Instant and utter silence fell over the breakfast table. Everyone stared at him, including the Wyndham cook, Joshua, who was handing Jessie a fresh piece of toast. As for Lucy, their serving maid, she was so distracted by the awesomely beautiful young master Jason’s words that she was in danger of pouring coffee into Mr. Wyndham’s lap. James grabbed her hand just in time.

“Home?” said Alice. “But you are home, Uncle Jathon.”

He smiled at the little faerie, the very image of her mother, who’d been born after he’d arrived here in Baltimore. “No, sweetheart, this isn’t my home, although I’ve been here longer than you have. England is my home, where I was born, at a beautiful house called Northcliffe Hall. That’s where my family lives, where I spent twenty-five years of my life.”

“But you’re ours, Uncle Jason,” nine-year-old Benjamin Wyndham said even as he passed a crisp slice of bacon to Old Corker, the family hound, who’d been born within a week of Benjamin. “You don’t belong to them over in that foreign country anymore. Who cares about Northcliffe Hall anyway? We could name our house-make it sound all sorts of grand-if you wished us to.”

“We’re already named, bacon-brain,” Jon said to his brother. “We’re Wyndham Farm.”

“You’ve got quite a few cousins in England,” James Wyndham said to his son, but his eyes were searching Jason’s face. Then he smiled. “You know, it’s time for us to pay a visit to England as well. The months and years slip by, don’t they? Time simply marches forward, and so very quickly. Nearly five years. That’s amazing, Jase. It seems like yesterday we met you at the dock in the Inner Harbor and Jessie couldn’t take her eyes off of you, said you were even more beautiful than Alec Carrick, surely the most beautiful man God had ever created. She said you had an identical twin, and that meant there was another one like you. I’ll tell you, I was grateful she didn’t swoon.”