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“Why did you want it?” I asked.

He paused before answering. “My mother used to say that lost things find their way home. I acquired the building two years after she passed away. I am not certain those two facts are unrelated.”

“And has Blackwood found its way home?” I asked.

“I would say so. Do you think it has?”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. Relief crossed his face.

The food arrived then and the conversation settled into something less formal. He asked about my mother. I told him about Sunday mornings with Vivaldi and the opera she took me to every birthday. Somewhere in the middle of the story, I almost laughed. I’d already told him all of this once before. He just did not know that I knew that.

I asked him about his favorite part of the day. He said it was late evening, sitting in his library with the fireplace burning low and his favorite opera drifting through the room. A library, a fire, and opera at the end of the day. I could have given nearly the same answer.

We talked about cities. He preferred old ones.

“I would have expected somewhere more ambitious,” I said.

“Old cities have an identity,” he said. “They have decided what they are. There is something restful in that.”

“Which is your favorite?”

“Salzburg.” Without hesitation. “Before the afternoon light changes.”

That surprised me. “I love Salzburg too. I went several years ago. I remember being surprised by how much of it felt unchanged. I think I understand what you mean about a place knowing what it is.”

He asked about my travels. I told him about Rome in the summer I turned twenty-six, when I had spent a month in a borrowed apartment near the Aventine doing nothing in particular. There had been nowhere I needed to be and nothing I needed to accomplish. It was the best month of my adult life.

“Nothing happened,” I said. “I wasn’t working toward anything. I walked in the mornings, read in the afternoons, ate things without justification.”

“When did you stop doing that?”

“Gradually, I think. Research has a way of convincing you that if you work a little harder, the next experiment, the next paper, the next grant will finally give you permission to slow down. Except, it never does.”

For the first time in several moments, his gaze left mine. “One of those things can now come off of the list,” he said quietly. I understood immediately. He was right. For as long as Aurora remained at Blackwood, grants were no longer mine to chase. I started to wonder what would happen afterward, then caught myself. For once, I didn’t need to know.

“Yes. I still haven’t quite adjusted to that. Perhaps it’s time I stopped postponing my life.” The words were out of my mouth before I even considered them.

“Is that something you do?”

“It’s usually my default setting,” I admitted. “I tend to organize my life around what comes next. But somehow, in a relatively short amount of time, Blackwood Hall has reminded me there are other ways to live.”

His expression changed for an instant, too quick for me to read. “I’m glad,” he said at last.

“Were you worried I wouldn’t like it here?”

“A little.”

He picked up his wine, turning the glass once between his fingers. His hands drew my attention the way they always seemed to. Large, patient, unmistakably strong. I found myself wondering, before I could stop, whether he was careful with everything.

“When I began restoring Blackwood Hall, people assumed I was restoring a building.”

“You weren’t?”

“The building was the easy part. I wanted to build a place where extraordinary work didn’t require an ordinary life to be sacrificed in exchange.”

“I think you succeeded. I do have one philosophical question for you.”

“What is it?”