She pushed open the door. “You mean at Millworth Manor?”

“Yes. Wouldn’t it have been much easier to have staged this Christmas farce of yours at your own house? From what Win has written through the years, I understand you have a country estate, as well as a house in town.”

She sighed. “Has Winfield told you everything about my life these past years?”

“Not everything.” Grayson shrugged. “I can’t imagine he knows everything.”

“And men say women like to gossip.” She moved into the attic. It was at once annoying and gratifying to know Grayson had followed the twists and turns of her life—especially as she had gone to great pains not to follow his.

“In answer to your question, the manor is where we always spend Christmas. When we have spent it together,” she amended. “Which has been rare in recent years. But there is nowhere else I would rather be for Christmas. Certainly, after Father died, when Mother began filling the house with her odd assortment of lost souls, it grew a bit unusual—”

He snorted.

“But in many ways, all those people who had lost their homes, sharing our home at Christmas . . . Well”—she shrugged—“I may make disparaging comments about Mother’s guests, and, indeed, there were any number of times when they could be quite bothersome to have around. Lord knows, little of it was especially proper, but, for the most part, they were usually very nice. And grateful to be here. They didn’t always say it aloud, but one could tell. And no more so than at Christmas.” She thought for a moment. “When I think of Christmas, I can’t imagine marking it anywhere but here. I realize it’s overly sentimental of me, but there you have it.”

“It was never what one might call traditional.”

“But always interesting,” she said absently, surveying the attic. Even on a winter’s day, there was enough light from the windows in the porticos to be able to see. Neatly stacked boxes, labeled and marked with their contents, crates and assorted trunks lined the short walls under the eaves. Miscellaneous, discarded furniture hidden under dust-covered cloths like ghostly guardians of the past clustered around the cut-stone columns, which supported the roof. The organized manner of the attic, thanks to industrious housekeepers, left a large empty space in the center of the room. She headed toward the far corner, where the Christmas ornaments had been kept for as long as she could remember.

“Funny to think of all your memories packed away up here,” he said behind her.

“Now who is being sentimental?”

“Blame it on the season.”