Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 157450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
“Great.” I realize how hungry I am. A quick glance at the Georgian wall clock above the door tells me it’s two fifteen. Its steady tick reminds me of the times I waited in this office for the bollocking my father administered whenever I’d transgressed—which was often. Right now the clock says…way past lunchtime.
“Oh, Danny,” I call her back.
“My lord?”
“After lunch can you go to the Hideout and retrieve all our belongings and bring them here? Put everything in my room, including the dragon night-light that’s beside the bed.”
“Will do, sir.” With a nod she departs.
As I approach the bottom of the staircase, I hear the music. Alessia is deep into another complex piece—one I don’t know. Even down here it sounds amazing. I quickly head up the stairs and stand just inside the room watching her from afar. I think this composition is by Beethoven. I haven’t heard her play any of his work before. A sonata, maybe? The music is rousing and passionate one moment and then quieter and softer the next. Such a lyrical piece. And she plays it exquisitely. She should be filling concert halls.
The music spirals down to its close, and Alessia sits for a second, her head lowered, eyes closed. When she looks up, she’s surprised to see me.
“Another great performance. What was it?” I ask as I stroll across the floor toward her.
“It is Beethoven. ‘Tempest,’ ” she says.
“I could watch and listen to you play all day. But lunch is served. Rather late. You must be hungry.”
“Yes. I am.” She jumps up off the stool and accepts my outstretched hand. “I love this piano. It has a rich…um…tone.”
“Tone. That’s the correct word.”
“You have so many instruments here. I only had the eyes for the piano at first.”
I grin. “Only had eyes for. No ‘the.’ You really don’t mind me correcting you?”
“No. I like to learn.”
“Cello is my sister Maryanne’s instrument. My father played the double bass. The guitars are mine. The drums over there were Kit’s.”
“Your brother’s?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“It is an unusual name.”
“Kit is short for Christopher. He was a demon on drums.” I stop by the crash cymbal and run my fingers over the polished bronze. “Kit. Drum kit. Get it?” I flash her a smile. Alessia gives me a puzzled look.
“We used to joke about it.” I shake my head, remembering Kit’s shenanigans on the drums. “Come on. I’m hungry.”
* * *
Maxim’s eyes gleam a brilliant green as he looks at her, but she can see from the tension across his forehead that his grief is still raw and he misses his brother.
“So that’s the music room,” he says as they leave and head back down the great staircase, stopping at the bottom. “The main drawing room is through those double doors, but today we’re having lunch in the library.”
“You have a library?” Alessia asks, excited.
He smiles. “Yes, we have a few books. Some of them are quite old.” They head back toward the kitchen, but Maxim stops outside one of the doors in the corridor. “I should warn you, my grandfather was keen on all things Egyptian.” He opens the door, standing aside for Alessia to enter. She pauses a few steps into the room. It’s like she’s entered another world—a treasure trove of literature and antiquities. On every available wall, there are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stuffed with books. At each corner is either a plinth or a cabinet holding treasures from Egypt: canopic jars, statues of pharaohs, sphinxes, a full-size sarcophagus!
A fire rages in the grate beneath an ornate marble fireplace that’s set between two tall but narrow windows overlooking a courtyard. Hanging above the mantelpiece is an old painting of the pyramids.
“Oh, boy, the staff have gone all out,” Maxim says, as if to himself. Alessia follows his gaze. Before the fire a small table covered in a fine linen cloth is elaborately set for two: silver cutlery, cut glasses, and delicate china plates decorated with small thistles. He holds out a chair for her. “Sit.” He nods at her seat. Alessia feels like the noblewoman Donika Kastrioti, the wife of Skënderbeu, Albania’s fifteenth-century hero. She gives him a gracious smile and sits down at the table facing the fire. Maxim sits at the head.
“As a young man in the early 1920s, my grandfather worked with Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter, excavating various sites in Egypt and stealing all these antiquities. Maybe I should send them back.” He pauses. “Until very recently that was Kit’s dilemma.”
“You have so much history here.”
“Yes, we do. Rather too much of it, perhaps. It’s my family’s legacy.”
Alessia cannot imagine the responsibility of dealing with such a heritage.
There’s a knock at the door, and without waiting for an answer, Danny enters, followed by a young woman carrying a tray.
Maxim reaches for his linen napkin and drapes it on his lap. Watching him, Alessia follows suit. Danny takes two plates from the tray and serves each of them what looks like a salad with meat and avocado and pomegranate seeds.