Page 9

“What is it?” Angelo demanded, rising. Even Nicholas looked up from his book, curiosity beating his usual aloofness.

Lorenzo lifted his head. His dark eyes burned so bright the fire seemed pale. “Lady Trenwith writes at last. She and her husband are on the Cornish coast. They have come upon something.”

“Come upon what?” Angelo closed the space between them and tried to read past Lorenzo’s shoulder. Lorenzo’s own hand was a puzzle on a good day. The lady’s script was worse.

“A house. Grimsfell Hall, perched above the sea. They have taken it through the winter season, and they have uncovered—” Lorenzo’s voice caught. “A concealed room. Tucked behind the library wall. Tied to Matteo. To my ancestor. They do not doubt it.”

The words seemed to hang in the sudden quiet. Even Nicholas had gone quiet, book forgotten in his lap.

Angelo felt his heart pick up, that old rush of excitement he had not known since leaving Florence. Heat ran under his collar. This was it. The thread Lorenzo had been hunting. After months of empty reading and dead ends, a real clue at last. His fingers itched for a task. Packing. Maps. A bottle of tonic for Nicholas’s leg. Anything that pointed west.

“What do they say?” he pressed. “What have they found?”

Lorenzo read the letter again, lips moving as he turned the English into Italian in his head and back once more. “They spare us the fine points. But hear this. ‘The hidden room is a work of no minor skill, and we think Matteo built it. You ought to stand in it yourself. Come to Cornwall if you can. You are welcome at Grimsfell Hall. The riddle of Matteo di Bianchi may at last be near an answer.’”

“Cielo,” Angelo whispered. “Lorenzo, this is⁠—”

“Everything,” Lorenzo finished, voice rough. “This is everything. Three centuries, Angelo. Three hundred years of searching, and at last I may learn what became of him. Where his works lie hidden. Why he vanished.”

Angelo gripped his friend’s shoulder and squeezed hard. Joy ran through him, not only for Lorenzo but for himself. Here, unsought, was an answer to his own restlessness. Purpose. A venture. Something beyond the gray slog of London in winter.

“When do we leave?” he asked.

Lorenzo blinked and stared at him. “We?”

“Naturalmente. Of course. You do not think I would let you take this road alone? After all we have seen?” Angelo grinned. For the first time in weeks his own face felt familiar. “I go with you, amico. Cornwall. Grimsfell. We finish this hunt together.”

“Angelo, I cannot ask⁠—”

“You are not asking. I am offering. Insisto. I insist.” He turned to Nicholas, who watched them with faint bemusement. “And you should come as well.”

Nicholas’s brows climbed. “I beg your pardon?”

“Lady Trafford will not be at hand for a fortnight,” Angelo reminded him. “You said so yourself. And I am meant to keep your treatments going in her absence. Therefore you must come to Cornwall, where I can do that duty and aid Lorenzo besides.”

“That is the thinnest excuse for hauling me into your melodrama that I have ever heard.”

“All the same, it is vero. True. You need the treatments. I give the treatments. Therefore you must come.”

Nicholas opened his mouth, ready with a cutting refusal, but Lorenzo stopped him with a warmth that surprised.

“Please, Nicholas. I would … I would value your being there. You have a sharp mind, even if you are a villano about most things. And Gabriel Trenwith is a stranger. He is bound to be wary. Suspicious. British. Another Englishman of good family to speak for my aims could only help.”

For a long breath Nicholas said nothing. Angelo watched feelings cross his uncle’s face too quickly to name. Resistance. Thought. Something that might have been loneliness, shut down at once.

At last Nicholas sighed, a great gust of surrender that seemed to empty him. “Very well. But only because Lady Trafford would have my hide if I skipped the treatments. And because the other choice is staying here to watch Marco and Molly’s … devotion … over every meal.”

“Excellent!” Angelo clapped, unable to keep the lift in. “Perfetto! The three of us, then! Ventures on the Cornish coast, hidden rooms, old secrets⁠—”

“And likely foul weather, worse beds, and a fair chance the whole business is a waste of hours,” Nicholas added, sour. But he was already leaning forward, fingers finding the cane, and Angelo knew the argument was won.

Lorenzo was already moving for the door, the letter still in his fist. “I must send a reply at once. And arrange travel. How long to reach Cornwall from London?”

“Three days,” Nicholas said. “Four if the roads are poor, which they will be in February.”

“Then tomorrow. Dawn. No. Tonight, if it can be done. Every hour we linger⁠—”

“Lorenzo.” Angelo caught his friend’s arm and put a brake on the rush. “We cannot go tonight. There are things to ready. I must pack my medical stores for Nicholas’s treatments. You must gather whatever papers may serve. We must hire a coach⁠—”