“My great-great-grandmother.” Pleased with her reaction, Bennett drew her hand into the crook of his arm. “She’d done hundreds of watercolors and had tucked them away. In her day, women painted or drew as a hobby, not as a profession.”

“Some things change,” Hannah murmured, then looked back at the painting. “Some things don’t.”

“A few years ago I found her work in a trunk in one of the attics. So many of them had been damaged. It broke my heart. Then I found this.” He touched the frame, reverently, Hannah thought. She looked from his hand to his face and found herself caught up in him. “It was like stepping back in time, generations, and discovering yourself. It could have been painted today, and it would look the same.”

She could feel her heart moving toward him. What woman was immune to pride and sensitivity? In defense, she took a small step back. “In Europe, we understand that a few generations are only a blink in time. Our history stands before us, centuries of it. It becomes our responsibility to give that same gift to each new generation.”

Bennett looked at her and found her eyes almost impossibly deep. “We do have that in common, don’t we? In America, there’s an urgency that can be exciting, even contagious, but here, we know how long it takes to build and secure. Politics change, governments shift, but history stands firm.”

She had to turn away from him. It would only cloud the issue if she thought of him as a caring, sensitive man rather than an assignment. “Are there any others?” she said with a nod toward the painting.

“Only a handful, unfortunately. Most were beyond repair.” For reasons he could only be half-sure of, he wanted to share with her things that mattered to him. “There’s one in the music room. The rest are in the museum. Here, have a look.” With his hand guiding her again, he took her down the hall into the next wing, their footsteps echoing off the mosaic tile.

Leading her through an open door, Bennett took her into a room that seemed to have been fashioned to accent the white grand piano in its center.

There was a harp in the corner that might have been played a hundred years before, or last week. In a glass case were antique wind instruments and a fragile lyre. The flowers were fresh here, as they were in every room in the palace. Trailing blossoms of jasmine spilled out of glossy, Chinese red urns. A small marble fireplace was swept and scrubbed clean with a pile of fresh kindling stacked as though inviting the match.