PROLOGUE
Kate 1982
The large ballroom was crowded with familiar ghosts come to help celebrate her
birthday. Kate Blackwell watched them mingle with the flesh-and-blood people, and in her
mind, the scene was a dreamlike fantasy as the visitors from another time and place glided
around the dance floor with the unsuspecting guests in black tie and long, shimmering
evening gowns. There were one hundred people at the party at Cedar Hill House, in Dark
Harbor, Maine. Not counting the ghosts, Kate Blackwell thought wryly.
She was a slim, petite woman, with a regal bearing that made her appear taller than she
was. She had a face that one remembered. A proud bone structure, dawn-gray eyes and a
stubborn chin, a blending of her Scottish and Dutch ancestors. She had fine, white hair
that once had been a luxuriant black cascade, and against the graceful folds of her ivory
velvet dress, her skin had the soft translucence old age sometimes brings.
I don't feel ninety, Kate Blackwell thought. Where have all the years gone? She watched
the dancing ghosts. They know. They were there. They were a part of those years, a part
of my life. She saw Banda, his proud black face beaming. And there was her David, dear
David, looking tall and young and handsome, the way he looked when she first fell in love
with him, and he was smiling at her, and she thought, Soon, my darling, soon. And she
wished David could have lived to know his great-grandson.
Kate's eyes searched the large room until she saw him. He was standing near the
orchestra, watching the musicians. He was a strikingly handsome boy, almost eight years
old, fair-haired, dressed in a black velvet jacket and tartan trousers. Robert was a replica
of his great-great-grandfather, Jamie McGregor, the man in the painting above the marble
fireplace. As though sensing her eyes on him,. Robert turned, and Kate beckoned him to
her with a wave of her fingers, the perfect twenty-carat diamond her father had scooped up
on a sandy beach almost a hundred years ago scintillating in the radiance of the crystal
chandelier. Kate watched with pleasure as Robert threaded his way through the dancers.
I am the past, Kate thought. He is the future. My great-grandson will take over
Kruger-Brent Limited one day. He reached her side, and she made room for him on the
seat beside her.
"Are you having a nice birthday, Gran?"
"Yes. Thank you, Robert."
"That's a super orchestra. The conductor's really bad"
Kate looked at him in momentary confusion, then her brow cleared. "Ah. I presume that
means he's good."
Robert grinned at her. "Right. You sure don't seem ninety."
Kate Blackwell laughed. "Just between the two of us, I don't feel it."
He slipped his hand in hers, and they sat there in a contented silence, the
eighty-two-year difference between them giving them a comfortable affinity. Kate turned to
