“Good God, Nicholas and Olivia were your brother and sister—”

“Half brother and sister!” she retorted, as if that might distance her from real pain.

“All right, then, half brother and sister! Haven’t you even wondered about it? Don’t you feel anything?”

“I feel grateful that they could be buried with Mother in the family vault,” Susannah answered. “Thanks to the rector’s kindness! In the old days, it wouldn’t have been allowed, you know that. Suicides weren’t buried in the churchyard, much less in the crypt! And we’d have been ostracized along with them. It’s still bad enough, God knows. London will be an ordeal, facing all my friends, knowing pity’s behind their sympathy—” She stopped, unwilling to lay her emotions out, raw and painful, for the others to paw over. “I don’t want to talk about it! What we’ve got to face now is, what’s to become of the house?”

Daniel said, “I’d always understood it was left to the survivors to sell.” He glanced around the room. Susannah. Rachel. Stephen. Himself. He was Susannah’s husband, but he’d always been treated as one of the family. That had been a source of great pride to him. With feelings running so high over the Troubles in Ireland, he might have been seen as less, well, acceptable socially, without the Trevelyan connection behind him. Not that the Trevelyans were so high and mighty, but they were old blood, respected. His eyes moved on. Cormac. Olivia and Nicholas’d left Cormac out of their wills. Daniel had found himself wondering, sometimes, who Cormac’s Irish mother had been—if it had made a difference. Cormac was a FitzHugh, but not a Trevelyan. Not Rosamund’s child. Nor wed to one of Rosamund’s children. Nor, like Rachel, a cousin on the Marlowe side.

Rachel said, “Yes, that’s what I’d been told. Unless they changed their minds. At the end.” As they’d changed their minds about living ... She took a deep breath and refused to think about it. And instead found herself listening again. To the sounds of the house. Since she’d walked through the door two days ago, she’d felt it. Swallowing her, drawing the very breath from her body. Frightening her with a stillness that wasn’t stillness ...

Stephen said, moving his cane along the pattern of the Persian carpet’s intertwined medallions. “Well, I for one know what I think we should do. We should turn this place into a memorial. A museum in Livia’s memory.”

Susannah stared at him in surprise.

Cormac said, “Don’t be ridiculous! It’s the last thing she’d have wanted! Olivia spent her entire life hiding from people. Do you think she’d be pleased to have strangers wandering about in here now?” He moved gracefully around the room, tall and oddly beautiful in a very masculine way.