Charles seemed to enjoy the afternoon as well, and as we departed, Dr. Frankopan pressed him with an invitation to come again, alone or in company, whenever he chose.

“I am an old bachelor, you will not disturb me,” he assured Charles.

“We are the pair of us old bachelors then,” Charles said rather too heartily.

We made our way back to the castle then in the waning afternoon light, the drooping sun casting long golden shadows over the valley, gilding the scene to a burnished tranquility. Cosmina drifted ahead, picking an armful of leaves to place in bowls, and Charles fell into step at my side.

“Well?” I asked. It was a testament to our long friendship that the single word was sufficient.

He paused, thinking. “I have finally realised what it puts me in mind of. Do you remember those curious children’s books we published last year? The metamorphoses books?”

I nodded. They were some of the most delightful books Charles had produced. Each had been crafted with clever turn-ups so that the turning of a page produced a feature that popped to life, a bird on the wing, a castle tower rising above a forest ridge.

“That is what this place reminds me of. A metamorphoses book. A turn of the page and something new and wonderful springs to life. Most unexpected,” he said, his voice dropping curiously.

And when he spoke, his eyes lingered on the graceful figure of Cosmina in the distance.

I was not jealous of Cosmina, I told myself firmly. It was absurd to place any importance whatsoever upon Charles’s apparent interest in her. There was no attachment; Cosmina’s antipathy would see to that. But it did not escape my notice that she managed to be just at hand to place herself next to Charles at dinner. And later, when the household adjourned to the library for quiet entertainments, Charles hurried to help her with the arrangement of her silhouette table.

“It is not often that I use the table,” she told him as he lit the candle and placed it opposite the screen according to her instructions. “But visitors here are so rare a pleasure, we try to commemorate the occasion with a silhouette, to bring pleasure to us in the lonely hours after they have gone. I thought I would cut one of you and one of Theodora, to remind us all of this night,” she finished, her colour becomingly pink.

Charles preened a little and seated himself on the other side of the screen from Cosmina and her sharp little scissors. She took up a piece of black paper and began to cut, her eyes darting between her work and the still shadow thrown upon the muslin.

Florian watched the interplay with a sullen air and began to work a mournful little melody upon the harpsichord until the countess called to him.

“Florian, my dear boy, play us something more cheerful. We have had enough of sorrowful things,” she commanded with a kindly smile.

He obeyed, spinning out a pretty tune that was so soft and coaxing, his mother began to nod over her needlework, and it was still possible to hear the gentle rustle of the fire and the heavy sleeping breaths of the dog settled upon the hearth rug.

Only the count seemed unaffected by the soothing music, for he took a chair close to mine, ostensibly to look over the castle guest book I had unearthed. I turned the pages slowly, reading over the spidery scrawls of ink, once black but now faded to pale brown upon the foxed pages.

But the count was not a man to be ignored, and as Cosmina and Charles fell into conversation, he spoke, his voice low and soft and pitched for my ears alone.

“It will never do.”

I puzzled over a rampant signature that scrolled over the better part of a page. A baroness of some sort, visiting from Buda-Pesth a quarter of a century ago. The castle had been a hospitable place then, for each page was filled with signatures of the great and good, and the further back I turned, the more exalted the names.

“What will never do?” I murmured. I had found an archduke, and just below, the illegitimate son of a pope.

“You and that fellow,” he said, darting his eyes at Charles almost imperceptibly. “It is absurd.”

“I do not understand you,” I said primly.

“Don’t you? Come to me when he is abed.”

I caught my breath at the brazenness of his command, but still I kept my eyes fixed firmly upon the decaying page before me.

“I shall not.”

“Do not hiss at me, my dear. I mean only to talk with you. It was an invitation to converse, nothing more.”

I dared a glance and was surprised to find his eyes alight, whether from amusement or malice, I could not say. He was an enigma to me, this curious nobleman from Transylvania. I could not say from one moment to the next what he believed, what he held dear, what he would not do. More than an enigma, he was a chameleon lizard, always changing his colours just when I had learnt his disguises.

But even such a man as this could not command me, I decided, summoning my tattered pride.

I opened my mouth to refuse him, but just then he put out a hand, barely touching my arm. “Please?” he asked.

He was humble, as I had seldom seen him, and I wondered if this was a fresh stratagem of his to throw me from my complacency.

“I cannot,” I said firmly. And to show that I meant it, I closed the book and rose to walk away.

Cosmina’s silhouette of Charles was a remarkable thing. It managed to convey the features of the man, but it captured something indefinable as well, some essential part of him that I would have thought unknowable without conversation and expressions. I looked at the flat shadow snipped from the ebony paper, and I saw the friend, the publisher, the erstwhile suitor. And something more. Cosmina had captured something rather dashing about him as well, and I realised this was how she saw him, not as the stiff and stuffy man of business, but as the congenial gentleman who had engaged her attention.

“It is very like,” I said finally, and Charles looked mightily pleased.

He gave way for me to take my turn behind the little screen, and I saw that the count had settled himself behind a chessboard. I had not seen it before; the pieces appeared very old and fashioned of marble, burnished to a sheen with long use. As I watched in some trepidation, the count invited Charles to a game and they began to play. All the while, Florian kept up his gentle melodies while his mother drowsed and the countess read, occasionally putting out a slippered foot to stroke Tycho’s back.

“What a pleasant man your friend Mr. Beecroft is,” Cosmina said softly as she began to cut the silhouette.

“Yes, he is rather.”

“Have you known him long?” I wished I could gauge the strength of her interest, but her expression was hid from me by the muslin screen.

“Years, actually. I must have met him when I was eleven, perhaps twelve. His family firm published my grandfather’s books, and his father and my grandfather were great friends. They were both of them Englishmen settled in Edinburgh, so they felt the kinship of living abroad, I think. When his father called, Charles and I were left to amuse ourselves in the corner while our elders talked.”

“And yet you never mentioned him at school. Curious.” Her tone was speculative, but I could hear the decisive snips of her scissors.

“I cannot think why I should have,” I told her honestly. “He was simply a person I knew. I only saw him once or twice each year until I came home from school and Grandfather fell ill. He called one day with some business or other for Grandfather and the poor old dear was asleep. Charles and I talked instead and he discovered I had written a few little stories. He asked to see them, and took them away to read. A week later he returned with an offer to see them published in a magazine, with an eye to grooming me to write a book.”