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.”

Lucy looked at the silent shape for some time, without a word. It seemed so innocent, yet had occasioned so much fighting, trouble, curiosity, and pain—however unconsciously. She noticed the dirty print of Fitzalan Walters’s shoe, clear in the dust: he’d trampled the painted rose underfoot, making contact with the gold and the iron strapping. Maybe there was a curse attached to it, after all? She turned away, to put the tea kettle on the stove.

“Shall we open it?” he asked her gently.

“The time feels—out of joint. Too much has happened today.” She walked over and placed her hands on his shoulders, still watching the object. “Is there any word about Walters and Guy Temple?”

“Oh, the villains are fine.” He let out an ironic laugh. “McPherson arrested the driver of the car—who refuses to say a word in English. Angelo is at Paddington Green, and looks certain to be charged with abduction and possibly manslaughter. That will be some justice, I suppose. Temple has had another mild attack, in the place where his heart ought to be! But he’ll be transferred to the Brompton sometime today—where we can keep a proper eye on him.”

“But what about Fitzalan Walters?” Lucy pinched at the muscles in Alex’s shoulders, unthinking. “I honestly thought he was dead.”