Prescott drew my hand through his arm and patted it. “Oh, he’ll give you up for a few minutes, my dear,” he said in a reassuring voice. “Besides, you’re the one I want to talk to. Only you, Lucie.” He laid an index finger over his lips like we were conspirators. I could read the message in his eyes.

Don’t tell anyone.

He led me down a long corridor lined with more paintings in ornate gilded or carved wooden frames that I knew for a fact were original Old Masters. Classical bronzes and marble sculptures that had once graced temples, palaces, and gardens in ancient Greece, Italy, or somewhere in the Middle East were subtly lit and so beautiful they took my breath away.

Then there was Hawthorne Castle itself, an honest-to-goodness castle with turrets, towers, crenellated walls—even a portcullis leading to an inner courtyard with a multi-tiered fountain in the center—built by Prescott’s father, Jock, in the 1800s as homage to his British wife, Lady Daphne, so she would not be homesick for her beloved England. Hawthorne also possessed a knight in a full suit of armor that stood guard in the foyer, a small garden maze modeled after Henry VIII’s maze at Hampton Court Palace, an orangerie, servants’ quarters, three swimming pools, a bowling alley, and dozens of formal rooms for entertaining where hand-woven silk and wool carpets from Morocco, Iran, China, and Turkey covered floors with elaborate inlaid borders of exotic wood. In total, the Castle had sixty rooms, including fifteen bedrooms, along with three Tudor-style guest cottages. In addition to the art on the walls, the high-coffered ceilings were painted with murals of hunting scenes and pastoral landscapes or cherubs and creatures from mythology; the intricate woodwork had been carved by craftsmen Jock had flown in from Italy.

“I’m sure you must never get tired of seeing these beautiful things,” I said. “I know I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t,” he said, “but to be honest, acquiring them is what really interests me. It’s more about the thrill of the hunt, if you know what I mean. Learning the provenance of each item—about the artist, the owners—traveling the world to find something so rare and exquisite, so sought after…” His voice trailed off.

Only to give it all away.