Now, thirty years later, he was one of the most powerful men in the country.

Last winter, the last remaining Balatons—Sarah and her father—had received a letter from a Hungarian historian. The Communist government was restoring Balaton Castle as a center for tourism, and the historian wanted to know if the surviving Balatons might know the whereabouts of the famed collection of Balaton jewels. The government was interested in securing them for a museum at the castle. The historian had enclosed a photograph of an eighteenth-century portrait of a Balaton countess wearing the tiara and choker and said he was collecting detailed descriptions of the rest of the missing collection.

Andrew had not bothered to write back. As he told Sarah, the Communists had stolen the Balaton Castle and lands, and even if he knew the whereabouts of the jewels, he wouldn’t tell them. But he had never seen the so-called Balaton collection, and he didn’t believe it existed. His ancestor, he maintained, had borrowed the tiara and choker from a friend.

For her part, Sarah hadn’t mentioned the scrap-book—or her opinion that the jewels Judith Land had worn at the Christmas ball in Vienna in 1956 were the same jewels worn by the countess in the 1798 portrait.

She didn’t want her father to know about her obsession with his first wife. Judith Land had been the love of his life, and she had destroyed any chance for his personal happiness. As a teenager, Sarah had begun the scrapbook. If she understood Judith Land, she felt, she might understand her father, and learn how to win his approval.

“Sarah.”

She looked up at the unexpected sad, melodic note in her father’s quiet voice. But his face was rigid, and he didn’t smile.

“Sarah, where you’re treading, you will find only pain. I have put the past behind me. I suggest you respect and believe that.”

They were the gentlest words her father had ever spoken to her. “It might be too late.”

“What do you mean?” he asked sharply.

She didn’t hesitate. “I’ve already talked to Ashley Wakefield.”

Andrew Balaton stood looking out at the Houston skyline, in his opinion the most beautiful of any in the world. With tremendous effort, he had dismissed his daughter with an affectionate kiss on the cheek. He wanted to flog her. Such a fool she was! But so tenderhearted, so devoted to him. He loved her in a thousand ways, but he had difficulty articulating any of them. She was his daughter—his flesh. He had watched her grow into a woman, and now he wanted her to be happy, a woman of strength and compassion. He admired her for her achievements. And yet every day he fought the urge to protect her from the agonies of life. In his mind, he accepted that she had to experience pain in order to grow. In his heart, he wanted nothing of cruelty ever to touch her—especially, he thought, the cruelty and pain and horror of his own past. That part of him, that agony, was his alone. She had no right to it.