We all know that Henry Tilney doesn’t do much to protect Isabella Thorpe from Capt Tilney’s less than honorable intentions because he realizes she doesn’t want protecting. But what would he do if his brother got to Catherine Morland first?

Blurb: Henry Tilney must decide whether to save a young woman from marrying his untrustworthy brother.

Monday

“Honest” Henry Tilney was descended from a long line of scoundrels and confidence men. It was in his blood and bones and DNA. He was, for instance, very good at mathematics: he could count cards and calculate odds. He was a good mimic and had an ear for languages, in case he ever needed to assume a false accent or identity. He was thin and wiry, useful to get out of tight spots. He had good hand-eye coordination, and a memory designed to recall exactly where something had been placed. The aptitude was there, bred for generations, but the inclination was not.

The true scoundrel of his generation was his twin Ricky. In temperament, personality, and life choices, the brothers were as different as could be while still remaining twins. They even had different birthdays; Ricky, the eldest, was born at five minutes to midnight while Henry didn’t make his come-out until ten minutes later. While Ricky had followed the family tradition of swindling and cheating others for his livelihood, Henry had chosen the duller, more legal path of being an antiques dealer. It was their father who gave the boys their nicknames: Tricky Ricky and Honest Henry.

It was by mutual agreement that the two did not keep in touch with each other once they reached adulthood. It was too frustrating for either to have anything to do one with the other. So when Henry received an urgent message on his home answering machine from his brother asking to meet him for lunch on Monday, he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

In the end, he decided the best way to find out what to go. His shop was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays anyway, and if it turned out to be another scam, Henry could just get up and leave. To that end, he packed a small snack in the car before he left his home for the hour-long drive to the suburbs of Boston.

His brother was waiting for him when Henry arrived at the restaurant, dressed in a military uniform with various medals pinned across his chest. “Should I salute?” Henry snipped as he took his seat.

“At ease,” his brother joked back. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”

“Not that long,” Henry corrected him. Not long enough for his brother to enlist and get promoted to the rank of captain but certainly enough time for Ricky to assume a new persona for his latest con. Henry didn’t bother opening the menu. He would not be staying long.

“Long enough that there’s someone I want you to meet,” his brother said and held up his hand.

Henry turned to see what the fuss was about. A young woman bounded clumsily across the room, smiling and waving frantically, bumping into tables and chairs and waiters as she walked. She was pretty, Henry had to give his brother that, but she was physically awkward. “Gawky” was the right word. She lacked a certain grace that would get her thrown out of the Tilney family gene pool. In an instant, he understood.

“You’ve gotten engaged to an heiress,” he muttered under his breath to Ricky.

“I’ve proposed,” Ricky answered in the same undertone. “She won’t say yes until she meets the family.” He stood up and greeted his girlfriend with a kiss.

They lingered a little too long in their embrace and Henry wondered if he should come back later.

With a giggle and a blush, this heiress finally broke away. “Hello!” she greeted him, thrusting her hand out to shake and knocking over the bouquet of carnations on the table. “Oh, excuse me. I’m so clumsy. You must be Henry. Ricky told me you were twins, but I didn’t think you’d be identical.”

“We’re not.” Both brothers spoke in unison, negating the message.

She giggled again. “If you say so.” She was not convinced. “I’m Cathy Morland. That’s Cathy with a C, not a K. I think K is such a hard letter, all straight lines, no curves at all.”

“Cathy is all softness and curves,” his brother agreed and they kissed again.

If they were going to keep this up, there wasn’t any point in him being here. “I’m afraid I can’t stay long,” he said loud enough to attract their attention.

Cathy was immediately penitent. “Oh, but I so wanted to get to know you, if you’re going to be my brother.” She smiled lovingly at Ricky and took her seat.

“Well, Ricky and I don’t spend much time together anymore,” Henry said. “We’re both busy people. Me with my business, he with his… decorated military career. We don’t have time for each other.”

“What kind of business to you have, Henry?” she asked sweetly.

“Antiques,” he answered. “Religious antiques mostly. I've got a shop in Bristol but I actually sell a lot by mail. I specialize in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. It has absolutely nothing to do with the present day.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s very fascinating,” said Cathy. “If you’re anything like Ricky, I’m sure you could never do anything you didn’t love.”

Something about the way she listened made him continue.

"Well, as it just so happens, I might be in love with it in a very cold-hearted and mercenary way. I've recently uncovered an illuminated manuscript that could be very important. I sent away to Trinity College in Ireland to see if they can date it. You've heard of the Book of Kells, haven't you?" He could feel the excitement seeping into his voice, but he could not hold it back.

"Blah, blah, boring, snore," his brother interrupted.

"Oh, Ricky, now be nice," Cathy scolded him gently. She turned back to Henry. "He didn't mean it. Go on."

The moment was broken and before Henry could politely exit out of it, his brother beat him to the punch.

"You forget, Cathy, that Henry always has a story like this. I've heard them all before, and they always end the same way: dull."

It rankled, his brother talking about him like that. It almost made Henry want to fight back, say something about how he had heard all of Ricky's stories before, and they all ended the same way: broke and deceived. Something held him back, however, and then the heiress intervened on his behalf.

"Now, Ricky, you should be more supportive of your brother," she said gently. "You don't know what it's like to be an only child, how lonely it is."

"You're not going to be lonely anymore, Sweetie," he assured her. "You've got me."

Cathy smiled. She looked sweet then teasing. "Ah, but do you have me, or is your brother going to tell me such horror stories about you as a kid that I run away screaming?"

Henry sighed. He had hoped to make an unobtrusive escape. Then he thought about what stories he could tell and sighed again.

Part of him had always resented Ricky. His older brother was always their father's favorite, always just a little bit stronger, a little bit faster. Henry had been more studious but Ricky had cheated or conned someone else into doing his work for him and so always got the better grades. It was the story of Henry's life that whatever he worked persistently and honestly to achieve his brother would always take by trickery in the end.

And now his brother had found a rich girl to pay his bills. Did Ricky plan to take her money and divorce her quickly, or was she worth enough to hang onto? Either way, Cathy Morland would be poorer and wiser by the time he was through... Unless Henry put a stop to it here and now.

Telling uncomplimentary stories about his brother lacked the dramatic flair of interrupting a wedding ceremony but the thought of being able to give Ricky some comeuppance was tempting and Henry was momentarily paralyzed to know where to begin.

Then he opened his mouth and the words started to tumble out. It was nothing very damning, nothing that his brother would feel obligated to stop, and yet it was never, at its core, complimentary. There were plenty of times that Ricky had to interrupt and tell it from his point of view, offer extenuating circumstances, reveal nobler ambitions, but he couldn't stop Henry from speaking. As soon as Ricky stated his case, Henry would launch into another example of Ricky's mean spiritedness, cruelty, deceit, or carelessness.

Cathy sat there and soaked it in quietly at first. Innocently, imperceptibly, she slowly shifted the conversation and got Henry to talk more about himself than his brother until finally he wasn't even mentioning Ricky at all, until the stories didn't have anything to do, even tangentially, with him.

Henry caught Cathy smiling at him, and realized he was grinning back, and had to reel himself in.

Ricky chose that moment to lean into Cathy and ask if she had heard enough. Without waiting for her to articulate an answer, he kissed her in such a way as to remind his little brother who had found her first.

Cathy had sat through Henry's stories, listened as he waved proverbial red flags, and still she let Ricky kiss her like that! Henry sighed. He had tried to save the girl but some people didn't want to be saved.

It was Henry's cue to exit. He waited until the pair paused for breath and made his goodbyes. "It was very nice meeting you, Miss Morland," he told her, shaking her hand. He didn't add any trite clauses about how much he was looking forward to the wedding invitation. Whenever it was going to be, he was pretty sure he was going to be busy that day.

Tuesday

Tuesday began like usual. He typed letters into the word processor in response to the inquiries he had received throughout the last week. He cleaned haphazardly, he compiled his grocery list for the week. He made a mental note to take a shower and to pick up his dry cleaning, in no particular order.

Then a delivery van pulled into his driveway and a driver got out. His driveway abutted the parking lot of the former church he had bought and converted into his shop. He had bought both the church and the parsonage for a song when the pastor had disbanded it five years ago. He still got a few random customers looking for a church service on Sundays and so he kept a stock of religious books and toys all priced under $15 by the cash register.

The delivery man bounded up to his front door with a clipboard and package. There was no need to knock, as Henry had seen him coming and was already at the door.

The man pushed the clipboard and a pen at Henry and instructed him to, "Sign here." Henry scrawled something over the line and the man took back his clipboard, filling the void in Henry's hands with the package. The two men nodded in farewell, and the man returned to his van and the rest of his deliveries.

As Henry held the package he realized he was trembling. The from address was Dublin, Ireland, and he could only think of his illuminated manuscript and the sample he had sent to Trinity College.

Henry backed into his house, letting the storm door slam behind him, and went into his office. There he opened the envelope and read the letter. He remained there, silent and shaking, reading the letter over and over again, looking at the additional papers -- scientific printouts and photographs, and an offer to purchase his manuscript -- until long past lunch.

The manuscript was real. Of course it was real! He wasn't his brother, he wasn't a forger. But not only was it real, it was old. It was so old, in fact, that the sample he had sent to Trinity was 150 years older than some sections of the famous Book of Kells. While that indeed made it priceless, Trinity was certainly willing to try to put a price on it, conditionally based on the projected quality of the rest of the manuscript.

Henry was about to become a rich and famous man. Well, not famous to most people, but in certain circles he would be. The rich part was a bit more certain.

This called for a celebration, but with whom? He wasn't about to call his brother, his mother had been dead for years, and his father was currently serving time. He only had one employee, Eleanor, and she was eighty years old at least and spent her Tuesdays shopping. He didn't have much in the way of neighbors but those he did have he avoided studiously, and they returned the favor. The scientists and scholars at Trinity College were a whole ocean away. He had not yet revealed anything to his colleagues because they were spread out across the world and, to be honest, he hadn't wanted to jinx it. He had received a few unsolicited offers to buy the manuscript, but he had decided to ignore them until he had known how much it was worth. So here he was, sitting in his unlit office on one of the biggest discoveries in a generation, and he had no one with whom to share it.

It was a lonely feeling but the direct consequence of his lifestyle and, as he had never complained before, he decided it would be disingenuous to start now.

With no one to call, no place to go, he would have remained in his office all day had it not been for the doorbell.

It started out as a halfhearted buzz but turned into a full throated harassment by the time he reached the front room.

He could see his new visitor clearly through the storm door. It was the Morland heiress from yesterday, and she was visibly distraught.

"Cathy, is something wrong?" he asked. Better to get the obvious out of the way now.

In response, she let out of wail and let herself in. "Oh Henry!" she cried and threw her arms around his neck.

He stood there for a bit, feeling stupid and useless before remembering to pat her back and say reassuring things like, "There, there," and, "It'll be alright."

She sniffled out that she couldn't stop thinking about lunch from the day before. Something in Henry's stories about growing up with Ricky had started to gnaw at her happiness. It has worried her to the point where she now didn't know if she wanted to marry Ricky after all.

What was Henry to do? At last he managed to say that it was best to have these thoughts now, before everything got messy. And if, when cooler heads prevailed, she still wanted to go through with it, there was always the prenup.

He eventually calmed Cathy down and she stopped clinging to him. "I'm sorry," she apologized, "I must look dreadful."

"I wouldn't know about that," Henry said.

Cathy laughed ruefully. "That's a very polite way of saying you agree with me. Can I borrow your powder room to freshen up?"

When she had repaired the damage caused by her outburst she returned, again contrite. "I'm so sorry, Henry. I don't know what came over me! I'm just worried that we're moving too fast I guess."

"Jitters are perfectly normal, but how did you even find me?"

"That's the worst part," said Cathy, making herself comfortable on the sofa. "I woke up this morning with all these questions to ask you, but I didn't know how to get a hold of you. And the more I thought about it, the more desperate I got. So I started hunting through the phone book for you but obviously you weren't in it. Then I tried looking in Yellow Pages for antiques stores trying to find you, but then I realized you didn't live near Boston but somewhere an hour away. Honestly, if you were easier to get hold of, I probably would have stopped once I found you. But after having spent the better part of a day looking for you, I simply had to speak with you."

"My home phone number is unlisted but Ricky has it," Henry pointed out. "You could have just asked him for it." He decided to take a seat next to her; she obviously wasn't planning on leaving soon.

She looked uneasy and squirmed a little. "Yes, but I sort of owe him an answer right now and I just don't think I can give him what he wants."

Henry tried not to look relieved on her account.

"So," she said brightly, "do you mind if I stay here for a bit? I'm not ready to get back behind the wheel just yet."

He started to fumble for an answer but she stopped him.

"Oh no! What am I doing? Of course you have plans," Cathy told him. "You'll want me to clear out before it's time to take your girlfriend to dinner."

Henry laughed nervously. "No girlfriend," he said. "Although it would be nice to have dinner with one today."

"How can a guy like you have no girlfriend?" Cathy wondered. "You're just as bad as your brother, hiding all that potential and from whom?" Then her smiled turned sad and her expression puckered as if she might cry again. "Sorry," she sniffed. "New rule: no more talking about Ricky today."

Henry nodded in agreement then remembered to ask her if she wanted a drink or something.

She decided on a water. Cathy was certain she wanted something stronger, but she would wait until she got home.

He led her into the kitchen and as he poured from the tap she noticed, "You don't live with antiques in the house, do you? I always thought antiques dealers lived in museums practically."

His work seemed a safe enough topic to discuss with her. "Many religious antiques don't really belong in homes, if you think about it. They were much more commonly found in places of communal worship -- churches and temples and the like. I suppose it would be different if I viewed the pieces with any sentimental value or deeper meaning but honestly, I sell that stuff; to put it in my house and possibly damage it and diminish its quality costs me money."

This puzzled Cathy and she thought a bit about what she wanted to say next. "But don't you believe ?" she asked him. "I can't imagine being surrounded by all those elements of faith and not believing in God."

"If I believed, how incredibly vulgar it would be to sell all these things for a profit!" he exclaimed. It was the one part of his Tilney heritage that he held to -- never believe the con -- not that he could say that in front of Cathy. Still, he could see the concept of an atheist selling religious artifacts did not sit well with her. "I still believe in miracles, after a fashion. It's just the miracle of a master craftsman creating the illusion of life out of wood or stone or glass."

She just shook her head. "So no antiques in the house, then?"

"Would you have me eat off of enameled communion plates? Read the morning paper in a hand-carved confessional?" he teased her, coaxing another winning smile from her. "No. No work antiques in the house... With one exception," he added, thinking back to his office.

Now she was intrigued. "What is that?" asked Cathy.

Henry mulled briefly what he should say to her but the overriding truth of the matter was that he wanted to tell someone -- anyone! -- of his discovery.

"Well, it's not in the shop because I didn't know how valuable it is," he explained. "You remember I mentioned yesterday that I had found an illuminated manuscript?"

"The Book of Kells?" Cathy said.

"Like the Book of Kells," he corrected her. "Kells is famous and has been found for centuries. My book has just been uncovered and it's slightly older."

Cathy's eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean, it's older?" she asked, her tone showing that she was at least partially aware of the consequences.

That was all the encouragement Henry needed. He told her all about the letter he had just received from Ireland, the findings, the offer. He told her about how he had originally discovered it in a chest with other Roman Catholic artifacts from the 16th century. He told her how he had begun to suspect the text's significance. Finally he told her that he was keeping it in his personal safe inside his office.

The entire time she was rapt with attention, hanging on his every word. At the end of it she blinked. "Are you saying it's in the house?" she asked in amazement.

He grinned like a schoolboy. "Would you like to see it?"

"Would I!" It was exactly the reaction he was hoping for.

Henry led her into the spare bedroom that served as his office and opened the safe. He pulled out the locked box and the envelope above it containing his own photographs.

"I don't want to take it out of the box," he said. "It's too old to be handled, but I have some pictures I took of the pages that I can show you."

Cathy didn't exactly pout but she did look pleading. "Oh please, Henry, can I just see the first page? Oh please, oh please, oh please! I promise not to touch it. I promise to be good." She unconsciously put her hand on his arm when she did this and Henry could feel all the temptation to give into her. Still he held firm. If anything happened to this manuscript before he could hand it over to Trinity, he would never forgive himself.

Her fingers tightened on his sleeve when he didn't relent. "Please, Henry," she said again. "You can't show me this much and no further! When am I going to have a chance like this again? Besides, don't you want to share this with someone?"

He did want to share it. "Alright," he conceded. "Hands behind your back at all times."

"You can tie them behind me if it'll make you feel better," she offered. "Anything at all."

He told her that was unnecessary before he considered too deeply how it would make him feel. Then he went through the routine of putting on his gloves and opening the box.

Cathy's eyes grew as big as saucers and she whispered her appreciation reverently. He kept the box open far longer than he had planned, pointing out details that the uneducated layman wouldn't catch.

When at last he returned the locked box to the safe, Cathy shook herself like a dreamer waking. "This calls for a celebration," she told him. "Get dressed. We're going out."

"Cathy, I haven't even had a shower today," he confessed.

She gaped at him, then wrinkled her nose. Then she struck what he could only call a pose and said in an accent he didn't recognize, "Shut up and take a shower."

And then she practically herded him into his bedroom and stood in the hall nagging him until she heard the water running.

---

He took too long in the shower. That's what he told himself when he was done and it was obvious. Then he stood paralyzed with indecision for another five minutes while he pondered whether to use aftershave or not. He wasted another fifteen minutes picking out what to wear; it had to be something similar enough to what Cathy was wearing so that neither of them felt out of place, and perfectly suitable for a dinner out in Bristol. And it wasn't exactly a date, was it?

That thought cost him a few more minutes.

When he opened his bedroom door, however, it felt as if a lifetime had passed and he was walking into someone else's home. There was still his paint on the walls, his furniture in the rooms, even his dust on the baseboard, but there was another presence now as well. Music was coming from the stereo in the living room and delicious smells were coming from the kitchen, and the overall experience was so far outside his day-to-day life it stopped him in his tracks. Just what was going on?

He tracked down the source of the changes who was busy in the kitchen.

"There you are!" Cathy greeted him with smiles as she set down her wooden spoon and picked up two glasses. "Cheers," she said. She put one of the glasses in his hand and clinked the rims together then downed her own drink.

"What is going on?" he asked rather than swallowing the proffered cocktail. He wasn't a big drinker simply because he didn't as a rule drink alone and he was so often alone.

Cathy gave him the same look as before and assumed the same odd accent - Marlene Dietrich maybe? "Shut up and drink," she told him, helping him tip the potent liquor down his throat. For all of her professed affinity with softness and curves, she could be rather firm.

It burned going down but before he could protest against her highhandedness, she popped a mushroom into his mouth and ordered him to chew.

He really had no choice other than to spit it out. Once the flavors started to mingle on his tongue, however, getting rid of it was hardly an option. He couldn't remember what meager dribble he had eaten for breakfast and he knew that he had skipped lunch. His body had completely forgotten what it was to be hungry in all the excitement about the text, but now that someone was putting tasty morsels into his mouth, it suddenly occurred to him that he was starving.

Cathy gave him a knowing smirk and turned back to the stove.

"Sorry about the change in plans," she told him, "but as soon as you got in the shower I thought you might like a nice evening in. I know it's a horrible stereotype, but I've never met a bachelor who can cook for himself. You're probably sick and tired of going out to eat, and I don't know the area well enough to suggest a really good restaurant, and I insist we have a good meal and that it is my treat. And my mother's very old fashioned. She would make me read an old newspaper article about the proper behavior of unmarried girls if she found out that I was treating you. Mother was always insisting I sit up straight and not cross my legs. She made sure I knew how to cook and that sort of thing -- you know, the domestic arts. The better to please my man with."

She laughed a little ruefully as she stirred her sauce. "Not that I'm going to have need those skills any time soon. You don't mind, do you?" She peered over her shoulder at him. Something in her eyes looked a little vulnerable, as if she was trying hard not to think about Ricky.

Henry shook his head. "Of course not." He could be accommodating.

She smiled back, victorious, and offered him another mushroom.

The second was just as delicious as the first but after he swallowed he forced himself to look around at the blossoming mess in his kitchen. "But where did all this food come from?" He knew he had never bought mushrooms that tasted like that.

She looked over her shoulder just so he could watch her roll her eyes. "Typical male!" Cathy chided him. "There's a supermarket down the street. I saw it on my way here. Once I decided to cook for you and realized you had nothing in the house worth eating, I popped down to the store and bought a few things. As I said, my treat."

Henry stole another mushroom. "Is there anything I can do?" It felt strange to be a guest on his own home.

"You can open the wine," she suggested.

"There's wine?" he wondered. Cocktails and wine, he reminded himself, and an empty stomach. He would need to pace himself

Cathy nodded. "Red sauce, red meat, red wine. I like simple repetition. It drives the point home."

It would be rude to disagree even if he knew what the point was, so Henry did as he was asked. He poured two glasses, one of which Cathy immediately dumped into the sauce. As he refilled her glass, he asked if there was anything else to do.

"You can set the table," she said.

He agreed quickly only to realize it was a minefield. The table in the dining room comfortably seated six but there were only two of them. Putting them at the head and foot of the table was obviously wrong. Putting them closer together made sense -- no one wanted to shout across the table at dinner -- but how close was too close? Should he put their plates on either side of the head so they could talk face-to-face over that shorter distance, or should he put the plates side by side even closer together? In the end, side by side felt wrong too, like sitting in a cafeteria. Yet sitting almost face-to-face at the corner struck him as a little too familiar for a couple who had only been introduced to each other yesterday and whose only connection -- Ricky Tilney -- was sketchy at best.

After far too much deliberation he settled on placing the plates to the right and left of the head chair so that they could watch each other eat.

He returned to the kitchen for additional errands but Cathy had little else she needed done other than to keep her company while she kept her eye on the sauce. They feel into an easy conversation about Bristol and why Henry had settled there, and where in the world each of them would like to live or visit. Cathy had a long list full of the usual famous places but Henry had a lot of obscure towns of unexpected significance that Cathy was quite willing to concede she would be happy to visit them all with Henry as her guide.

They carried the serving platter and bowl to the table together. Henry went back to the kitchen to fetch their wine glasses and when he came back to the dining room, Cathy was rearranging the settings to suit herself. All his concern over whether to sit beside her or not was wasted because she had decided as the guest of honor ("I don't think I can be guest of honor in my own home." "Nonsense, Henry, don't spoil it for me.") he should sit at the head of the table. She was not done there, but insisted on serving him first and offering a toast to him, "and the Book of Tilney."

He nearly choked on his wine at that but things proceeded smoothly from there and they discovered they had as much to discuss about the food they would like to eat as they had about the places they would like to go.

It was a good meal, better than good. Every part of it was fantastic. As the food and the wine and the conversation took their effect he began to feel quite content.

At one point, however, he saw her expression shift. Their plates were nearly empty and, if she hadn't hidden a dessert in his fridge, she should probably start thinking about the long drive home.

"Do you ever think about how amazing life is, the sheer random chance of it?" she mused. "I know I said I didn't want to talk about Ricky but I can't help it. When I first met your brother I thought he was so handsome and kind and funny. There was just something about him I just couldn't resist."

She sighed heavily and Henry felt his euphoria leaving him. He had for the moment forgotten all about his brother as the only reason Cathy had come here today.

"Still," she continued, "even from the beginning, deep down I think I knew something wasn't quite right."

That did help Henry's growing disappointment, knowing that Cathy would have seen through Ricky's lies and manipulations before long. But would she have been quick enough to get out with her fortune intact?

"It seemed like such wonderful, random chance that we met, such beautiful serendipity." She frowned in thought. "But maybe I wasn't supposed to meet Ricky after all. Maybe I was supposed to meet someone else instead, did you ever think of that?"

She looked at him and for a second Henry thought the question wasn't rhetorical. Then her gaze turned insightful. "Why didn't you go out tonight, Henry? Why didn't you have plans to celebrate your good fortune and hard work with all your friends?" She looked sad on his behalf.

"I thought we were celebrating," he replied quietly. He had certainly felt pleased with himself a few moments ago.

Cathy rested her hand on his and gave it an affectionate squeeze. "Why does a girl like me have to get practically engaged to someone else to meet a guy like you?"

She was frustrated at all the time she had wasted with Ricky, he found. This was a date after all, a part of him crowed. There was another part of him, however, that felt leaden.

Cathy leaned over and kissed him. It was short and sweet, a brief declaration of her intentions, a test of the waters so to speak. When it was over, Henry realized how much he wanted it to continue but he also needed to get something off his chest first.

"Cathy, there's something I need to tell you." He spoke quickly, nervously. If she interrupted him, his mouth might go numb and he might not be able to find the words again. "I come from a long line of scam artists, Ricky and I both. My brother's always been running some confidence scheme or other and right now he's after your money. My father... I don't know what you've been told about my father, but he's in jail these days serving time for fraud. My uncle disappeared in South America during some scam gone awry. My grandfather swindled a lot of money from people in his day although he managed to spend it all and more, and died destitute. My great grandfather... I'm not sure about him but my point is, if you traced my genealogy as far back as you can go, you'd find a Tilney trying to cheat a neighbor. Even me," he observed glumly. "I sell artifacts of a religion I don't believe in to people who do. How is that not a con?"

Cathy's face was pale and blank. Her mouth hung slightly open.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I should have warned you earlier about Ricky, but I only met you yesterday, and when you showed up today you had already decided not to go through with it. But I like you, Cathy, and I'm glad I didn't have plans for tonight, and I'm glad --" He was glad for any number of things, the beautiful serendipity as Cathy called it, but he didn't get a chance to enumerate the entire list.

"Shut up and kiss me," she told him. And he did to the best of his ability. The corner of the dining table proved an initial impediment but Cathy solved that in no time by moving directly to his lap. From then on, they didn't pause until they were both breathless.

Cathy began to unfasten the buttons on his shirt. Henry knew he was supposed to do something -- he wanted to -- to help move things along, but he couldn't. It was more than just kissing that left him panting; he felt unwell.

"Wait," he said, almost slurring his speech. "I don't feel so good."

She froze for a moment then took his face in her hands and peered at him intently. "How much do you drink normally?" she asked at last.

"Normally, I don't." He was definitely slurring now.

"And how much do you weigh?"

"About 150," he rounded up. He was still in the chair, still with Cathy on his lap, but it felt as if he had started a journey down a tunnel.

"You really are nothing like your brother," she observed from the growing distance, her voice distorting by the lengthening gap. "Listen, I'm very sorry about this, and I really do like you too, Henry..."

There was more she said, but the sound was weak and echoing and he couldn't understand, or maybe it was Marlene Dietrich who spoke to him. Or maybe he just couldn't remember. She got farther away too for all that she was sitting on top of him, until he slipped entirely from her grasp and continued his journey down that tunnel alone.

Wednesday

He awoke groggy and disoriented in a white room smelling of disinfectant. He tried to speak coherently, to sit up, but he couldn't exactly. His throat ached painfully and his stomach felt like it had taken a beating. As he stared in confusion at the tube pumping saline into his wrist he heard a small noise in the room.

“Henry!” greeted the grandmotherly woman who worked in his shop. “Let me call the nurse now that you're awake. Oh, you gave me such a scare.”

“Eleanor?” he croaked, trying to make sense of it. He remembered Cathy Morland visiting him, making him dinner, kissing him. “Why am I in a hospital?” And where was Cathy?

“Oh, Henry! You were unconscious this morning. It nearly gave me a heart attack,” the old woman said, dropping her knitting to clasp her chest.

It took too much energy for him to ask for an explanation so after a moment Eleanor continued: “I came to the shop this morning like always but you weren't there. I thought you must be running late, maybe you slept in for once, so I went to your house and knocked. You didn't answer -- obviously you didn't answer! -- but I could hear you had the radio on and the door was slightly ajar. You know I would never walk in uninvited, but I thought with the radio maybe you couldn't hear me knock. So I walked in and there you were, lying on the floor! Oh, I swear I nearly fell down and joined you, I was so shocked. And you didn't wake up when I shouted at you. You were breathing but I couldn't wake you up, so I called the ambulance. And here we are.”

Henry took a minute to absorb the story. If Eleanor had found him, it must be Wednesday. But Cathy had been to see him on Tuesday, she had been in his home. He had begun to feel unwell at dinner and he couldn't remember anything after that. Surely if he had collapsed like Eleanor has described, Cathy would have gotten him to the hospital. But if she had also gotten sick, she might have ended up similarly incapacitated on his carpet. What had happened to her? Eleanor would surely have mentioned if she had found a second person, wouldn't she? What if Cathy was waking up in a nearby hospital room, alone and confused worse than Henry?

“Where's Cathy?” he rasped.

“Who is Cathy?” asked Eleanor.

“She's my --” He stopped. How could he explain her succinctly? She had been introduced to him as his brother's girlfriend, potentially his fiancée. She had shown up on his doorstep yesterday as a girl in desperate need of a friendly ear. She had been genuinely interested in Henry, not in a way that threatened her relationship with Ricky, but as a friend. And, he confessed, he had found her interesting too but, until she officially broke things off with his brother, he had better not get ahead of himself. Except they had kissed, Henry and Cathy, hadn't they?

“Is she your cleaning lady?” Eleanor suggested when no answer was forthcoming. “Your place was looking spic and span, I noticed.”

Henry tried to think of why he felt uneasy at the observation as a nurse bustled in. She asked him how he felt, if he knew his name, where he was, and what day it was as she read his clipboard and checked the bag of saline suspended over his cot. At last the woman asked him if he knew why he was hospitalized.

“I suppose I fell ill during dinner yesterday,” he said.

The nurse did not look very sympathetic. “I'll let the police officer know you're awake. He'll want to speak with you after Dr. Keyes completes his examination.” With that she left the room.

Dr. Keyes was in next, and Eleanor was sent to wait in the hall while Henry was poked and prodded and interrogated. Why bother with police officers if the doctor was going to ask everything anyway?

By now, more of his memory had come back and he could remember some of his interactions with Cathy more clearly. He might not have been a con artist like the men in his family, but he could certainly be a scoundrel for kissing his brother's girlfriend.

Officer White came next, bringing another interrogation. After going over Henry's last memories before he woke up in a hospital -- “I had dinner at home with a friend” was all the detail he would admit to, rather than how he ended up with that friend in his lap -- Officer White asked what drugs he was taking.

“I'm not on any drugs,” said Henry with some affront. He was not the sort of person to use drugs, not in the way the officer was implying.

“How much did you have to drink yesterday?”

Here Henry felt a little responsible. “Uh, I'm not sure,” he admitted. “We had a cocktail before dinner, and there was a bottle of wine but we couldn't have drunk it all.”

“How much do you normally drink?”

“None at all.”

White took notes. “And what was in the cocktail you drank?”

“I don't know. Cathy made it. It had to be something I already have in the house.”

“And what was in the wine?”

That was an absurd question. “Wine was in the wine. It was a red wine. I'm an antiques dealer, not a vintner. What is the point of all these questions?”

Officer White eyed him suspiciously then scribbled another note before replying. “Mr. Tilney, you were found unresponsive on the floor of your living room more than 12 hours after you report feeling ill. Your dining companion is nowhere to be found, nor was it obvious to the paramedics that you had a dinner party last night. The hospital had to pump your stomach when you arrived. And while toxicology hasn't delivered their report, I'm going to guess they'll find something in it that upstanding, law-abiding citizens don't have. Now, would you like to add anything?”

Henry gaped stupidly. Then he felt himself grow cold. He had been raised by a scoundrel, he had grown up alongside another, surely he knew enough to recognize a con when it happened to him.

Ricky had to be behind this. Sweet little Cathy Morland was not his girlfriend, or an heiress. She was either working with him or for him. Ricky has dangled the girl in front of him two days ago to establish the relationship, then sent her over to Henry's house yesterday. Once she was in his home it didn't matter what Henry did -- whether he warned her against Ricky or nudged her closer to matrimony or even kissed her -- she would have found a way to drug him. And he had stupidly, stupidly, stupidly shown her the priceless manuscript.

What Ricky thought it was worth, whatever buyer he had lined up, he would do it wrong. And all the money that should have been Henry's would dissolve between his brother and faceless middlemen. And whatever fame should fall to Henry as the man who discovered this work of art would be lost forever.

“Mr. Tilney?” prompted the cop.

“I need to call my brother,” he said hoarsely. “I need to speak with him privately.”

Officer White sighed wearily, asked a few more questions, then left the room. Henry shakily picked up the phone and followed the procedure for getting an outside line. He listened to the ringer repeat until he heard Ricky's dispassionate voice answer, directing him to leave his name, telephone number, and a brief message.

Henry tore into the answering machine, leaving a scathing rant. Halfway through, a squeal came back across the line as his brother picked up the phone.

“Henry, what is going on?” The verbal attack was too uncharacteristic to offend.

“You stole from me!” Henry thundered. “You and your little… Trojan horse! I just hope you haven't gotten rid of it yet because I'm giving you give five seconds to return it before I report you to the police.”

“Hold on, Henry. Let's not be hasty. What are you talking about?” Ricky has shifted into survival mode at the mention of police. “When would I ever steal from you? What do you think I took? What is the horse?”

“Your fake fiancée,” shouted Henry, “is the horse! My manuscript is what you stole! You have no idea what it is really worth! You are going to ruin everything!”

“My fiancée?” repeated Ricky who was only able to deal with one of his brother’s accusations at a time. “Henry, Cathy turned me down two nights ago. She's not my fiancée.”

“She's not an heiress either,” stated Henry. “She's your accomplice and the two of you have succeeded in putting me in the hospital. And I will not stop till I've put you both in prison. You can say hello to Dad for me.”

By now Ricky was beginning to feel more like a dupe than a con. Either his brother was trying to hustle him or Cathy already had. “Where are you right now? You're in a hospital? I'm coming to see you.”

“You have one hour to get here,” warned Henry, “then I'm telling the cops.”

Ricky got there with seven minutes to spare. Henry had calmed down considerably in that time so that he was no longer shouting but he was still coldly furious. Eleanor had stayed to meet Henry's brother but, after shaking hands with him and chattering sweetly while her boss glared silently, she took her leave.

Ricky got the full story from Henry but he could not return the manuscript because he didn't have it. Cathy, acting alone, had stolen it. She had clearly posed as an heiress to attract Ricky, then used him to get introduced to his brother. Who she was working for was anybody's guess, because Henry had received numerous requests to sell the artifact to many unnamed buyers since sending the sample to Trinity.

The asking price from these shadow collectors had continued to climb with each refusal but Henry had not been ready to sell. He had wanted Trinity to prove him right first, to verify its authenticity and significance. He had wanted to go down in history for having found the Book of Tilney. With the letter he had just received, he could have gone to any auction house in the world and made a fortune. But not anymore, not without the manuscript.

It took some doing, but Ricky convinced his brother that he was not involved in Cathy's scam. The final piece of evidence, however, was in Henry's home.

Eleanor was right, the place was indeed neat as a pin and very clean. The dining room had been cleared of all signs that they had eaten there yesterday. The kitchen was spotless, dishes were put away, the trash can was emptied. The floors were swept. There was no sign that Cathy had been over; no sign, practically, that Henry even lived there.

While Ricky stood about, appreciating a rival’s technique, Henry went to his office. This room, like the others, had been professionally cleaned. Even the safe looked untouched.

The only sign of life was a fountain pen lying askew on the blotter. He picked it up and dumped it into a cup already brimming with pencils and highlighters. Then he sat down heavily in the chair and faced the safe.

He had known for hours that the manuscript had been stolen from him, but facing the closed safe he felt a frisson of doubt. Had she failed to crack his combination? Had she changed her mind at the last minute? Had she succumbed to worry and regret over drugging him? Is that why she left his door ajar and the radio blaring -- to attract attention and get him the medical treatment he needed? More of her words were coming back to him and he felt like the most ignorant dupe of all to remember them, but maybe she had cared for him after all.

With a shaking hand he spun the combination and swung open the door.

The safe was empty.

“You've got a card,” his brother called from the other room before bounding in, envelope first. “I recognize the handwriting.”

The address looked exactly like what Henry had imagined Cathy's handwriting to be, before he found out she was a con artist. It was fat and looping, the “i"s dotted with little circles, and it appeared to be written in the same pen he had found on his desk. There was no return address but the postmark implied she had dropped it off at the post office on the way out Tuesday night. With a sigh he opened it.

It was a Get Well card. An unsettlingly smiling yellow face on the cover said he would be feeling better in no time. Inside a personal message was scrawled in the same pen as on the envelope but in a completely different hand. Where the address had been soft and curving, the note was angular and sharp.

Henry,

Sorry it came to this but you wouldn't sell and my employer is most insistent. You really should get out more; I would never had gone through your brother if I could have met you directly.

XOXO,
-K

P.S. I judged the dose based on your brother. You were supposed to last until after dessert.

A Year Later

Henry stood next to Professor John Thorpe from Trinity College as John quietly pointed out the major players in the room, his soft Irish accent making all the people a little more interesting. There were a representative from the Soviet Union, a few Middle Eastern princes, someone who came all the way from California, three random people from old-money, titled European families, and a couple of older gentlemen dressed in clerical garments of various religious denominations.

The Book of Tilney, as Henry now thought of it, was irrevocably gone except for the twenty pages that had still been in Ireland when Cathy Morland broke into his safe. He had called the police to his home after confirming the manuscript was missing, but it had been too late by then. The pages were gone, the thief was gone, even the photographs were gone. Like all successful crimes, they were never found.

Henry had been beside himself with an entire gamut of negative emotions. He was too angry to sleep, too shocked to do much else. He was ashamed that he had failed to recognize Cathy for what she was, and deeply disappointed that he had played so neatly into her trap. He had fallen into a depression after a week as the certainty of his loss overwhelmed him, which had hardened into an increasing distrust of people in general. Contrary to Cathy's advice, he did not get out more after the theft.

At some point, he had called Trinity College and reported the crime. They had been soothingly sympathetic and had asked what he had wanted to do with the twenty pages still in their possession. Henry had sat up straighter upon hearing that. He had forgotten all about it! The Book of Tilney was not completely lost after all! There was still something to prove his discovery, and there was still something to sell. Sure, it would bring in a pittance compared to the complete work, but it would be more than enough to make the pages worth selling.

The auction, however, took nearly a year to arrange. In the meantime, professors and other researchers in Dublin continued to examine the surviving pages as well as the photographs that Henry had sent. They gave talks and, from Henry’s point of view, drummed up interest.

At last, the academics were ready to part with it and arranged to sell it through one of the older and more respected auction houses on the European continent. Henry had come to watch his little fortune be made, but he clung to the shadows at first, refusing to meet potential buyers until John had finally teased him into it.

So now he stood, wine glass in hand, in a special bar room in the auction house, while John pointed out the interested parties, knowing that they were all looking at him too, trying to learn more about him. Suddenly he heard his partner’s sharp intake of breath and looked at him in alarm.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.

Thorpe just inclined his head ever so slightly, his eyes fixed on an older man dressed in black and purple clothes who had halted his progress shortly after entering the room.

“Who’s that?” Henry wanted to know, immediately suspicious that he was in the presence of an international thief.

“Cardinal Antonio Magellan,” breathed Thorpe. “He runs the Vatican’s Secret Archives.”

Atheist though he was, Henry had heard of the Vatican. “If they’re secret--”

“They’re private property of the pope,” Thorpe explained. “If the Vatican wants your book, you’re in luck. Take whatever figure you think you’re going to get out of this and double it.”

“Are you sure he’s legitimate?” Henry couldn’t help asking. Something about the man raised his hackles.

“He’s more legitimate than you or I,” said the academic, hoping to settle the matter. “And if he’s here, you can be certain his right hand is close by.” Thorpe began to smooth his tie and check the line of his jacket.

“Who’s that?” Henry couldn’t help his interest.

Thorpe scanned the crowd then shook his head. “Not here yet. Not that it matters,” he sighed. “I’ve struck out with her more times that I can count. I think she must be gay.”

Before Henry could probe further, the Irishman stiffened and began preening again. “He's coming over,” Thorpe announced in a stage whisper.

Henry saw that Cardinal Magellan was indeed walking their way and had just enough time to ask his companion how to address such a man before he needed to put such knowledge to use.

Thorpe ran through the introductions but it was clear that the cardinal already knew who Henry was.

“Mr. Tilney, I am so pleased to make your acquaintance,” Magellan said smoothly. “Your illuminated pages are quite beautiful.”

“Thank you, your Eminence,” replied Henry, “but I can hardly take credit for that.”

“Still, I know his Holiness would like to have them for his private collection,” the cardinal said, “and I, as his humble librarian, have been authorized to purchase them from you on his behalf.”

“And I would love to sell it to you,” Henry countered, “or anyone else with the winning bid, but the auction is tomorrow.”

Thorpe looked appalled at Henry’s American manners. Cardinal Magellan, after all, was not some televangelist. “Tilney, I really think you should listen to Rome's offer. Now. Let me see if I can find a private room for this conversation.”

“That will not be necessary, Professor Thorpe,” preempted Magellan. “I have already secured an office just down the hall. If you would please follow me?”

Henry decided to follow the academic, who followed the cleric to a small room containing a table and chairs. A legal representative from the auction house was already there.

In the end, it was not as shady as Henry had first feared. The Roman Catholic Church was a big player with deep pockets. If they were willing to pay a sufficiently large sum and not try to cheat anyone out of their commission, there was nothing unseemly about it. The figure the cardinal offered for the few surviving pages was excessively generous, closer in line to what the complete work would have been worth rather than the slim folio for sale.

The cardinal explained that the Vatican wanted to purchase not just the portion which had been safeguarded at Trinity during the theft but also the rest of the book should it ever resurface. “For I believe that there is nothing lost that may not be found,” said Magellan. “I have faith that the entire book will be eventually reunited in my library although not perhaps during my tenure.”

Once Henry had recovered from the dazzle of such a generous number, he was quite willing to sign and initial wherever he was instructed.

After the paperwork was complete, the agent left to file it and inform the other interested parties that the auction was cancelled.

“This calls for a celebration!” Thorpe clapped his hands together. “Let me get the champagne.” With that he too left the small room.

Henry decided to make an effort at small talk with the impressive man seated across from him. “So when did you first hear about my little book?”

“Oh, over a year ago,” answered the older gentleman. “My librarians are often in communication with places like Trinity College. I even sent a researcher to look at the pages when they arrived in Dublin.”

“And do you have much luck in hunting stolen goods like the manuscript? I can't imagine you have a lot of practice; people probably would rather not steal from a church if they can help it,” Henry observed. “Or will you just wait for it to be unearthed again? In the hands of an overzealous collector, you won't see it for more than a generation, if at all.”

“I have a few researchers who might enjoy the challenge, but we have more practical work. No,” said the older man, “I am a patient man, and the Church is even more patient than I. The book will be whole again one day, and on that day it will belong to the Church.”

“I confess, I had hoped you would hunt down the persons responsible,” Henry admitted. “I've spent the last year imagining the thief would be caught and give up the name of whoever hired her.”

The cardinal did not look especially pleased with this idea. “May I counsel forgiveness instead, Mr. Tilney? Judgment belongs to God alone, and all this bitterness is detrimental to your soul.”

“I'm an atheist,” Henry pointed out. “I don't believe in gods or souls.”

The cardinal was surprised to hear this but he recovered quickly. “Regardless,” he said after a series of rapid blinks, “that resentment will eat at you, to believe that your happiness is dependent upon others being unhappy, and their unhappiness so thoroughly outside your control. When or if the guilty party is finally brought to justice, what will that moment give you that you cannot give yourself right now?”

Henry had not thought of it that way before. He did so now.

“Consider instead,” continued Magellan after seeing evidence that Henry was still mulling his words, “that the Church, in buying your book, has also bought your concern. We will find the rest of the pages; the Book of Tilney will be made whole again. But you need not think about that anymore. You're now a wealthy man, and can devote yourself to serious or frivolous pastimes as you see fit. As a man of God, I shall hope you use your wealth wisely and for the good of all, but as a man I will understand if that is not always possible.”

The door opened again and Thorpe stumbled in, laden down with a bottle and glasses. The cardinal took this as his cue to leave. “Now, if you will excuse me,” he said, rising, “I am no longer in my prime. I find travel and disruptions to my routine to be fatiguing. I must contact Rome and inform them of today's events and then I need to rest. I will leave the celebrations to the younger generation.” So saying, he walked out.

There was nothing left to do but drink the champagne and ruminate. And when the bottle ran out, the two men left the auction house and found themselves a bar where they had to pay for their drinks but, Henry realized, he could now well afford it. They talked and drank until Henry had drunk enough to unburden himself of the true story of Cathy Morland.

“Holy Mother!” exclaimed Thorpe near the end of the tale. “Had any woman ever sat in my lap and told me to kiss her, I know what I would have done.”

“I tried,” complained Henry. “I did, up until the point where I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was in the hospital and the girl was gone along with my manuscript.” It was cathartic to tell the story now where it had previously only been embarrassing.

Thorpe’s eyes widened. He had never heard the details of the theft before but in his present state of mind, they seemed remarkably funny. He started giggling, which Henry found both immature and unsympathetic.

“You are no help at all,” Henry scolded.

“Sorry, it’s just… funny,” Thorpe said. “Well, you won’t have to wonder why they’ll be throwing themselves at you now, will you? Rent a penthouse somewhere and they’ll be crawling out of the woodwork to cheat you rotten.”

Henry found no humor in that thought. He was already untrusting to the point of being misanthropic. What would a fortune do to him? “No, after her, I’m in no mood for women of any sort,” he decided.

“That girl has got you ‘once bitten and twice shy’, is that it? You need to be more ‘play hard, pray hard’ in my opinion. Now’s your chance to do what I’ve always wanted -- I mean, what you’ve always wanted. Run around for a year and sow your oats, see if you can find someone that doesn’t put you in the hospital. And if it doesn't work out,” offered Thorpe philosophically, “come to Dublin, meet my sister Isabella.”

Henry frowned at his empty glass in disappointment. Continuing to drink while listening to Thorpe’s reckless optimism was less than wise. He needed sleep and sobriety before he listened to much more of this. “I'm going to bed,” he announced, easing off his chair and ambling to the door.

“My hero!” Thorpe called out in farewell.

Henry slowly and a little haphazardly walked through the foreign streets to his hotel, his thoughts turning inward rather than on how to navigate. What Thorpe suggested was not heroism but idiocy. The Irishman’s understanding of women had to be a bad combination of juvenile and academic.

The trouble was that Henry’s understanding was also woefully insufficient, and his ability to trust women in general had been badly bruised. Cathy Morland had struck him as something of an innocent, and he had tried to protect her from his brother’s scheming, only to learn that she had played him for a fool. That had been a bitter realization: worse than thinking the first woman he had been attracted to in a good long while was actually in love with his brother was finding out that she hadn’t been in love with either of them, and that she had only conned him into feeling that way.

And now the manuscript had been sold, not just the portion that had been studied at Trinity, but also the lion's share that had disappeared with Cathy and her mysterious employer. Cardinal Magellan probably had the right of it, the book was no longer his and neither was the burden. Much as he had spent the last year thinking about Cathy Morland and how he had been a fool, he needed to stop. It was time to put the crime in his past and get on with his future.

When he finally found his hotel -- accidentally -- he had a visitor waiting for him in the lobby.

Leaning against a wall stood Cathy Morland, only she was not the Cathy Morland he remembered. That girl was softness and curves, clumsiness and friendliness, with dark blond curls and a plumpness to her form. The angular woman before him was nothing like that soft creature. Her hair was bleached almost white and hung down in thin straight sheets, her bangs stopping barely above her heavily made-up eyes. Her expression was bored and unimpressed with the tired lobby. Her face was thinner, her whole body was thinner, at least thirty pounds lighter than Cathy had been; or maybe only twenty pounds lighter, if another ten pounds were transformed from fat to lithe muscles. Her clothes were not designed for a clumsy person, with a plunging v-neck blouse and a slit on her skirt going mid-way up her thigh. She was taller than Cathy too, thanks to her three-inch stilettos. But she was, without a doubt, Cathy Morland.

“What are you doing here?” he asked numbly.

“Waiting to congratulate you,” she smiled slightly. “And to offer my apologies.”

“I got your card already,” he said. In it she had already apologized, not that it meant anything at the time, not that it mattered now. “There’s no need to come all this way.”

“For you, I like the personal touch,” she said, straightening away from the wall with a feline fluidity. It was a grace that made him suddenly nervous.

“What do I still possess that you could possibly want?” he asked baldly. “The rest of the manuscript is out off my hands. It's been bought by the Vatican and I doubt whether you or your employer can wrest it from them.”

“Shall I tell you a secret?” Without waiting for his answer she stepped forward and leaned over his shoulder, her hair falling like a curtain against his cheek. “The Vatican is my employer,” she whispered.

Oh, what a fool he had been! The truth was more effective than any drug she could have used and Henry felt himself sagging under the weight of his stupidity. Cathy -- it couldn't be her real name but he didn't know what else to call her -- called out to the hotel clerk for assistance and the two of them helped Henry up the stairs and into his room. He couldn't follow their conversation at all as they both spoke in a rapid German but he had a distinct impression of doom as Cathy sent the clerk back down the stairs and shut the door to his room with herself on the inside.

“Who are you?” he wondered. “Who are you really?”

“My name is Katerina Moritz,” she told him. “I am a researcher for the Vatican Archives. I specialize in religious writings from before the turn of the millennium, the 400s through the 900s. I am very rarely required to perform field work. In my spare time, my taste in literature runs to unapologetic, irredeemable pulp. I think tennis is the only sport worth watching. I think American wines are swill. I love the beach, nothing but lying in the sun for days on end. As a rule, I love Italian food and shoes, and despise Italian men. They know how to dress a woman but they don't know how to treat her, his Eminence notwithstanding. I come from a large Catholic family that still predominantly lives in the same hamlet for the last forty years, more than that if you ignore wartime displacements. My parents call me Katya but pretty much everyone else calls me Moritz.”

She secured the lock on the door and walked over to join him on the bed. “Do you mind?” she asked before sitting down too close to him. “His Eminence could confirm all of this for you but unfortunately he is out of patience with me right now and will probably deny everything.”

She waited only briefly for him to interrupt. “Go ahead,” she prompted him. “Ask more questions.”

“What do you want from me?” He couldn't keep the distrust from his tone.

“I haven't come to steal from you, if that has you worried,” she told him. He was not reassured. “I've come to… Well, I've come to get to know you better. I like you. We have a lot in common.”

“Why pay for what you had already stolen?” he moved into his next question.

“‘Thou shalt not steal,’’ she quoted some religious directive. “By paying for it, I wanted to undo the crime. His Eminence didn't like it; he worried you would be suspicious and I had already confessed the sin and completed my penance. But, as I said, I like you, Henry Tilney. I insisted and he reluctantly agreed, so long as I didn't do anything foolish.”

“If you were planning on paying for it anyway, why go to the trouble of stealing it?”

“We needed to see it for ourselves. We had tried to speak with you anonymously but you rebuffed all attempts,” she pointed out.

“I was waiting to hear back from Dublin first,” he explained. “It was foolish to sell and foolish to buy until we knew the facts.”

Here she sighed and looked around the room. “And do you remember when we were having dinner and you told me about all the frauds and tricksters down your paternal line?” The question alone made him warm with mortification. “Why did you not mention your mother to me?”

“What about her?” The room had swung suddenly from hot to cold.

“She was a forger,” Katerina said nonchalantly.

“She was an artist ,” Henry corrected, “who was unwittingly duped into making reproductions for one of my father's scams. She left him when she found out how he had used her. And besides, she worked in oils and acrylics. The manuscript is completely different.”

“I didn't say that I suspected your mother of faking the illuminated text, just that you had a colorful family history that inspires a healthy skepticism,” she said, not accusing him of forgery either. “And you are a recluse, Henry Tilney. While the pages you sent to Dublin are authentic, all those hours not spent meeting people and having friendships could have been spent embellishing and adding to the Book of Tilney.”

“It is no counterfeit,” Henry grit out indignantly.

“No, it is beautifully genuine,” she agreed, “but we had to be sure, you understand. And you refused to speak with any potential buyers so that we could arrange an independent examination. So we didn't really steal it, you see. We just bought it on credit without warning you in advance.”

“And now everything is resolved all neat and tidy?” he said unconvincingly.

Moritz shrugged and Henry felt his own shoulder rise and fall. “It looks that way from where I'm sitting.” She added, “with one small exception.”

He felt a frisson of unease. “What's that?”

“I feel terrible for drugging you so thoroughly,” she admitted. Henry noticed that she felt no qualms about drugging him just enough . “For all my research, I had never actually seen you before; you were a bit of a recluse and I can respect that. I had assumed since you and your brother were twins that you would be a bit heavier, you understand, that your tolerance would be higher. I am very sorry about how abruptly our evening ended.”

“Especially,” Henry added tightly, “given how pointless the charade was, since you bought the text anyway.”

“Are you going to ask what I had planned for dessert?” she asked.

“No.” He did not equivocate. She was going to tell him anyway.

“You are almost cripplingly distrustful,” she smiled at him. “I sympathize. I am always worried that someone may be smarter than me. Even if they are more honest, they may still try to cheat me accidentally.”

“And even an innocent Cathy Morland may be hiding a conniving Katerina Moritz,” he pointed out.

“You wouldn't honestly want a creature who would fall for you brother's ridiculous scams. I am better than Cathy Morland. Shall I prove it to you?” she offered.

Henry didn't laugh. “Can you prove it by leaving me alone? Because after spending time with Cathy, I woke up in the hospital,” he pointed out. “Who's to say, after spending time with you, I don't wake up dead tomorrow? Or maybe I'll just wake up in a bathtub filled with ice and my kidneys cut out.”

“My employer has no interest in your internal organs,” she assured him. “They are worth more to me where they are.”

“That is hardly reassuring,” he confided.

“I could promise -- ”

“I'd never believe you,” he told her flatly.

“Never?” She sounded genuinely disappointed. “Not even after I have explained why I did it? Not even after you've been paid for the entire book? I didn't mean to hurt you. I have tried to make it up to you. I have thought about you, Henry Tilney, over the last year. Often. I have been looking forward to being able to see you again.”

“I cannot say the same.”

“No? You never thought about me?” she inquired.

“Not in a good way.” He was determined not to give an inch.

She eyed him, a smile slowly curling one corner of her mouth. “Not too badly, either,” she guessed. “All this time in your room and you haven't tried to throw me out or to call for help. You haven't even threatened to call the authorities. You must not entirely despise me, or maybe you've been too distracted looking at my legs all this time.” She was not gloating, but only just.

Too late Henry raised his eyes to the ceiling. “And what if I tell you to go now?”

“Shut up and kiss me,” she commanded.