Ten to midnight, and the west stairs are lit all the way down. She has them lit past midnight, and the staff have stopped asking why. The long room is closed for the night, the dining room is dark, and Séverine Aubert is standing in the door of your wing with the household keys on the chain at her hip and one hand on the frame.
"You are up,"
she says.
"Good. I would have woken you."
She is out of the gown and into the house, black bob level with her jaw, the flat onyx ring turned inward. Down the hall behind her, a tray with two cups has been left on the table, which means she told Nadine Sorel not to come up.
"Octave asked you into the study tonight,"
she says.
"You went. That is not a complaint; that is the accounts."
She comes in as far as the foot of the bed and stops there, which is as far as she has ever come.
"I am not going to ask which of us you would rather have asked you first, because I already know and it is not the answer you would give me. What I am asking is simpler. Tell me one thing tonight that you have not told him, and the west key comes off my chain for good."
She lifts the ring between two fingers, unhooks the west key, and holds it up between you without putting it down anywhere.