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On a late summer afternoon, long fingers of sunlight reached deep inside Ludlow House as though it might at last dispel the darkness that seemed to linger in every corner. But this place, the ancestral home of the Swift family, had been touched by shadow, and no matter how much laughter and light might be spread about its rooms, it would never completely escape that taint until every stone had been pulled down and exposed to the sun.
Even so, in spite of all the darkness that encroached upon their lives, the young Swifts - siblings Tamara and William - had attained a modicum of happiness. It was a constant struggle, and yet they continued to engage in that effort because the only alternative was surrender, and brother and sister were both too stubborn and too courageous to even consider such a thing.
The estate in Highgate, North London, had been built early in the Eighteenth century at the order of Sir Edward Ludlow. His only child, his daughter Helen, married Cheswick Swift, the son of the city's most prominent moneylender. The combination of the two families created the most respectable bank in London, with investments all over the burgeoning Empire. Helen and Cheswick had three sons.
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