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Angelo made his way back to the organ bench and sat down, setting the candle carefully on the console. His fingers found the keys almost without conscious thought, and he began to play. Not a formal piece, but simply an improvisation. A conversation with the instrument, trying to recapture some of what Isolde had created earlier.

The organ responded to his touch, its voice filling the hall, the mirrors amplifying and multiplying the sound until it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Angelo was no master like Isolde, but he had learned basic musical skills as part of his general education. Enough to fumble his way through a simple melody.

He played for perhaps ten minutes, losing himself in the act of creation, hoping somehow that Isolde might hear wherever she had fled to. That she might understand he was not angry, was not put off by her strangeness or her secrecy.

That he wanted to know her, whatever form that knowing might take.

His hands found a melody almost without conscious thought, a simple folk tune from Florence that his mother used to sing. Not complex or showy, but warm. Comforting. The kind of music meant to soothe rather than impress.

Perhaps Isolde would hear it and understand what he was trying to say. That he meant her no harm. That her secrets, whatever they were, did not frighten him away.

Finally, his fingers stilled on the keys. The last notes died away, absorbed by the stone and mirrors, leaving only silence and the eternal whisper of wind through hidden places.

At that moment, racing footsteps sounded in the library and he turned to find Gabriel standing at the entrance to the hall, panting as if he had come running from his bedchamber.

“It is you? Playing the organ?”

Angelo licked his lips, reluctant to mislead. “Si.”

The viscount ran his hand through his hair, frowning in confusion. Dropping his hand, he opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. After several seconds, he shrugged. “I … um … will see you in the morning, then.”

Angelo nodded, rising from the bench to make his way back toward the library, carrying the candle with him. As he climbed the stone steps, he paused and turned back, looking once more at the extraordinary space Matteo di Bianchi had created. Listening to Gabriel’s retreat, he waited until he was sure he would not be overheard.

“I will come for you tomorrow night,” he said to the empty hall, to the shadows where Isolde might or might not be listening. “And the night after and every night, until you trust me enough to let me truly see you. I am patient, Isolde. And I do not frighten easily.”

The hall offered no response. But as Angelo made his way back through the library and up to his chamber, he could have sworn he felt eyes upon him. Watching. Wondering.

Hoping, perhaps, despite the fear.

And that was enough. For now, it was enough.

He would find a way to reach her. To coax her from her shadows and prove that whatever she feared in revealing herself, he was equal to facing it.

Because something profound had shifted in Angelo tonight. Some fundamental change had occurred in his understanding of what he wanted, what he needed.

And what he needed was to know Isolde. To understand her. To bring joy to her melodic voice.

To prove to her that she was worth knowing, worth cherishing, regardless of whatever secret she kept hidden in the shadows.

Even if it took weeks. Months. Years.

Angelo Scott was nothing if not persistent.

And Isolde, whether she knew it yet or not, had just become the most important mystery of his life. One he fully intended to solve.

CHAPTER 8

“The scene breathed the very spirit of elegance and delight.”

Ann Radcliffe

* * *

Angelo awoke to bright sunlight streaming through his window, the light so intense it pierced even his closed eyelids and dragged him unwillingly toward consciousness. He groaned, throwing one arm over his face to block the assault, and tried to sink back into sleep.

But his mind was already spinning, replaying the events of the night before in vivid detail. The music filtering through the grates. The Hall of Reflections lit by candlelight. Mirrors multiplying that single flame into infinity. Isolde at the organ, her profile perfect in the golden glow, her hands drawing beauty from the instrument as if she and it were one being.

“I like people, but they do not like me.”