Alex’s voice, with none of its richness: “Lucy?”

He crouched beside her, relieving Siân of her watch. When her lovely face had first prompted his smile, almost a year ago, her dark silk hair had been lopped to help her manage it, and her eyes had been enormous in her thin, pale face. In the intervening months her hair had grown past her shoulders, and her gradual gain in weight and healthy color had reanimated her face, giving a generous prominence to her cheekbones. But looking at her now—her face full of shadow and her eyes smudged with exhaustion—he had never seen her so vulnerable. “Lucy,” he said; and held her.

ALEX’S VOICE: WITH ALL OF ITS RICHNESS. “LUCY?”

A door opened softly; floorboards creaked; but she ignored the intrusion until sunlight flooded the room, and she winced, held her arms over her head, covered her eyes. She felt the clean air, heard the window being secured, then a scraping noise beside her that intrigued her, forcing her eyes open—forcing her to peep from cotton snow. He’d placed a teacup and a perfect white bloom borne on a stem among tight blush-pink buds on the table next to her: “Madame Hardy.” His hand on her face was warm, his voice not at all hollow. “The first white rose of the year, from an old English garden. I think it’s a week or two early.” He kissed her, and left the room.

She composed her thoughts. She was in Alex’s room, in Longparish; had returned to it sometime after three o’clock this morning. She had lived in a dream, seen the impish faces, been traveling a long time, trying to get back to him, she realized. And now she could stop. She gazed into the erotic shape of the flower beside her: an elegant damask, she thought, a hundred petals around a familiar green “eye” not fully opened. It would be, later in the day. The scent was very present, but not at all cloying.

She sipped the tea and lifted her watch. It was after ten o’clock, so she slipped on a robe and stepped to the open window. Henry was cutting the grass, and the garden was alive with buds and early flowers, the first pendulous blooms of wisteria just starting to invade the room through the mullioned window.

When she came downstairs to the kitchen she found Alex with a coffee in one hand, Will’s silver key in the other, alone with his thoughts. He was staring at the box, now installed on the pale ash-wood table. “James McPherson brought it this morning, along with Mum’s Bible.” He looked up at her. “He drove all the way down, just to bring them.”

“Has he established we can keep the box? English Heritage doesn’t want it?”

“He’d settled that earlier—as long as Suzie at the shop, and the pub landlords, waived any claim on it.” Alex looked at her with a tired smile, put down his cup. “They all very generously feel we can establish a genuine provenance, though we can’t sell it abroad without offering whatever’s inside it to a museum here first.”