Delilah arched a graceful brow. “Interesting.”
The shape of two more bodyguards appeared at separate corners of the room. And then Victoria—making her way through the crowd toward us. I tugged Delilah close.
“You see the guards?”
“I can take ’em,” she said without a trace of humor.
“I don’t doubt it,” I agreed. “And our target is coming.”
“There you are,” Victoria exclaimed. “Come, come. We have collections to see. Oh, and you remember Sven, right?” We nodded at the man Freya had described as a “psychopath.” “And this is his brother, Hans.” A second guard appeared at Victoria’s shoulder. “They’re here temporarily for some interesting projects I’m working on.”
Delilah’s body was tense as we followed Victoria through the crowd, stopping every few feet to greet guests and receive their effusive compliments. The great room opened into a hallway with blood-red carpets and mahogany walls. Each cozy room opened into another, like Russian nesting dolls, until I was almost dizzy with it.
“I had this house built in 1995, and it took absolute ages. It’s not easy to find contractors who will commit to a full Tudor revival.” We passed an expansive library that had my fingers itching to pull on the spines and flip through the pages.
“And you know, there were issues along the way. The papers made it out to be like some kind of Winchester house, stairwells leading to nowhere, that kind of thing. But it was nothing of the sort. Many of these pieces were flown in exclusively from Europe.” Victoria nodded at me, tapping her fingers along a wall of paintings as we passed. “Henry, I knew you would appreciate my attention to authenticity. We can’t live our lives with fakes, you know.”
“Certainly not,” I said, passing what might have been an original Monet.
“And this,” Victoria said, “is my private collections room. Try not to swoon, Henry.”
With a nod from her, Sven pushed open a heavy-looking door into a cavernous room. It felt like an actual museum: glass cases and soft lighting and displays of books, crumbling vases, an old shield and an ancient map.
The gravity of this moment was only surpassed by its surrealism. After weeks of lying to Victoria Whitney to gain her trust, we were standing in her room of antiques. And probably mere feet away from a stolen book worth millions of dollars.
But the quiet intensity of this room also sent a bolt of longing through me; for those early days in libraries before I was made brutally aware of this shady underbelly. My eyes caught the shape of books I hadn’t seen in quite some time—a sense of wonder infused my limbs, even as the stakes of this case tightened around us like a vise.
“This is…a professional honor,” I managed to say.
“My husband’s idea of Disneyland,” Delilah said. I could tell she was assessing the room, taking in the displays.
What if the Copernicus was here? Somewhere in this room?
The next case displayed a single sheet of paper. I moved toward it with a shocking, painful recognition, every fine detail about this case converging into this one moment. Bernard and Victoria’s whirlwind romance might have ended years ago, but the reason they still saw each other now was for something else entirely.
“Is this what I think it is?” The hard edge of my voice echoed in the quiet room. I could feel Delilah turning to me, responding to my tone.
“Oh, is that my Newton?” Victoria inquired, as nonchalantly as one might ask to pass the salt.
“Page seventeen,” I said, muscles beginning to tremble. “How specific.”
It was the page I’d told Abe I’d discovered to be missing from the McMasters Library six months ago. Newton’s handwritten notes were in the margins.
Fucking page seventeen.
“Yes, well, Bernard thought I would enjoy it. Notice the pencil markings.”
I’d analyzed and indexed those markings myself, years earlier, working alongside Bernard.
“May I ask how he came upon just the single page?”
Victoria stiffened, patting at the jewels around her neck. “I think everyone in this room is aware of where he got it.”
“It’s lovely,” Delilah said, placing a hand on my back. We were the Thornhills, we bought stolen books and missing pages and pilfered antiques. Henry Thornhill shouldn’t have had to ask. “Henry’s a massive Newton fan.”
“It’s why I’m so stunned that Bernard”—I paused, flashed her my most winning smile— “was able to find this for you.”
“Was it a gift?” Delilah asked, in a slightly teasing tone.
Victoria touched her hair. “Why, yes, yes it was.”
Delilah’s finger was on her silver bracelet. Take pictures. In my shock, I’d forgotten the reason we were here, but Victoria was watching me like a hawk. A pleasant hawk, but I still felt a bit like prey.
Sven and Hans cleared their throats, and Victoria shot them a withering look. “My guards are reminding me it’s not ideal for us to be down here so long. Come along, I need to show you my newest acquisition.”
Delilah threw me a look of apprehension mixed with curiosity. There was an orange door Victoria pushed open, beckoning us with a crook of her finger. Delilah reached down and linked our fingers together. My ears roared with the sound of my own heartbeat.
It couldn’t be this easy—could it? Victoria, yanking away a velvet cloth like a magician’s assistant, revealing what we’d been searching for?
A light illuminated a glass case, which shone in the middle of the room. I noted the temperature controls on the side of the walls, the special lighting.
This was the room of an archivist.
Victoria giggled shyly, beckoning us closer. A low grunt from behind me indicated that Sven and Hans were steps away. I hitched up my sleeve, uncovering my watch.
“I told you I like to own works by geniuses,” Victoria said to me. “Which is why I purchased Shakespeare’s First Folio.”
My pulse jolted painfully. My stomach dropped. There, in the glass case, was William Shakespeare’s First Folio, a compilation of his plays printed in 1623. It was one of the rarest books in the entire world.
And it wasn’t the fucking Copernicus.
I forgot to be enamored—forget to be awed by the sheer magnitude of the text, the history, the greatness. Delilah was squeezing my hand like her life depended on it. I brought her wrist to my lips, kissed her there.
“I’ll take your silence for surprise,” Victoria mused.
“That would be accurate,” Delilah murmured.
“Henry? Any thoughts on this purchase?” She’d emphasized the word purchase.
Despair knifed through me. “There are 750 copies of this book left in the entire world,” I said robotically. “I’ve never seen one in person.”
Which was a lie—I’d worked on it with a team of conservationists years ago at Oxford. It had been one of the biggest professional accomplishments of my entire life. But I couldn’t dredge up that feeling in the wake of such bitter disappointment. “Where did you buy it from?”
A letter of authenticity was framed near the book.
“The Antiquarian Book Festival in New York City one month ago,” she said proudly. “I was the highest bidder—by a long shot, of course.”