“Been hired to inventory the items and measure them.” He picked up a carpenter’s folding wood ruler, displaying the item for her benefit. “Oi’m in charge of selecting the crates and wrappings.”

He spoke as a man proud of the role he’d been assigned. He said all the right things and had all the right tools to account for his presence here . . . and yet . . . “And you’ll wrap those pieces yourself?” she quizzed, unable to shake her unease.

“Three of us have been assigned the role.”

“Three,” she repeated meaninglessly.

“Three.”

Hmm.

And then something he’d said registered. “Mr. Phippen is overseeing these rooms.”

The man hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, miss. Oversees all of them, ’e does. Involved in every aspect of the projects he takes on.”

That may be, but these rooms were different, not for the walls and the floor and the windows, but rather for the items within. “My father wouldn’t just leave his collection to a builder. He’d trust them to someone familiar with the artifacts here and how to handle them.”

Mr. Phippen’s emissary shrugged. “Oi don’t know that, miss. Oi only know the work Oi’ve been ’ired to do and what was worked out, miss, between Mr. Phippen an’ the earl and countess.”

They stood silently for several moments before Myrtle cleared her throat. “Then I shall let you back to your task, Mr. . . .”

“Henries.”

“Mr. Henries.”

Did she imagine the way his shoulders sagged in relief? Or was it because of the cessation in her questioning?

As Myrtle dragged the broadsword over to its stand and heaved with all her might to get it back up and in place, she watched him.

Sure enough, he set to work, unfolding his measuring stick and just then putting it against the marble bust of a man. That mid–First Century piece from the early Imperial age of Julio-Claudian. Details she knew even without the gold plaque her father had commissioned for the front of the pillar, as he had for all the pieces in this room.

Reluctantly, Myrtle quit the rooms, leaving Mr. Henries to his assignment.

Her father must be getting on in his dotage, for the proud and exceedingly careful connoisseur of artifacts, a man who’d looked with the same reverent awe upon the items in this room as he did his wife, would not simply leave them for someone else to oversee. Nay, it was more likely he’d have handled the task himself . . .

But then, how much do you really know him or your mother, or any of your family, for that matter?

As she approached the sanctuary that had always been hers, the loud giggling within served as another reminder that all the places she’d called hers belonged now to her family, and that she was just a visitor amongst them.