Semele’s instincts told her she needed to make a copy of the manuscript right away. Usually flagging an item for digitization meant involving a preservation manager, a collections manager, and a photographer. They would all discuss handling issues, customize the cradle to hold the manuscript, and come up with contingencies to avoid any undue stress on the parchment. That was the ideal scenario. But occasionally when working in the field, she needed to digitize a work before transporting it back to New York—like today.
She set up her tripod, which had a pan-tilting head so she could shoot the image flat on the table. Then she mounted her camera, along with a special scanning camera, and positioned her portable high-intensity discharge lamps to provide a continuous light source.
She kept waiting for Theo to barge in and question what the hell she was doing, just like he had to the maid. Her hands became unsteady and she could feel the frown locked on her face. The quality of several leaves looked tenuous. Two thousand years were weighing on this parchment like invisible stones; it was a heavy burden to carry.
When the last page had been digitized, a wave of dizziness hit her and she closed her eyes until it passed.
She had been working with unwavering focus for several hours. Now she was completely drained. But when she opened the file on her laptop to double-check her work, what she saw made her whistle. The quality of her scan was a hundred times better than any image from a commercial digital camera. Every blot of ink and speck of dust had been captured in the minutest detail: it looked like an exact replica.
She dismantled all the equipment and then carefully packed the manuscript in the last remaining crate, her mind still reeling from her eleventh-hour discovery. What if she hadn’t looked in the cabinet?
The thought that she might have left Switzerland without finding this jewel horrified her. She still couldn’t believe there was no mention of the manuscript in the official registry.
The grandfather clock in the hall struck four and she glanced at her watch in surprise. The day had vanished. The courier would be here soon, but there was one more thing she had to do before leaving the château. She needed to make sure Marcel was really the one who had written her the message.
She pulled Marcel’s note from her pocket and studied it again. The writing had a distinctive right-slanted scrawl with wide spacing, connected letters, and restricted loops. Her mind automatically began to list the defining traits: he was larger than life, generous but cautious, and signs of tension marked his penmanship. She needed only to see a small sample to be sure.
Hurrying across the gallery, she ducked into Marcel’s personal study. She usually passed through the room to access the kitchen, but today she stopped and closed the door. The chances of one of the staff coming in were slim, but she couldn’t risk anyone seeing what she was about to do.
She rushed to the sixteenth-century mahogany writing desk and opened all the drawers, where she found ledgers, letters, even an old appointment book—more evidence than she needed.
Within seconds she had her answer. All the handwriting was identical to the note. Marcel had written to her. Now the question that remained was why.
But there was nothing more she could do here. She needed to discuss the situation with Mikhail when she got home. He would know how to handle the dilemma.
She was about to leave when her eyes settled on the family photographs hanging above the fireplace. They ranged from daguerreotypes taken in the 1800s to pictures that looked quite recent. She didn’t know who all the people were but she could feel the love, the sense of friendship that emanated from them.
In a grand house such as this, her favorite room would be this one, and she was certain it had been Marcel’s too. She felt as if she had gotten to know him through the weeks she’d spent here.
She studied a picture of a much younger Marcel with his wife. Theo stood wedged between their legs, only five or six years old. An older woman, most likely his grandmother, hovered to the side. Semele looked at the other photos of Theo. There was one with his mother that appeared to be the most recent. She knew that Mrs. Bossard had passed away three years ago from breast cancer. In the picture Theo had his arms around her and was laughing. He didn’t look like his current self at all.
Semele couldn’t stop staring at the picture. Something about it made her wistful.
The desire struck her to go visit a few of the other rooms one last time before she left. Her only opportunity to explore the château had been on that first day. There was a small reading library upstairs, where she’d spied several jaw-dropping first editions perched on a bookshelf, including an Orbis Sensualium Pictus, the earliest picture book for children, first published in 1658. She had to know if it was an original.
It would just take a minute. Surely no one would mind—Theo was gone and the housekeeper had already said her good-byes. The only person left was the chef, who was probably in the kitchen drinking wine and watching his favorite Swiss cooking show. But as she ventured up the sweeping staircase, she began to second-guess her nerve—Orbis or no Orbis, she felt like an intruder. Halfway down the hall, she was ready to turn around when she saw that the bedroom door directly across from her was open. What she saw inside made her freeze.
Theo was sitting on a king-size bed in the middle of a room that looked like it had been plucked straight out of a Tudor manor. He was wearing only sweatpants and sitting cross-legged, meditating with his eyes closed and an open hand on each knee.
He looked like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man come to life and reclining in repose. The air around him felt charged.
Semele stood watching him until a glimmer of awareness finally returned to her and she realized how this must look. She was a professional, one of the best in her field, and here she was hovering at her client’s bedroom door like a Peeping Tom.
Tiptoeing backward, she fled through the hall and ran down the stairs, jumping the last two. She dashed back to the gallery and closed the door. “Jesus!” That had been completely ridiculous.
Mortified, she put her hands to her face, still in a panic. If she had been discovered … She tried to calm down but spent two solid minutes pacing the room.
Needing a distraction, she grabbed her laptop and made her way to the kitchen for a visit with the chef and a cappuccino. When he offered her a glass of Petite Arvine from the local vineyard, Semele changed her mind.
The debacle upstairs called for wine.
She perched on a stool at the kitchen island and sipped the golden white. The chef tried to offer her a late lunch, but she declined, too worked up to eat.
She opened her laptop to try to take her mind off Theo. What she really wanted to do was read more of the manuscript, but she didn’t feel comfortable working on the translation in front of anyone. What if Theo came downstairs? Just the thought made her stomach do a somersault.
Instead she logged in to her company’s server, where there was a running news stream of sales happening at various auction houses around the world. She forced herself to focus on the recent highlights.
Sotheby’s had sold twelve items of a collection she was quite familiar with for $14.9 million. One of her associates at the firm, Fritz Wagner, had managed the auction. She made a mental note to send him a bottle of champagne when she got back.
A copy of the Torah had set a record, selling for $3.85 million, and a Titanic letter had sold for $200K. It seemed like all the usual suspects were up for grabs this week. Writings from Abraham Lincoln’s journals—the man wrote more than a million words in his lifetime—and works by Thomas Jefferson and the Beatles too. And it looked like Bonhams had just sold the second of two known copies of the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for $100K.
The next listing grabbed her attention.
Sotheby’s had auctioned off an entire private manuscript collection for $2.5 million. The collection was billed as “a representation of the history of the written word in Europe” and contained pieces from Early Antiquity to the Renaissance, including several rare works from the Dark and Medieval Ages in a myriad of languages: Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Old English. The catalog would be an excellent reference. Semele studied the list of all sixty items and started to take notes.
Half an hour later she reached for her wine and realized she had finished it. When the chef asked if she would like another, she slid the glass forward.
As she watched him pour, she noticed he wore a Geiger watch like her father’s. She had been meaning to ask her mother if she could have the watch as a keepsake, only they weren’t speaking to each other now.
With a sigh she sipped the wine and moved on to checking e-mail. There was one from Bren letting her know he had made a reservation at La Grenouille for tomorrow night.
Her eyebrows rose as she read—the place was a landmark, where Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, and Salvador Dalí had all dined by candlelight and roses. Semele and Bren had been to La Grenouille once before on a business dinner with a collector her firm was courting. Over Grand Marnier soufflés Bren had whispered that he’d bring her back for a special occasion. Semele was beginning to wonder just what he had in mind.
Was he planning to turn dinner into something more than an anniversary celebration? An image of him placing a ring-sized box on the table took shape in her mind. Surely he wasn’t going to propose. They weren’t at that stage yet. She brushed the thought aside.
In his e-mail he had attached a funny picture of himself holding a handwritten sign that said LOST AND LONELY. It made her smile.
They had barely spoken the past three weeks. Whenever she tried to call, she got his voice mail because he was tied up in class. Switzerland was five hours ahead, so most of their conversations ended up happening over e-mail and texts. But Bren understood how consumed she was by her assignments. Out of the twenty days she had been in Switzerland, she’d allowed herself only one day off to play tourist.
Last week she had strolled the gorgeous lakeside walk to Château de Chillon, the famous island castle on the edge of Lake Geneva. The castle looked like it was literally rising from the water; its construction was a marvel of architecture and steeped in a thousand years of history. It had been everything from a Roman stronghold to a royal summerhouse to a prison.
Semele spent the morning touring the grounds, looking out Gothic windows and wandering along the sentry walks. She visited the Clos de Chillon wine cellar, where monk François Bonivard, the hero of Lord Byron’s famous poem, had been imprisoned. She did a small tasting of their Grand Cru and bought a bottle to take home to Bren. At the gift shop she also found a leather-bound copy of The Prisoner of Chillon. Wine and Lord Byron would be perfect anniversary gifts. She planned to give him both tomorrow night.
Semele’s fingers flew across the keyboard as she sent Bren a reply—perhaps a sappier one than usual to atone for her unexpected feelings upstairs. Then she finished off her drink and thanked the chef for a wonderful stay. As soon as the courier came, she would be officially done at the château, and she was ready to head home.
She waited for her computer to shut down and zipped it into its case.
Feeling mellow from the wine now, she wandered back into the gallery. A sharp pang of guilt hit her as she realized she’d been half hoping Theo would come downstairs. Although they had said their good-byes this morning, he was still here … and so was she.…
In a bit of a haze, she shut the door and leaned back against the heavy wood and closed her eyes.
“Daydreaming?”
Startled, she turned to find Theo standing in the doorway of his father’s study. He was waiting for her. He had changed into slacks and another sweater. Her eyes reflexively swept over him, but then she caught herself.
“Did you have a chance to take a last tour around the house before you’re off?” A knowing look danced in his eyes.
Semele’s heart hammered in her chest. He had seen her upstairs. “I-I … I wanted to look at your Orbis.…” She hesitated, thinking that didn’t sound right.
“Did you? Look?” He walked toward her.
She watched him close the distance between them. “Is it really an original?” She hated how nervous she sounded. Her conscience screamed for her to back up, to look away, to figure out how to leave the room, but she couldn’t resist the spell that was weaving itself around them.
“I’m afraid this house is full of surprises,” he said softly. “God knows I shouldn’t be down here.” His hand came up and trailed along her cheek. “Tell me to go.”
The desire in his eyes made her forget every thought running through her mind. She wanted him—had wanted him from the first moment they met. Their lips locked, seeking each other, and the tension that had been building between them all these weeks turned into an insatiable dance. It was as though a hand reached inside and turned her like a spinning top.
“Semele,” he whispered and lifted her up.
She felt the table beneath her and his hands as they slid along the silk of her stockings. She leaned back, taking him with her as the kiss deepened. They were almost unable to stop.
It was Theo who pulled away. His breath sounded ragged as he ushered an apology. “I’m sorry.”
Those two words jolted her back to reality. She was lying across the examining table in her client’s arms.
Semele opened her eyes and saw a myriad of emotions play across Theo’s face before his gaze shuttered and the connection between them was severed.
He backed away and gave her room to stand. Her legs wobbled, her whole world off-kilter. She had no idea how to handle the situation—she couldn’t find her voice.
“Forgive me,” he said, sounding like a repentant gentleman from the 1800s. His stilted manner made everything worse. She could barely focus on what he was saying. “I’m afraid I let myself get carried away.” He seemed to be waiting for her response.
“Me too,” she stammered like an idiot.
Before she could recover, he said, “Forgive me,” once more and strode off toward his father’s study. “Safe travels, Miss Cavnow.”
The door closed behind him with a definitive click.