The Vale estate was not what I expected.

I'd been preparing myself for the kind of house that announces itself — the grand gates, the marble, the particular architecture of wealth that wants to be noticed. Instead, the car turned off the highway onto a road that went through trees for fifteen minutes, and then there was a house.

A real house. Stone and old glass and a garden that had opinions about itself, and the kind of scale that had happened over generations rather than been built all at once.

"Home," said Sebastian, from the other side of the car.

He'd said approximately six words on the two-hour drive. I'd said approximately the same. We'd established, without discussing it, that the silence was preferable to the alternative.

"It's beautiful," I said. Because it was.

He looked at it.

"My grandfather built the garden," he said. "He's been in it every morning since I was four years old. Less so this year."

He got out of the car.

I got out of the car.

A woman emerged from the front door before we reached it — sixty, efficient, the particular expression of a household manager who has seen things.

"Mrs. Chen," Sebastian said.

"Mr. Vale." She looked at me. "And this must be Miss Cassidy."

"Nora," I said.

She looked at me with the expression of someone revising a first impression.

"The east wing guest room has been prepared," she said. "As requested."

The way she said *as requested* communicated something carefully left unsaid.

"Thank you," Sebastian said.

She showed me to the east wing.

The room was large, comfortable, and completely private — its own bathroom, its own sitting area, a window that looked over the back garden. It was the room you put someone in when you wanted them comfortable and separate.

I set my bag on the chair.

On the desk was a card.

*The ground rules, for your reference. — S.V.*

I opened it.

Hand-written. Clean and precise, the handwriting of someone who has been taught to write and takes it seriously.

*Public: we met six months ago at a gallery opening (your colleague Priya can confirm — she's been briefed). I pursued you. We've been together since March. We are not demonstratively affectionate in front of staff, but in front of family and at events, we are a couple.*

*Private: this room is yours. The door between our rooms locks from your side. I will not enter without invitation. Your time is your own when we have no obligations.*

*One request: if my grandfather asks about us, tell him the truth about what you see. He'll know if you invent things. Just describe what's in front of you.*

I read that last line twice.

*Tell him the truth about what you see.*

A curious instruction, for a man asking me to perform a lie.

I put the card in my bag.

The garden below was full of late-afternoon light. Someone was in it — an older man, moving slowly along the path between the beds, with the careful deliberateness of someone who knows exactly where things grow.

I watched him for a moment.

He stopped. Looked up at the house. I stepped back from the window.

Not fast enough.

He'd seen me. And he smiled — slow, specific, not the smile you give a stranger but the one you give someone you were expecting.

August Vale. Dying, Sebastian had said. Five months.

I pressed my back against the wall and thought: *you said tell him what's real.*

The problem was that I'd been here for twenty minutes and the only real thing I'd felt was something I hadn't expected.

I'd felt seen.

By a man I was deceiving.

This was going to be more complicated than page four.