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“This way, Mr. Winter,” Cordelia said, breaking the spell.

With a little shake of his head, Mr. Winter returned to the business at hand. He followed Cordelia into the parlor, where, really, there was no room for the piano. “Do you think you can find a spot for it?” She could hear Viola whispering to Roz and Miranda on the stairs.

Winter studied the room. “May we move a couple of chairs?” he asked.

Cordelia nodded, and Winter went to work. She joined her sisters on the stairs. In minutes Winter summoned the carters, and they hefted the piano into the parlor. In no time they emerged with the rolled-up canvas and stood in the vestibule.

“Miss Staveley,” Winter poked his head out of the parlor. “Do you approve?”

Cordelia led her sisters into the parlor, their skirts filling up the space. Winter’s solution surprised her. The piano was there, under the window, and the chairs rearranged into two groups, so that the siblings could all squeeze in if they chose to.

Once again Winter’s gaze found Miranda, and he seemed struck senseless. Cordelia cleared her throat. “My sisters and I thank you, Mr. Winter.”

“Right,” he said with a little shake of his head. “I’ll be on my way.” With a brief bow he left the room.

His voice sounded in the vestibule, speaking to the carters. The door opened and closed. Viola went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The three men appeared outside, walking away from the lodge in the rain.

“Interesting,” said Viola. “Mr. Winter is smitten with Miranda.”

*

The storm passed at sunset, and a serving girl in an apron and mobcap appeared to announce supper. The mere word supper prompted an ungentlemanly grumble from Gray’s belly. He realized he hadn’t eaten for hours. If a meal was ready, Winter must have been busy.

Dimly, Gray had been aware of comings and goings around him, but his attention had been on the castle, drawing its stones, the way his father had taught him. Sketching was a way of seeing the place clearly. Now he had a dozen sketches of the interior of Delamere, cataloging its ground-floor inconveniences, such as the location of the two pantries across the courtyard from the kitchen and the beer in a cellar next to the coal bins. He had noted the features that pleased him—stone walls, wood beams, and the heavy dark pointing of an earlier age.

He had spent an hour in the great hall alone. In ancient times, there would have been a dais for the lord’s high table at the far end of the long room, in much the style of the dining room at his old college. The walls would have been hung with great tapestries or lined with weapons at the ready. Gray did not know the castle’s history or how it had fared in the turbulent times of civil war. He did know that the first lords of Delamere would not have gambled her away, not when she’d been designed for stubborn resistance to attack.

He guessed that the facade of grayish Portland limestone had been added to the outside of the building sometime in the seventeenth century, though the base of the castle was still rough stone. And someone had renovated the interiors of the upper floors with pale plaster walls, white wainscot, and a room of bright-yellow silk damask.

He told the servant girl he’d be along directly and put aside his sketchbook.

Fading daylight streamed through three tall arched windows set in a deep embrasure, where once, perhaps, the lady of the castle sat on a velvet cushion at her needlework. He looked out past the beach to the sea, whipped into whitecaps and glittering where the sun’s rays broke through the moving clouds. Scud blew across the empty beach. He would swim again in the morning, and with that thought, an image that had bothered him all day flashed in his mind. He could see Miss Staveley picking her way across the pebbles to the water, her skirts whipped by the wind.

His first impression of her standing next to her languishing sister had been that Cordelia Staveley was the sort of iron-souled, managing female he liked to avoid. It made no sense that his wayward thoughts strayed to images of her swimming. He did not see her allowing herself to be drawn into the sea in a bathing machine for a brief lady-like plunge under the care of a matron. His unruly imagination saw her as some South Sea island maiden utterly at home striking out through the surf.

Thankfully, hunger banished the vision of white arms cutting through the waves. He descended a rough winding staircase to a dark-paneled dining room adjoining the old southeast tower. There he found a table set for one, lighted by four braces of silver candles, an island of light in the dim room. A fire blazed in a grand fireplace, and savory aromas wafted from a set of covered dishes on the sideboard. Windows along the north side allowed views of an Italian garden. Voices drifted in from the kitchen outbuildings. Then Winter appeared, looking distracted.

“Ah, Winter, there you are. Can you set another place?”

“Sir? You didn’t tell me you expected a guest.”

“Join me. Be my guest.”

“Forgive me, sir. There’s a good deal yet to do.” Winter raked a hand through his tousled hair.

“Join me. You can report on what has been accomplished.”

“Sir, I would never presume.”

“We’re not in London, Winter. We’re two gentlemen stranded in the wilds of Hampshire, and you look done in. Sit before you fall.”

“Very well, sir. Let me get the wine.”

Winter disappeared into an outer room, and in a minute the servant girl reappeared with another setting.

When Winter returned, Gray took over with the wine. He ordered Winter into a chair and decanted a drinkable claret. An apron-swathed woman of middle years and stout dimensions entered and began serving from the sideboard, directing her assistant in the placing of fish and fowl, soup, bread, and potatoes. Gray raised his brows.

“Sir, may I present Mrs. Peachy and her daughter, Dinah.” Winter indicated the two women, who curtsied. “As you did not care for the inn’s food,” Winter explained, “I have engaged Mrs. Peachy to set up a kitchen here.”