At 12:03 a.m., Gideon walked down the grand staircase of Whitlock House, very much alive.He took the steps slowly. The banquet hall opened below him, all crystal and candlelight, with a long table set for forty and a wall of white roses behind the head seats. The string quartet had stopped playing. Forty faces turned toward the stairs at once, and he watched each of them understand what they were seeing.Grandmother Margaret Whitlock sat at the head of the table in black silk and pearls. Her champagne glass slipped from her fingers and shattered across the marble. "No," she whispered, and then her voice climbed into a shriek. "He's alive! It's past midnight and he's still alive! The curse will pass to the groom!"Near the window, Roland Pike had gone the color of old paper. Gideon held his gaze for one long second and let him wonder.Mrs. Vale rose from her seat beside her son. She was a thin, elegant woman with diamonds at her throat, and she looked at Gideon the way people look at

Margaret answered on speaker with a hand that wasn't quite steady. "This is Margaret Whitlock.""Mrs. Whitlock, this is Horace Bell." The chairman's voice was deep and clipped, the voice of a man who rarely made his own phone calls. "I'm calling about your company's loan. As of this morning, it has been extended by five years, and all interest has been waived. The bank has also approved a new fifty-million-dollar line of credit for Whitlock Textiles. The documents are already on their way to your office."For a moment, no one breathed. Then the boardroom erupted. Board members shot to their feet, someone shouted, and someone else began laughing with pure relief. Margaret pressed a hand over her heart and sank back into her chair. Iris stared at the pen in her own fingers and slowly set it down. The signature line was still empty. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but for the first time since last night, she could breathe.Before anyone could ask how, the door swung open.Presto

The first patrol car reached the broken guardrail four minutes later. By then the pistols were at the bottom of the Harrow, the last gunman had come to and staggered off into the reeds, and Gideon sat on the slope with his jacket zipped over the wound in his side. The gunman's phone was in his pocket.Iris did the talking, and Gideon watched her with something close to awe. She stood in the flashing lights with mud on her coat and blood dried on her hands, and she lied to two police officers without a single tremor in her voice. A drunk driver, she said, a black car that swerved across the lane and kept going. No, she hadn't seen the plate. Yes, her husband had been cut by the glass. One officer studied Gideon a little too long, but Iris was a Whitlock, and that name still carried weight in Harrowgate. They let her go.She called a car and gave the driver the address of a private clinic on the north side. On the way, while she stared out the window, Gideon typed a single message to Br

Sabine Royce's private office sat at the top of the old lighthouse, a round room of glass and dark wood with the whole harbor spread out below like scattered jewels. She closed the door behind Gideon, crossed to a cabinet, and poured two glasses of whiskey without asking if he wanted one."Sit down, Gideon Morrow," she said.His name hung in the air between them. Nobody had spoken it aloud in three years, and hearing it now felt like stepping into cold water.He didn't sit. "You have me confused with someone else.""I don't." She set a glass on the desk beside him. "Your father's last gala, three years ago. You were bored out of your mind, so you asked me to dance to escape a minister's wife. You stepped on my foot during the waltz and apologized in French." A faint smile touched her mouth. "I told you, I never forget a face."Gideon said nothing, but he picked up the whiskey."Relax. If I wanted you arrested, you'd already be in handcuffs." Sabine leaned against the edge of her desk,

By evening, the whole house had changed its tune.The servants were polishing silver for a celebration dinner. Margaret had propped the Meridian invitation on the drawing room mantel where every visitor would see it, and toward Iris she was suddenly all sweetness, asking whether she had eaten, whether she needed a doctor, and whether the reporters had been too rough with her. Toward Gideon, she was colder than ever.She found him in the upstairs hallway. "That closet is to be cleared tonight," she said without looking at him. "The Meridian Gala is less than a month away, and I will not have guests in this house wondering why a grown man sleeps with the mops. You'll move to the servants' quarters behind the kitchen.""No, he won't."Iris stood at the top of the stairs. Behind her, the rest of the family had drifted out of the drawing room to see what the noise was about, Celeste with a glass in her hand and Damien leaning on the banister."From tonight, my husband sleeps in my wing," I