Chapter 20 Provenance
PROVENANCE
LILA
The air is thick with dust, polish, and something faintly metallic that coats the back of my throat.
Shelving lines every wall, crowded with crates and boxes, their handwritten labels curling at the corners.
A tin sits half-open under Theo’s flashlight, a soft glint reflecting off the beam.
The scent of varnish hangs in the air, and brushes lie stiff beside cloudy jars of oil they likely haven’t been dipped in for years.
Near the far wall, a loose sheet of paper lifts with the draft from the open door, fluttering down onto a stack of empty frames.
Theo steps forward, sweeping the beam of his flashlight across a long workbench cluttered with tools: fine brushes, precision scales, magnifying lenses. A jeweler’s lamp sits dark at the edge of the table, its cord wound neatly beside a ledger book spotted with fingerprints.
I file in behind him, scanning the shelves. Theo lifts a tin, squinting at the label.
“Gold leaf adhesive,” he reads.
He sets it down, and I take a slow pass around the room. A thin layer of dust coats everything—shelves, tools, the tops of boxes stacked in uneven towers, the floor.
There are no footprints. No sign of recent movement in the room. No one has stepped foot in this room in years.
On the workbench there is a cracked magnifying lens and brass hinges sorted into neat rows. A microscope sits abandoned. A stack of old books slumps against the wall, edges curled from the damp. This room was once used, heavily, obsessively—and then one day someone left and never came back.
A dull gleam in the far corner catches my eye.
“Theo,” I say, too quietly.
He turns, follows my line of sight, and freezes with the flashlight halfway raised.
The orrery sits on a low table, half-assembled. Brass arms extend in rigid arcs, tiny planets suspended from thin rods. The gears beneath are exposed, intricate and likely hand crafted many years ago.
Even dulled with dust, it’s beautiful. And unmistakable.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he breathes.
Sixteen million dollars in missing astronomical machinery. Tucked in a forgotten basement room beside tarnished tools and boxes no one bothered to sort.
My stomach twists. “It’s real.”
I fully realize that there’s no way for us to know if this thing is actually worth sixteen million dollars, but it feels like too much of a coincidence.
Theo nods, the movement small and disbelieving. “And from the looks of things, only one person in this family knew.”
I am in utter disbelief. “Henry.”
It’s the only thing that makes sense. No one has stepped foot in here in years. If the person who used this space vanished from it that abruptly, I would assume they were dead. Because who leaves something like this behind on purpose?
I take a step closer, but something else pulls my attention away. A sliver of dark wood near the back wall, just behind a row of boxes. A clean vertical seam.
A door.
I guess I shouldn’t have expected that a crawl space was the only way to get in here.
Theo notices when I do.
He walks over to it and runs his fingers along the edge. The panel shifts, swinging inward to reveal a narrow stairway cut into grey stone.
We just stare into the abyss for a long moment, but there is no discussion needed. We’re climbing these stairs.
Theo takes my hand in his and takes the first few steps, “Want to bet where it goes?”
“Sure,” I say, feeling brave. “But I don’t gamble small. And if I win, you should know that I’m going to be very particular about what I’m owed.”
Theo responds with a pained groan. “Sounds a lot like I win either way.”
He squeezes my hand, then starts up the stairs. The steps narrow as we climb, turning tighter with each rotation. It feels endless, like we’ve gone up multiple floors.
My legs are already aching when the air starts to grow warmer.
Somewhere above us, a door opens and then slams closed again.
We stop at the top of the landing, a wall separating us from what I can only assume is Henry Mayfair’s study. And beyond it, voices.
“We are running out of time, Giles.” Tillie is pacing, frantic. I can hear each step she takes across the room. “Our guests are searching. Every day that passes one of us finds one or both of them snooping around the house. In the archives, in the halls at night. We have to find it.”
Theo turns toward me, eyes wide.
Giles sighs in that put-upon way of his. “We have searched this study more times than I can count. If the orrery were hidden in here, we would have found it long before two random professors started snooping around.”
“They think we’re looking for the orrery,” I mouth to Theo.
“Victoria tore this place apart before she died,” Tillie fires back. “You know she did. She was obsessed. She had to have known it was hidden somewhere in this room.”
I release a breath and whisper, “Victoria’s research is starting to feel a little less genealogical.”
“That thing drove her to do what she did to Henry—”
A beat. A shaky breath.
“—and to Peter. We still have no idea who came for her or why. Then they just show up out of nowhere like this. Peter’s old lawyer, of all people. Who knows what Peter told him all those years ago. No one in this house is safe as long as it’s still somewhere within these walls.”
Theo’s fingers tighten around mine.
Giles lowers his tone. “We don’t know for certain that she killed Henry.”
“Don’t you dare pretend,” Tillie snaps. “You know too much of what happened before and after to convince yourself or anyone else you don’t know without the shadow of a doubt that it was her.”
Theo mouths, “Holy fucking shit.”
Giles continues, still maddeningly calm. “Tillie, even if all of this is true, tearing this study apart again will accomplish nothing. Let the past stay buried.”
“Not when those two are downstairs digging it all up again!” She slams something—a book against a desk?
A drawer? Something hollow rattles. “If they get their hands on it, everything we have done to keep this family from tearing one another apart over the years will completely unravel. Why do you think Henry kept it hidden in the first place? Mrs. Mayfair does not need to deal with the legacy dispute turned battle royale that will ensue if that thing sees the light of day.”
Their footsteps move closer to where we are on the other side of the wall.
Much closer.
They’re standing right on the other side.
It is at that exact moment that the edge of the step I’m standing on crumbles away and my foot smacks down loudly onto the one below it.
Giles murmurs, “Tillie, the bookshelf—did you hear that?”
We do not hesitate. Theo pulls me by my hand as quickly and quietly as possible back down the stairs.
Stumbling, scrambling back down the spiral steps as fast as the cramped space allows. The stone echoes each of our footfalls throughout the stairway.
Their muffled voices fade the further we descend, and we finally reach the bottom landing, practically diving back through the hidden door before either of us even breathes again.
Theo leans in close, whispering, “We need to get out of here before they figure out what’s on the other side of that wall.”
“There’s no way they figure out how to get through whatever hidden door that is,” I whisper back. “It’s been four years since Henry died. If they haven’t by now, they—”
A loud groan comes from somewhere far above us.
Then another.
Theo blinks. “Lila.”
There is the faint sound of footsteps tentatively making their way down the stairs.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I hiss.
We bolt.
Theo yanks open the door that leads into the closet we entered through. We ease inside and he shoves aside the tapestry that hides the crawl space opening.
“Go,” he breathes.
I hesitate for half a second. He gives me a you’re kidding look.
“I can’t help it,” I whisper shout. “It’s scary.”
He doesn’t waste time arguing. He slides in first, shoulders angling through the narrow entry. The footsteps upstairs are closer now—I can hear them even this far away from the stairwell, faint but distinct.
I crawl in after him and reach back for the panel. It doesn’t move.
“What the hell are you doing?” Theo whispers sharply.
“It’s stuck,” I whisper back, tugging harder. Nothing. I pull again. Still nothing.
He stops, twists halfway around, and worms back beside me as much as the walls allow. His arm rubs up against mine, then his shoulder, then basically all of him as he reaches past me.
“Move,” he breathes.
“I can’t move.”
He gets his fingers on the edge of the panel and yanks. The door slams shut with a sound that might as well be a gunshot in this silence. We both flinch.
The angle we’re in is unfortunate. He’s half-pressed against one wall, I’m half-pressed against him, and our limbs are pointing in enough directions to qualify as a diagram.
We try to un-wedge ourselves. Once. Twice. A third time.
We fail at every attempt.
Theo lets out a restrained, murderous exhale. “Okay. New plan.”
The only workable option becomes obvious at the same moment for both of us.
Theo lowers himself flat onto the tunnel floor. “Come on,” he whispers. “You have to get on top of me and shimmy down so you can turn around.”
I stare at him. “This is humiliating.”
“That’s not the word I would have used to describe it, but okay.”
I nudge myself sideways and end up practically sprawled on top of him before I can gracefully reposition myself. His hands come to my hips on instinct, steadying me so I don’t bonk my head on the ceiling trying to rearrange myself into a less undignified position.
I hear the moment they breach the door at the bottom of the stairs.
Theo’s breath is hot against my collarbone. My thigh is somewhere it definitely shouldn’t be. His pulse is wild under my palm.
I am sure mine matches his beat for beat.