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Sotheby’s to bid on ten pages from Historia Immortalis . Vivi had been a manuscript curator, quite the little know-it-all on Psalters and whatnot, and according to her, scholars were divided about the book. Some believed it was an account of early astronomers who’d mapped the evening sky; others claimed it was a history of vampirism. Whatever it was, Historia Immortalis had launched a crusade in southern France and had played a role in the Inquisition. A tremendous role. Then it had vanished for nearly eight hundred years, only to resurface at the auction.
    He’d told Vivi to bid on a medieval icon, too—a sort of companion piece to the manuscript.
    â€œHow much are you willing to spend?” Vivi had stood in front of the gilt mirror, brushing her shoulder-length hair. The straight, shiny locks were precisely the color of Earl Gray tea.
    â€œWhatever it takes,” he said. “You’ve got carte blanche.”
    That afternoon she’d called to say she’d won both the icon and the pages. She brought them to their Kensington flat and stood off to the side, watching with a curious expression as Wilkerson locked the items in his safe. He slipped into a burgundy robe and uncorked a bottle of Merlot, but Vivi wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. She pleaded exhaustion and went straight to bed.
    Weeks later, on an unseasonably warm morning in April, Vivi left the flat in a hurry. Later, Wilkerson found a home pregnancy test in the trash bin. He held up the pink stick as if it were a mouse tail and blinked at the plus sign in the display grid.
    Damn her. Vivi knew he wasn’t ready for a baby. She’d clucked sympathetically when he’d told her about his workaholic father and his barmy, social-climbing mother. His parents had dumped young Harry into a boarding school where older boys had tormented him. He’d endured their tricks and insults. Now they were dead, the whole lot, and Wilkerson had restructured his late father’s pharmaceutical company. He’d worked eighteen hours a day, sometimes sleeping in his office. Vivi hadn’t complained. Her job as curator sent her around the world. What kind of parents would they make? Terrible ones, that’s what. Without fail, they’d used contraceptives. Yet here she was, carrying a snot-nosed imp in her belly. Well, she’d just have to get rid of it.
    Wilkerson stayed home from the office that day. He poured a glass of scotch and rehearsed a speech. The pregnancy wasn’t negotiable. She’d get an abortion or face the consequences. After four years of marriage, he’d grown tired of her. True, Vivi was both exquisite and educated, but she was a bore, and besides, his mistress was far more titillating in bed.
    He waited all day for Vivi to come home. At dusk, he began to worry. Had something happened? Was she injured?
    I do love her, after all , he thought.
    When first light rose over the steep rooftops in Kensington, he’d changed his mind about fatherhood. What would his child look like? Would it have his hazel eyes or Vivi’s strange pewter ones? Would it inherit the Wilkerson square chin?
    He began to panic when Vivi didn’t show up the next day. A sharp-edged fear, hard as shattered granite, sliced through his chest. He ran to his safe, spun the dial, and opened the steel door. Empty, except for a first edition Evelyn Waugh and Vivi’s wedding rings. The bitch had left him. His detectives said she’d run off with a wealthy Frenchman she’d met at the auction, taking her unborn child and the artifacts with her.
    For a time, Wilkerson went off the rails. His detectives lost Vivi at the Rome airport. Her passport had cleared Customs, and then she’d vanished. His men turned Italy inside out, but they hadn’t found her.
    It took him years to track down Vivienne. By then, he’d put vampires on the payroll, and they’d tracked Vivi and her Frenchman to a remote hilltop in