Later that evening, Nora sent Søren a text message to accept the invitation.

Warning, I have a housewarming gift for you, Nora told him. Three gifts actually.

Søren answered, Gold, frankincense, and myrrh?

Even better. See you soon.

Nora stopped by The Good Witch one more time to pick up Søren’s first housewarming gift, then drove over to his house. She found him in his music room at his piano, playing a song she vaguely knew but couldn’t name.

She came in and sat next to him on the piano bench. His hands stilled at the keys, but when she didn’t say anything, he began to play again. The sun was setting outside, the room growing darker. When he reached the end, he lifted his fingers from the keys and set his hands in his lap.

“Pretty,” she said. “What was that?”

“An old Welsh lullaby—‘All Through the Night.’” He sung the lines to her, softly:

Sleep my child and peace attend thee

All through the night

Guardian angels God will send thee

All through the night

He faced her the first time. “Grace used to sing it to Fionn to put him to sleep. She let me listen on the phone one night.” His brow furrowed. “Does that hurt you?”

“That you listened to the mother of your son sing to him? Of course it hurts. It breaks my heart because you only got to hear it over the phone and only once. Why do you ask?”

“I think I hurt you more in more ways than I know. No, I hurt you in more ways than I want to know.”

“I can take it.” She smiled—a wicked smile, but a brief one. It was all for show anyway. “Sometimes. And sometimes I can’t take it.”

“Miserere mei, Deus—secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.”

She laughed softly. “Are you trying to turn me on by speaking in Latin? If so, it’s working.”

He smiled, almost. “It’s known as the ‘neck verse,’” he said. “The first verses of Psalm 51 in Latin. In old Britain, clergy received less sentences for their crimes. Anyone accused of a crime could claim ‘benefit of the clergy.’ You would save your neck from a noose if you could recite to the courts that verse in Latin and thus prove you were in the clergy. Of course, many non-clergy members used it. Who wouldn’t?”

“Seems a little unfair. I doubt they’d believe a woman accused of murder was a member of the clergy even if she recited the whole Bible in Latin.”

In fact, they would have probably accused her of witchcraft.

“Massively unfair, but I’ll take any help I can get right now.”

“I’m not going to hang you. Or shoot you.”

“Or leave me?”

She kissed him. A gentle kiss at first, then deeper as Søren took her face in his hands and kissed the breath from her body. Who needed air anyway? The kiss stilled like a storm and they sat there, foreheads resting together. Søren found her hands and held them.