“No offense, sir, but your ancestor was a peculiar individual.” “By all accounts, I take after him,” Griffin said. “You’ve seen the portrait in the library. When I look at it, it is as if I am viewing my own reflection.” It was very pleasant sitting out here in the garden with Adelaide, he thought. A brief, tantalizing glimpse of what his life might have been like if his past had taken a different turn, if he were not who and what he was, if he had been free to marry and start a family. “You do bear a striking resemblance to Nicholas Winters, but you are not at all the same man,” Adelaide said. The ringing certainty in her voice made him raise his brows. “Why do you say that?” he asked. “The resemblance, both physical and psychical, is obvious.” “I’ve spent over a decade with that lamp,” she reminded him. “Believe me when I tell you that I know every nuance of the heavy dreamprints on it. You are certainly a descendant of Nicholas Winters but you are your own man.”
