The handwriting was faint in places, her head throbbed, her eyes ached, and the hour had grown late. A soft tap came at her bedroom door, disturbing a mental state too riotous to qualify as brooding. That gentle knock was the gesture of a man who wanted to be able to say over breakfast that he’d come by to check on his guest, but hadn’t wanted to disturb her slumbers. Abby pulled the door open and found Axel Belmont holding a white rose in a pink porcelain bud vase. “You are awake.” The professor spouted a metaphor, did he but know it. Abby stepped aside. “Come in.” He ought not to set foot in her bedroom, and not because the hour was late and they were unchaperoned. Unchaperoned apparently did not signify, when a woman’s late husband had made sure all and sundry thought her prone to hysterical fancies. Axel eyed the journal in Abby’s hand.
