They drifted to a halt a few feet from her front steps, and he gave her the most interesting smile. Small, still tinged with sorrow, but somehow all the deeper and more meaningful for it. A man’s smile had never made her pulse increase before, but her heart took a strange little tumble now.

He bowed a bit at the waist, somehow making it look elegant and formal despite being dressed in athletic wear. “Thank you, Miss Blackwell, for seeing that perspective. And thank you, also, for the pleasure of walking you home.”

She suddenly wished she was in a pretty dress, her hair done up properly. Such a bow deserved something more appealing as its recipient. But she had only her uniform, and tendrils pulling free of her chignon, and a camera in her pocket weighing heavily, begging for a chance to capture him just so.

What an intriguing mass of contradictions he was. The still and the active. The formal and the informal. The studied and the earnest.

Her fingers slid into her pocket and extracted the camera as a grin stole over her lips. “May I?”

He blinked, first at her face and then at her camera. “I . . . why?”

“Because I like to keep a visual record of my days. And I don’t want to forget this conversation.”

She saw the softening in his eyes and responded to it before he nodded. Already had the camera up, open, and was adjusting the focus. Perhaps it was the quickness of her actions that made him laugh. She couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t let it slip by her. She managed to get the pin pushed while light still danced in his eyes and the smile had full possession of his lips.

Ivy and Clarke soon caught up with them, and the men said their farewells amid promises to see them tomorrow.

“See there? Aren’t you glad I insisted?” Ivy chuckled as they made their way inside.

Lily granted her a grin. But then, rather than trail her sister up the stairs to their rooms, she aimed for the small chamber—once a room for a live-in maid—that Mama had let her turn into her darkroom.

Once inside, she pulled out a box of photographs she kept for repurposing—many of which she had taken, others donated by Admiral Hall—and sorted through them until she found the one she was looking for, with Moscow’s magnificent onion-domed horizon. Smiling, she reached for her camera and the film inside it.

She couldn’t give Zivon Marin his home back or find his brother for him. But she could give him a souvenir, anyway. A matryoshka doll. Not a memory itself, but something to open them up.