. No distinct shadows, no footprints.

“What is it, Killian?” Portia asked softly.

It wasn’t possible. Ghosts didn’t exist. They were merely figments created by grief, a profound grief that was now washing through him, that had washed through his father for years.

Locke had been a babe when his mother died, too young to even understand loss, to weep for her, but he bowed his head now and let the tears flow, for a man he had loved and a woman he’d come to love through his father. Portia closed her arms around him, and they rocked while the wind wailed and the snow fell and at the residence the clocks ticked.

“It’s odd to hear the clocks keeping time,” Edward announced.

They were seated near the fireplace in the music room—the Marquess of Marsden’s sons and their wives. His funeral had been a grand affair. Locke had been unprepared for the number of people who came: royalty, nobility, villagers, servants, miners. People coming to pay their last respects to a man who many of them remembered with fondness. Apparently his father had spent a good deal of time corresponding over the years, letters offering advice, counsel, and opinions. His father may have been a recluse but he hadn’t been completely withdrawn from Society.

Fortunately, Portia had anticipated the crowd that descended on Havisham. Not that Locke was surprised. The daughter of a vicar certainly knew how to manage a funeral. His father now rested in a grave beside his mother.

“I’m growing accustomed to them,” Locke said.

“I remember the day we arrived,” Ashe said. “I never wanted to leave someplace so badly in all my life.”

“That’s understandable,” Portia said. “You’d just lost your parents.”

“It was more than that. It was the desolation, the wind, the silence of the clocks. And the way Marsden looked so lost. But that night after we’d gone to bed, he came to me and shared a story about a prank my father played at school. And he told me that it was okay to cry when I missed them, that for a year after he lost his wife he cried every night. ‘The pain will never go away,’ he said, ‘but you will learn to live with it. And I will show you how.’ Damned if he didn’t.” He raised his glass. “To the Marquess of Marsden and the privilege we had of knowing him better than most.”

“Hear! Hear!” they all said, lifting their glasses in a salute.

It was sometime later that Portia found her husband standing out on the terrace that led from the ballroom, the place where he had first kissed her, no doubt hoping to run her off. She ambled up beside him. “Are you looking for your mother’s ghost?”

“And my father’s.”

His words caught her by surprise. “I didn’t think you believed in ghosts.”

“The morning we found my father, I thought I saw something. I want to believe I did. My father and mother together.”

“Then you should believe it.”

“It makes me sound like a lunatic.”

“It makes you sound like a man who can believe in the impossible.”

He sighed. “When I was a lad, I awoke one night because I felt something brushing over my brow. But no one was there. I lay as still as death, afraid I was going insane, afraid I wasn’t.”

“You thought it was your mother touching you.”

He nodded brusquely. “I may have done my father a disservice, believing he was mad.”

“You never locked him away in an asylum. You cared for him. And he loved you. It was obvious in the letters he wrote me.”

He studied her for a moment. “I often wonder how he knew you were the one for me. What did you say in your letters?”

“Didn’t he let you read them?”

“No, he said I needed to ask my own questions. But I’m curious as to what questions he deemed important, what he asked of you.”

Wedging herself between him and the railing, she placed her hands on his shoulders. “He only asked two things of me.”

“Two? But he said you corresponded quite a bit.”

“We did. In his first letter, he asked me to describe myself and to explain why I felt I met the requirements he sought. You heard those answers on the first day.”

“And the second question?”

“Came in the last ‘interview’ letter he wrote to me. He asked if I believed in love.”

“And you said yes.”

She shook her head. “I said, ‘Not any longer, but your letters make me wish I did.’ I thought he would dismiss me at that point, but he wrote back, ‘You’re perfect.’ And we began corresponding concerning our terms.”

“Between the first and last interview letter, if he wasn’t asking you questions, what was he telling you?”

She smiled softly, with sweet memories. “He told me all about the woman he loved and how he came to love her.”

“I should like to read them.”

“I thought you might, although I should warn you, he does tend to get a bit explicit sometimes.”

“Oh, dear God, don’t tell me he wrote about the piano.”

“All right, I won’t tell you.”

His laughter echoed out over the gardens, where come spring an assortment of flowers would bloom. Then he crushed her to him and took her mouth with the same fever and passion he had the first time here on the terrace.

If he hadn’t kissed her, she might have been able to walk away that day. Instead he’d sealed their fates. And she was ever so glad he had.