The gilt-embossed cover was stunning. When closed, even the edges of the pages had been inked and painted with violets and pomegranates and abstract lines and swirls. A fanciful touch, given that the ornamental edges would be out of sight when the book was tucked into a shelf. Opening the volume spread the ivy and swirls into nothing at all.

She picked up a small blade and a clean quill.

This was an act that could not be undone. She hesitated. Harming a rare, priceless book made her hands shake and her stomach feel queasy.

The thin wooden boards inside of the covers were weak. Philippa supposed she was lucky that these were Elizabethan manuscripts, rather than medieval, or they might not have survived. The boards’ interior walls were stiff and peeling, even without her interference.

Carefully, she sliced the leather to reveal a folded document beneath. As gingerly as she could, she liberated it from the fore edge. The parchment peeled away as though it had never been glued in place. As though it wasn’t part of the binding at all, but a separate hidden page. It had been protected from sunlight and weather and oil from fingers. The painted colors were slightly brighter than those in the manuscript. The paper itself was slightly less yellowed and decorated with elaborate swirling designs.

Nonetheless, the paper was still brittle. Philippa pulled on a pair of gloves before attempting to unfold it. Carefully, she opened the paper as far as she dared without risking it falling apart along the fragile folds.

It was a letter!

“‘To my dearest Agnes,’” she read aloud.

Who was Agnes? Sir Reginald’s wife? His daughter?

“‘How I have adored these years together, you and I working side by side at our little table. Each stroke of my pen reminds me of your hand, its art indistinguishable from my own. Each completed volume, identical to the last. I often cannot tell where I end and you begin.’”

Sir Reginald had not created these manuscripts by himself? He and Agnes bound and illustrated them together, side by side at their…little table?

“‘To others, copying our words year after year must seem like drudgery. But with you, I have never known a moment’s boredom. Our hands are one, as are our hearts and our lives.’”

Well…that was romantic enough that Philippa discounted the idea the illustrator had penned this letter to his daughter. It must be to his wife. “Our words” and “our hands are one” could certainly be interpreted as two artists illustrating the same text interchangeably. It often occurred with Renaissance painters and their apprentices.