The Locked Door
Isabel didn't sleep that night in the guest wing of Kade Hall. She lay in a four-poster bed older than her home country and ran the numbers Sebastian had fed her over eight months of candlelit dinners — the shipping fortune, the three estates, the seat on the museum board, the words "old money" said the way other people said "healthy" or "married."
None of it matched a sentence like the vault is empty.
By seven she was dressed and moving down the east hallway before the house staff had finished laying breakfast. The study door was closed now, and locked — she checked, gently, twice, glancing over her shoulder each time like a woman who had done this before. She had.
"Looking for something?"
Isabel turned too fast. A man in his fifties stood at the end of the hall holding a leather folder against his chest like a shield, silver at his temples, tired eyes that had clearly read too many bad numbers.
"I got turned around," Isabel said. "This house has so many hallways."
"It does." He didn't move. "Perry Nash. I handle the family's accounts."
The accounts. Isabel filed the name away and smiled her best smile, the one that had worked on every man who'd ever stood between her and something she wanted. It did not work on Perry Nash. He looked at her the way an accountant looks at a number that doesn't balance.
"Mrs. Kade — the elder one — likes her privacy about business," he said. "I'd hate for you to get the wrong impression on your first morning as family."
"Of course," Isabel said. "I wouldn't dream of it."
She walked away first, which felt like losing, and spent the rest of breakfast rebuilding her composure over coffee she didn't taste. Sebastian talked about honeymoon destinations. Isabel nodded in the right places and thought about the word pretending.
She needed proof. Not gossip through a door — numbers, real ones, something she could hold.
That afternoon, while the family gathered on the south lawn for photographs, Isabel slipped back down the east hallway one more time. The study door stood open two inches, unattended.
She pushed it wider and stepped inside.
The desk was bare except for a single framed photograph and a leather ledger with a brass clasp, unlocked. Isabel's fingers had just closed on its cover when the door behind her clicked shut.
"Find what you were looking for?"
Josephine Kade stood against the closed door, cane in hand, not remotely surprised to see her — as if she'd been waiting for exactly this, on exactly this afternoon, all along.