“Thank you for meeting me here, it was good of you to come.” Jean-Claude had smiled over the silver teapot in the tea room at the Savoy. She’d smiled back. He had an intense brown gaze, white hair clipped close over a rounded head, and the South of France in his voice.

“The project intrigued me, of course I came.”

“I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I saw what you did in my friend’s flat in Chelsea. I hoped you might work the same magic on our house.”

“I loved the images you sent me, have you any others?”

He reached into the briefcase by his feet and drew out a bulging envelope, fanning the contents on the tablecloth between the plates of cucumber sandwiches and slices of fruit cake. The photos were of a Georgian house with faded brick; wide, empty rooms; exquisite windows; a long green view.

“I am trusting you with the whole restoration project, to do with the house as you please.”

Melissa looked up, startled. The dark eyes were somber.

“My son is ill; the family is in France. We will be in Paris for a year at least, while he recovers.”

He doesn’t elaborate, he didn’t need to, she understood. She would drop everything to be with Izzy if she was ill, nothing else would count.

“I’m so sorry.”

Jean-Claude nodded, acknowledging her sympathy. “The house has been empty a long time.” The brown eyes studied her closely. “It’s in good shape structurally but it needs fresh air and light, heat, color, curtains, rugs, furniture; color most of all. I love the choices you made for my friend. Please, take the key.” He passed a large iron key across the starched white tablecloth. It felt heavy in her hand, like an expensive gift. Her heart beat fast with excitement.

“I’ll visit next week,” she had promised. “I can’t wait to get started.”

After two hours, the gray spire of Salisbury Cathedral appears in a dip in the hills, so tall and finely wrought it seems to pierce the pale blue sky. She drives slowly through the winding streets of the city, past the gray stone walls of the Cathedral Close and the leaning, timbered houses. A few miles farther west toward the village of Broad Chalke, she takes a left turn and the country road narrows. She slows, opening her window; birdsong and the bitter scent of hedgerows enter the car. The white iron gate is where he’d described, a mile beyond a village of brick and flint. The house stands at the end of the long drive, tall, symmetrical, rose-bricked. Weeds straggle through the gravel; an old man pushes a mower across the lawn—the last cut of the year probably—the sound flares and fades as he walks toward her then away. A couple of thrushes peck at the grass. The walls are warm under her hand. A hidden England beneath the England she knows; calm falls like sunshine. Inside her feet tap on dusty boards pale with age. The kitchen has a dresser and an ancient ceramic sink, copper pans left behind hang by hooks above the range. There is a stage at one end of the room in front, a ballroom perhaps. The rooms in the attic smell of sun-warmed wood. She holds fabric up to the light, measures for curtains, paces distances, and returns to the view; there are sheep on the chalky slopes, beech trees in shadowy stands. The hours tick by, she doesn’t want to leave; she makes a call.