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“You’d say that even if it wasn’t, which is just as well because by Bree’s clock I’ve only got ten minutes left. You’ve only got ten minutes to change.”

“Okay.”

“I hate that.” With genuine feeling she pushed at her hair. “Just hate that you can get ready in ten minutes. I was thinking about wearing my hair down, but—”

“I like it down.”

“Fine, settled, but now I need different earrings. What are you wearing?”

“Clothes.”

“Oh, shut up.” Laughing, she changed her earrings.

He went with dark gray jeans, a pale blue shirt, and managed to get ready three full minutes before her.

“I really hate that.”

“But you look amazing.”

He laid his hands on her shoulders from behind, kissed the top of her head. She turned, started to lift her mouth to his, then nudged him back.

“No time! I don’t know what she’ll do if we get off schedule, and I don’t want to find out.”

Grabbing his hand, she pulled him into the hall just as Owen stepped out of Cleo’s room.

“She’s still in there, fooling around.”

“No! She can’t! Schedule.”

When Sonya dashed into the room, Owen just shrugged. “She asked me which dress—she had two—and went with the one I didn’t pick.”

Trey only nodded. “Don’t be insulted, trust me. I’ve got a sister. Let’s head down where we can probably be useful.”

Bree, the general to the army she’d amassed, had everything under control. The vision Sonya and Cleo had imagined for the first opening of the manor came to vivid life with flowers, music, the glint of silver and copper and glass under clear blue skies.

Family came early, as requested, because family, as Sonya saw it, was the heartbeat of the manor. Guests arrived in a trickle, then a flood. And as she’d wanted, wished for, the manor filled.

She enjoyed seeing her mother laughing with the Doyles, and her aunt in deep conversation with Anna.

She split tour-guide duty with Cleo and Trey, and while the third floor stayed quiet, the servants’ bell for the Gold Room rang insistently.

She met more Poole cousins, and felt gratified they’d come. Though she’d been assured, more than once, they held no resentment over her inheritance, it relieved her to see and feel the lack of it herself.

Connor Poole Oglebee, head of sales, a big man on the cusp of fifty with a big laugh and deep brown eyes, drew her aside into the music room.

“An impressive gallery. Sad and beautiful at the same time.” He stepped closer to Agatha’s portrait.

“My branch of the family tree comes through Jane Poole, Owen’s twin, and the child she had shortly after Agatha’s death. Seeing this, the lost brides together this way? It makes me wonder what might have happened if Jane had been married in the manor. I’m here because she wasn’t.”

He turned to Sonya. “We’re both here due to choices made along the way. I’m sorry Patricia Poole made the choices she made, and glad—very glad—Collin did what he could to rectify those choices.”

“My father had a good life. Too short, but a good life, a happy one.”

“Yes, I believe that. I met his parents, and your mother. And you.” He took her hand. “Collin would like what you’ve done here, what you’re doing. He never took his eye off the business, even though in the last few years he rarely came in. But he guarded that legacy.”

He looked back at the portraits, scanning from Johanna to Agatha.

“I’d come here every four weeks or so, on the excuse of giving him a report. One he didn’t need, as he kept his eye. He guarded that legacy,” Connor repeated, “as he guarded the manor, another legacy. But this was more than that to him. It was home. Despite all its… quirks, he loved the manor.”