The old museum creaked and groaned against the wind that battered it in the storm. Bare branches tapped Nichol's window as they lost the last of their leaves in an autumn storm. Tucked at her desk with a small space heater, she shivered and drew an old gray sweater further around her shoulders.
Through crooked glasses she peered at the handbook she was reading on the effects of light on fragile documents. After staring blankly at the page for several moments she found she could not concentrate on it, distracted by the storm outside, and she marked it and placed the book aside.
Storms such as these roused her to impatience. It was warm and cozy to be indoors on such a night, with no imposition to travel beyond the small apartment she kept on the third floor of the museum, but it was lonely to share the storm with none but oil paintings and marble sculptures.
Convulsively she reached into her desk for the sheaf of old papers she kept, but just as abruptly ceased. She was tormented with guilt and self-loathing for turning again to the letters, the centuries-old letters that so impassioned her that no flesh-and-blood male could touch her. It was a secret she kept, a pastime she alternately loved and hated-- this adoration of a man long-dead, whose paintings of beautiful women hung protected in the museum, whose letters and documents she tended and supplied to interested scholars.
Gabriel Lysander had become more than a historical figure to her. She had looked too often at existing pencil sketches of his profile, trying to picture exactly how such a face would look in truth. She had so little to grasp of him-- faded documents, love letters. They only teased her senses, made her want to know more of him, made him all the more impossible to her.
This obsession she kept private. She never let anyone see her pore over Gabriel's journals or letters, or glance at his miniatures. Nichol calculated laboriously over all the information she knew of him, half-believing she could dream him alive through her will. If it were known were the artist was buried, she did not know if she could have brought herself to visit his grave, though it might have been best, to remind herself that she loved a man that had been cold bone and ashes long before her birth.
A crash resounded from somewhere below, bringing Nichol to awareness. Abruptly she rose from her desk, horrified by the thought that the vibrations of thunder might have toppled a priceless artifact. She descended the staircase with haste, shivering all the while against the permeating cold.
At the bottom of the staircase was a figure, half-illuminated in the glowing lamps, half in darkness as she faced the storm outside. Nichol's breath hitched in her throat as she encountered the unexpected human figure. “Madam,” she said, bewilderment rising in her polite tone. “The museum is closed for the evening, I'm afraid. May I assist you with something?”
The woman turned and looked at Nichol, rooting her to the spot with a sapphire-blue stare. She was dressed all in black, in a gown that swept the floor. Her ebony hair was knotted intricately.
Immediately her interested stare made Nichol feel self-conscious of her poor appearance: her uncombed dark-blonde hair and dark-rimmed eyes too long engrossed in books. She twisted the gray sweater over her shoulders nervously.
“I'm looking for a local expert-- Nichol Durand.”
Nichol's eyes widened. “I'm Nichol. How may I help you, Miss...?”
“Hildegarde Engel.”
Nichol realized as the woman spoke that she was German-- not so much because of an accent, but a certain discomfort with English. Her uncommon beauty made her distinctive in any society, however.
“I want to know of a nineteenth-century artist, Gabriel Lysander.”
Nichol nodded. Lysander was the only historical figure of which she was expert. Anyone who came to the museum to speak to her would be interested in that subject. “Are you a researcher?”
Hildegarde paused uncertainly. “You might... say that.”
She seemed disinclined to elaborate, to Nichol's surprise. Not wishing to interrogate her in the discomfort of the dark, cold foyer, Nichol gestured to the staircase. “Please come into my office. I have many documents and books that may interest you.”
Hildegarde spoke reluctantly, as though from far away. “I... have a document that may interest you, Miss Durand.”
Nichol raised a brow but said nothing more until they were in the solace of her office. Hildegarde withdrew a sheaf of notes from her purse: old notes, letters, tattered and yellowed. Nichol took them from her extended fingers and glanced over them. A cursory look informed her they were in Gabriel's hand-- she was far too studied in his writing to doubt it. Her hands seemed to catch fire with the weight of them, as the implications swept her. More information about Gabriel.
Where had Hildegarde gotten these?
A rush of questions was on her tongue, but Hildegarde stayed her. “From my home. There are many cases of documents I have found. We are renovating our burg, and I am going through old things, deciding what is precious. I began to suspect that these belonged to Lysander. I know little about art, but I know he lived at our burg for at least part of his life.”
Nichol looked from the letters to Hildegarde's pale face. As she stared, the startling thought clung to her that Hildegarde resembled the sketches she bore of Lysander-- but that was impossible, of course. Nothing more than Nichol's obsessive imagination.