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above the trapdoor of the tower. Rhys went to assist his wife up the final steep steps, grasping her hand and pulling her up. “Whoop!” Beth gasped as she found herself suddenly standing, her fluffy skirts billowing in the breeze. “Oh, good gracious,” she said, taking in the view.
    Alex watched as Rhys put his arm around his wife, steadying her. It reminded him that he’d had that once, that closeness with a woman, ripe with the hopes of family and a long life. Death had taken it from him with the hot touch of a fever, sweeping pretty, petite Frances away as if she were so much dust. Sometimes it felt as though every step he had made since that day was a step away from the possibility of ever having such a life again, and having to risk the pain of loss.
    “I don’t see what was unfair about it,” Rhys was saying to his wife. “The man would rather spend his nights with a telescope than a woman.”
    Beth rolled her eyes, shaking her head at his obtuseness. “You have only to take a look around you, my darling, to see the truth.”
    Alex and Rhys both raised their eyebrows, their twin expressions forcing Beth to elaborate. “It’s a castle ,” she said, as if speaking to simpletons. “A medieval castle atop a mountain, pennants waving, portcullis raised as if awaiting the return of its lord from the Crusades.” She sighed, moving a little closer to the edge and looking out over the body of the fortress. “If Serena does still haunt this hill, I am certain she is glad to see her home occupied again, especially after the Briggs family abandoned her so abruptly. There wererumors that Mr. Briggs did not like sharing his home with a ghost. You wouldn’t mind though, would you, Alex? Not a man with your kind sensibilities.”
    Alex raised a single eyebrow at his cousin, who responded to his wife’s words with a shrug and a helpless expression. Beth could find romance in a pigsty; a castle held a host of wonderful imaginings, even one with a murderous ghost for a caretaker.
    “I took the place only for the view,” Alex said. “It’s the perfect spot from which to study the night sky. And you already know it was Mr. Briggs who rebuilt Maiden Castle, so I can’t take credit for that bit of your fancy. I would have been content with the tower and a one-room cottage.”
    Beth wrinkled her nose at him. “Pish.”
    He smothered a smile. Ah, well. Let her think him a dashing, romantic figure in his castle on the hill if it pleased her. No doubt she would slowly drive Rhys up a wall with her thoughts.
    “Uncle Alex?” a small voice asked, and he turned to see his niece Louisa, age nine, poking her blond head above the hatchway. “Uncle Alex, Mummy is looking for you. She said to come right this minute,” the little girl said imperiously.
    “Did she?” He raised his eyebrows at her.
    “She did. She said to tell you she is waiting in the library.” Louisa frowned at him. “I shouldn’t keep her waiting, if I were you,” she said, and then ducked back down the hatchway, her message delivered.
    Alex turned a wry smile on Rhys and Beth. “Duty calls.”
    Serena stood amid the spring flowers in the garden, staring up at the new stone walls of the castle as if their solidity were a personal challenge. She would rip them down with her bare hands if she could. God knew she had done her best to keep them from going up.
    She’d worked hard to chase out the new occupants, too.For all the good it did her. The Briggses and their staff had moved out, but now someone else was moving in, and she’d have to start all over.
    Didn’t anyone understand that this place belonged to her now, and that she wanted to be left alone? She had been at the fortress for nearly five hundred years. She had earned it with her own blood and determination. It was hers, and she was not inclined to share.
    Living people. How she loathed them.
    She jerked her chin up and flicked back a long tress of pale blond hair with the back of her hand.