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Chapter One

REUBEN WAS A TALL MAN, well over six feet, with brown curly hair and deep-set blue eyes "Sunshine Boy" was his nickname and he hated it; so he tended to repress what the world called an irresistible sht now to put on his studious expression, and try to look older than his twenty-three years

He alking up a steep hill in the fierce ocean ith an exotic and elegant older woman na about the big house on the cliff She was lean with a narrow beautifully sculpted face, and that kind of yellow hair that never fades She wore it straight back fro bob that curled under just above her shoulders He loved the picture she h polished brown boots

He was doing a story for the San Francisco Observer on the giant house and her hopes of selling it now that the estate had at last been settled, and her great-uncle Felix Nideck had been declared officially dead The one for twenty years, but his will had only just been opened, and the house had been left to Marchent, his niece

They,d been walking the forested slopes of the property since Reuben arrived, visiting a rauesthouse and the ruin of a barn They,d followed old roads and old paths lost in the brush, and now and then coe above the cold iron-colored Pacific, only to duck back quickly into the sheltered and danarled oak and bracken

Reuben wasn,t dressed for this, really He,d driven north in his usual "uniform" of worsted-wool blue blazer over a thin cashray slacks But at least he had a scarf for his neck that he,d pulled fro cold

The huge old house intry with deep slate roofs and diah-faced stone, and had countless chi conservatory on the west side, all white iron and glass Reuben loved it He,d loved it in the photographs online but nothing had prepared hirandeur

He,d grown up in an old house on San Francisco,s Russian Hill, and spent a lot of tihts, and the suburbs of San Francisco, including Berkeley, where he,d gone to school, and Hillsborough, where his late grandfather,s half-ti place forhe had ever seen could compare to the Nideck family home

The sheer scale of this place, stranded as it was in its own park, suggested another world

"The real thing," he,d said under his breath the moment he,d seen it "Look at those slate roofs, and those reen vines covered over half the ihest s, and he,d sat in his car for a long moment, kind of pleasantly astonished and a little worshipful, drea a place like this someday when he was a famous writer and the world beat too broad a path to his door

This was turning out to be just a glorious afternoon

It had hurt hiuesthouse dilapidated and unlivable But Marchent assured hiood repair

He could have listened to her talk forever Her accent wasn,t British exactly, or Boston or New York But it was unique, the accent of a child of the world, and it gave her words a lovely preciseness and silvery ring