They both nodded as if this were obvious. Carmen had assumed they were friends (which they were). Mrs. Marsh treated all sales reps as if they were dangerous criminals.

Ramsay’s face lit up. “Aha!”

“What? Don’t tell me, an Up on the Rooftops?”

“You are joking, aren’t you? We’d all be in the Bahamas right now.”

Nonetheless he heaved the two heavy boxes up onto the old desk, and, curious despite herself, Carmen inched closer.

“Oh, this is Carmen,” said young Mr. McCredie finally. “She’s helping me out over the holidays.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Ramsay. “You have . . .”

He indicated something, and Carmen, who had been rather cross with him not dealing with her as the person in charge of the shop, put her hand up to her cheek. Somehow she had managed to stick a red bow on the side of her neck.

“Oh!” she said, ripping it off crossly.

“I thought it was a feature,” said young Mr. McCredie. “You know. Seasonal.”

“A bow stuck on my neck? You thought this was part of my shop modernization?”

“Um . . .”

As a distraction, Ramsay opened the box carefully. There was a lot of big old dusty hardbacks, which Mr. McCredie looked at reverently before he gently handled each one.

“What’s this?” said Carmen, picking up one on The Sublime in Landscape Architecture, 1759–1805.

“Illustrated plates,” said Ramsay.

“Ooh,” said Mr. McCredie.

“No!” said Carmen. “We don’t have a market for that.”

“But it’s beautiful,” said Ramsay, and Mr. McCredie nodded his head emphatically.

“But who is going to buy it?” said Carmen. “Sublime fans?”

Mr. McCredie looked at her stubbornly, his hand on the old binding.

“What else have you got?” said Carmen, giving Ramsay a narrow look.

Beneath the pile of random books was a full set of identical heavy green hardbacks. Carmen pulled out the top one.

It was beautiful. Bound in a dark green, there was a colored plate of a snow queen recessed on the front. When you opened the cover, there was a fine layer of tissue paper that rustled gently and, once turned over, there was an image of the queen in front of her icy castle. The books, though clearly rather old, were perfect; they had never been open.

“Well,” said Mr. McCredie reverently.

Carmen found herself desperate to put out a hand to touch one. “These are lovely. Hans Christian Andersen?”

Ramsay nodded. The endpapers were marbled and there were full-color plates throughout the stories, as well as regular line drawings and a silk placeholding ribbon.

“This is treasure, Ramsay,” said Mr. McCredie. “Where on earth did you find it?”

“A lot of digging at an estate sale,” said Ramsay in his deep rumble. “Looks like a younger son venture gone rather wrong, don’t you think, and covered up?”