“I’ll return to your father now. Will you join us when you’re done? Then we can talk some more.”

“Yes. I won’t be long.”

She turned, waiting until his footsteps had faded, and then forced herself to survey her room. Photographs first. She removed them from their frames, a half-dozen family portraits that chronicled her life, along with her parents’ wedding photograph, and tucked them into the worn copy of Anatomia del Gray that she’d been slowly memorizing. To it she added her precious Medicina Interna di Goldman-Cecil and a dictionary of infectious diseases that had lost its cover years ago.

Her jewelry, what little there was, she emptied out of its papier-mâché box and into a handkerchief, its corners tightly knotted to hold her treasures. And then she took the empty pack that Signor Gerardi—Niccolò—had brought to her, pushed the books into the bottom, and methodically filled it with the clothing she’d already set aside.

She hefted the pack, testing it, and nearly buckled under the weight of all her books. And still she couldn’t resist adding one more indulgence: the mohair-and-velvet rabbit, missing one of its pink glass eyes, that had been her companion since before her memories began. It was childish to bring it, and Niccolò would think her silly if he noticed, but she could not, in that moment, bring herself to leave Pietro behind.

She was tempted to hide in her room, but she had so little time left with her father. Better to share those precious moments with him, even with a stranger as witness, than to forgo them altogether. She left the pack on her bed, switched off the light, and went in search of her father and the man who had come to take her away. Predictably enough, they were in her father’s study, standing side by side in front of the desk. She paused at the door, glad of the chance to study Niccolò Gerardi, for neither man had noticed her approach.

He was fair, with a day-old beard the color of dark honey and a tracing of freckles across his nose and cheekbones. He stood at least a head taller than her father, with shoulders that strained at the faded seams of a much-mended coat, but his voice, from the little he’d said to her, was that of an educated man, and there was a reassuring gentleness to his manner.

As she waited, half-hidden in the darkened hall, her father opened his hand, his gaze fixed on a small object in his palm. From the way it glinted in the lamplight, she thought it might be a coin. Then he shook his head, blinking hard, and swiped at his eyes.

She must have moved, or made some slight sound. Her father turned, his reddened eyes the only sign of his earlier distress, and beckoned her forward.

“There you are. Are you packed?”

“What is that in your hand?”