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“The original building was devoted to the arts. Why science? Why laboratories and a conservatory and an observatory?”

“They all begin with the same thing.”

“And what is that?”

“The belief that what exists is not all there has to be. Art teaches us to imagine. Science teaches us to question. Somewhere between the two, we become capable of creating things that did not exist before.”

“I wish I had my notebook so I could write that down.”

A hint of amusement touched his expression. “I suspect you’ll remember it. Just like I remember rain beneath glass.”

I held his gaze. “I said that to you beneath conservatory glass.”

“You did.”

“You gave it back to me beneath chandeliers.”

“Yes.”

There it was. No mask. No more ambiguity. He knew that I knew. I was aware again of the candlelight, his hand resting near his wine glass, the distance between our chairs. Whatever had begun beneath the chandeliers no longer belonged to the masquerade.

Our plates disappeared soon after that, almost unnoticed. Neither of us seemed in any hurry to surrender the evening.

“Would you be interested in coffee and tiramisu, Emilia?”

“That would be wonderful, thank you.”

The waiter walked away and I asked Alexander my next question. “You are the expert on Blackwood Hall. Tell me the story that every resident knows.”

He looked pleased to be asked. “There are dozens,” he said. “My favorite is about a single orchid in the conservatory. It sits beneath the eastern windows in an unremarkable clay pot. There’s nothing unusual about it, except that every head gardener receives the same instruction on the first day: don’t water it. Don’t move it. Just leave it alone.”

“Really?”

“Yes, and the explanation has never changed. Someone else is taking care of it. It is watered at regular intervals. The dead leaves disappear, and the new blooms arrive every season. No gardener has ever admitted to touching it. One head gardener arrived before sunrise every morning for nearly two months, convinced he would discover who was responsible. He never saw another person. I believe the orchid has outlived every gardener who has tried to explain it.”

I laughed. “Well, now I’m going to spend an embarrassing amount of time trying to identify one orchid in an entire conservatory.”

“You’ve already seen it.”

“I have?”

“Yes, our first afternoon there,” he said quietly. “You wandered away from me for a few minutes. You stopped beside the reflecting pool. It sits just beyond it.”

I tried to remember. The conservatory had felt endless that day, every path leading to another impossible collection of orchids and climbing vines. I remembered the reflecting pool. I remembered losing track of time. What I didn’t remember was Alexander noticing where I had gone. Somehow that surprised me more than the orchid.

“You remember that?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “I remember most things.”

I had spent the evening discovering how much thought he had given to Blackwood Hall. It had not occurred to me that he had been paying the same attention to me. I wondered what else he remembered. The thought sent a small warmth through me that had nothing to do with the wine.

The coffee and tiramisu arrived just as a guitarist had taken a place near the front of the restaurant. The first notes drifted through the room, never demanding attention but simply becoming part of the evening. I hadn’t realized I had stopped speaking. There was something about the Spanish guitar that had always made the world recede.

“You like the Spanish guitar,” Alexander observed.

“I love it.”

“I thought perhaps you did.”