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She kissed Trey, then Owen in turn.

“You need to clean them up some.” Not a suggestion from Owen, but an order. “Oil them.”

“We will. We’ll do that tomorrow between addressing invitations.”

“You’re going to hand address a hundred and fifty invitations tomorrow?”

“Please.” Sonya laughed at Trey. “I have a program for that.”

“And we’re going to add some protection to this room, like in my studio. I have some things.”

“If you can do that,” Owen wondered, “why don’t you do the whole damn house?”

“Have you seen the size of this house? And honestly, I don’t want to press my luck.”

“But right now, we’re going to make dinner for a couple of strong, handsome men.”

“We?” Cleo said as Clover chimed in with Mary Wells’s classic “My Guy.”

“I’ll do the grunt work.”

It started at three with the chime of the clock, the trill of piano music.

In the nursery, a grieving mother wept. In the servants’ quarters, a young girl from Ireland cried out in pain. A boy lay dying of fever in his bed.

A man sat in a leather chair enjoying his post-dinner brandy and cigar while another split wood to add to the stack.

In the ballroom, people danced, ghosts among ghosts as time slipped. Musicians played reels, then waltzes, then fox-trots.

The dead raised glasses to the brides, the grooms.

A midwife delivered twins of a dying mother while another nursed hers for the first and last time.

The voices, the music, the weeping grew like a storm that had Sonya covering her ears.

“Do you hear it? Do you hear it?”

“Yeah.” Trey wrapped an arm around her. “I’m going to check it out.”

“No, don’t—”

The fire came on in a roar; the terrace doors blew open.

The dogs sat up, barking, and Sonya swore she heard dozens, inside and out. Barking, baying, howling.

She rolled out of bed along with Trey, and with him fought to secure the doors again.

And saw Dobbs on the wall, facing the house, arms lifted, her smile hard and brilliant in the moonlight.

“That’s not right. It’s not right. She sees us.”

“None of this is right.” Teeth gritted, Trey shoved the doors closed.

The room changed around them. Flowers with pink-tipped petals covered the walls. Wood logs crackled in the fire.

A woman wearing an apron over a gray dress, a cap on her head, stood by the head of the bed. A woman, her dark hair matted with sweat, labored in it while others knelt on the bed between her legs.

“Trey, God, Trey, do you see?”