21. CHAPTER 19
Léonie
If I saved a euro every time someone called me Madame Kade, I'd have funded my own escape by now.
“Good morning, Madame Kade.”
The first came from one of the groundsmen as I stepped out of the west wing corridor.
“Bonjour, Madame Kade.”
The second floated up from the maid polishing the banister.
“Breakfast is ready Madame Kade,” Isabella said as I reached the base of the stairs, her voice cheerful and sweet as always.
Madame Kade.
Madame Kade.
Madame Kade.
Two weeks, and the name still felt like a pair of expensive, beautiful, exquisitely crafted shoes a size too small, and blistering in all the places no one warned me about.
I walked into the dining room, the long polished table gleaming under the morning sunlight.
My place has stayed the same since I moved here.
At the opposite end of the table. The chair directly across from me stayed empty until dinner, when Orion returned from whatever world he ran outside these walls.
He was never present at breakfast. I always ate alone. He only came home for dinner, and we barely spoke—sometimes just a handful of words.
Honestly, silence suited me just fine.
Mrs. Lewis set down a cup of tea in front of me. “Good morning, Madame Kade.”
I smiled politely. A reflex, at this point. She left me with a bow, and I let my gaze travel across the room—the carved ceilings, the tall windows, the ivory curtains that shimmered when the breeze slipped through.
A gilded cage was still a cage. Even so, part of me preferred it to the chaos I came from—my mother’s constant managing and my family’s scrutiny.
I didn’t have to leave the house for my peace of mind. There were plenty of places to claim it here, though it always came with the uneasy feeling of being watched.
The first few days after the wedding, I barely left my room. My nerves were raw from the reality of it all—from waking up in an unfamiliar estate, inside a marriage I'd never wanted—and I needed time to adjust.
Mrs. Lewis had walked in one morning and insisted I toured the rooms in the wing at least. I indulged her.
She walked me through room after room. All mostly empty—huge spaces with plain white walls and very minimalist furniture. Spaces she claimed were all for me.
Finally she took me into a room, which was less of a room and more a walk-in closet.
A wide smile plastered on her face like an accomplishment.
“Mr. Kade had these prepared for you,” she’d said, opening the double doors with the reverence of revealing a shrine.
Rows and rows of dresses, sophisticated fabric of blouses, trousers in couture level tailoring—all in shades of ivory, cream, beige, sable, sand… I almost sighed. No single color in sight.
“Neutrals are timeless,” she added gently when she saw my face. “But if they’re not to your liking, we can arrange for the designer to send pieces in the colors you prefer.”
She had no idea neutrals were my rebellion.
At home, wearing anything muted colors was a declaration that I'm not bending myself to fit into your world anymore. Here… it felt as though Orion had secretly taken even that from me.
Is this what he liked?
I spent three days staring at that wardrobe, deciding exactly how much of myself I was willing to lose, and how much of myself I was willing to submerge. These were the real questions.
It would have been easy to rebel again, to do the exact opposite of what he expected, just to prove I wasn’t a thing he could control, or a puppet he could use. But in the end, I didn’t change a thing.
I’ll let him think he’d gotten it right about me. I’ll let him believe I was as simple to decode as a color palette.
He had no idea.
As days passed, the routine continued. Breakfast alone and dinner, always with him, like we were reenacting a cold nineteenth-century marriage.
He had impeccable table manners. The posture he assumed whenever he sat at the table was as precise as a king at a feast. Every movement was very deliberate, every gesture impeccably controlled.
Even the way he cut into his steak was meticulous, as if he were mid-negotiation for the rights to a small country. He barely spoke unless necessary, moving with the kind of practiced etiquette that suggested he’d been drilled in formal dining since he was old enough to hold a fork.
To him, it was a ceremony. To me, it was just dinner. Nothing was ever that serious.
What unnerved me the most was how he looked at me. Though not constantly, but when his eyes did land on me, I felt… inventoried. As though he was mapping my reactions, and filing them into a mental cabinet somewhere in his head… studying me without asking a single question.
And then there were all these things I noticed about him. Things that shouldn’t have concerned me in the first place, but I guess the word husband has a way of placing that responsibility on your shoulders.
Knowing the little things was solely for survival. The more I knew about him, the better my chances of navigating this minefield.
He liked a cup of tea after dinner. He took it without sugar, like a bitter old English aristocrat.
His morning began at 5:30AM, a time when I was still lost in my deepest dream cycles. By 6:15, he had finished his gym session, showered, and exited the estate. I, on the other hand, could barely function before seven.
He loathed noise. It didn’t matter how faint it was.
Once, a member of the kitchen staff dropped a spoon, and it clanked onto the marble floor.
Orion tensed as if he’d just lost a high-stakes legal battle and was watching his assets being seized.
It’s a good thing his skin is so tan; if he’d been any lighter, he surely would have reddened at the impact.
There was a ritual to his evenings. Before stepping into the dining room, he'd remove his cufflinks, tuck them into his pocket, and roll up his sleeves. Then he'd wash his hands before sitting to eat. Every single day.
And he hated lilies. I wasn’t sure what the white beauties had done to deserve such vitriol, but when his mother had a bouquet delivered to the wing, I had them placed in the foyer. The moment Orion spotted them, they were gone with a single, lethal glare.
Then his relationship with his mother… that’s a whole different story. I’d thought my mother and I had it bad. Orion could never keep a poker face with his mother around. He always tensed when she visited. The jaw ticks he tried to hide, and the breaths he drew to pretend he wasn’t affected.
And really, it wasn’t hard to see why. Esmé Kade had a smile that said she couldn’t wait to cut you.
Gabonese beauty with a Parisian glow. She wore diamonds that probably owned their own security detail around the property as if they were nothing.
Her demeanor and that harsh floral scent would tell anyone, she made no room for weakness.
She’d taken one long look at me and told me, with perfect politeness, what was expected of a Kade wife—duty, restraint, dignity, discretion.
In her words, “A Kade wife is not defined by warmth, dear. She is defined by composure. Staff should feel the boundary the moment you walk into a room. If they don’t, you need to reassess your conduct.”
She had words of advice for days and weeks to come. There was advice for every situation, from navigating society life to conducting myself on ordinary days when no one was watching. It was exhausting, to say the least.
Orion didn’t marry you to be the heart of this home. He married you to be the crown. And a crown that sits too low is eventually stepped on.
Orion this… Orion that.
Esmé ’s expectation were that I lived for Orion. That my every breathe and existence be reserved for Orion.
I tried my best not to roll my eyes at her list of necessary presumptions.
Her husband however, seeing him on his sick bed broke my chest open. His frail hands held mine, as if he knew me. He could barely form a word, and Orion became his interpreter, speaking every word his father meant to say to me.
He looked just like Orion, but pale-skinned with silver-grey hair scattered in a few places.
It was refreshing seeing Orion in that room. He was a different person when he was around his father. There was a hint of vulnerability in his eyes… and other things I deliberately chose not to dwell on. It was evident that his father occupied a place no one else did.
Henrik Kade was different from what I heard about him.
Maybe it was because he looked fragile from sickness, probably that dulled the edge everyone feared.
The Henrik Kade my father and brother feared and talked about was brutal in many ways.
I could feel the inherent authority in the room, but there was also a certain intimacy that eased the ache of being here in a way I hadn’t expected.
The library at the west wing became my favorite place—fast.
It was the only place I could breathe and let my hair down.
I discovered it on the fourth day, after wandering through the west corridor in search of somewhere that didn’t have house staff sprawling.
It instantly took my breath away.
Floor-to-ceiling shelves climbed the walls, dark wood lined with books in exact, beautiful rows. A rolling ladder clung to the rail system; I’d always wanted to climb one of those. The windows overlooked the back garden, letting in warm light whenever the weather cooperated.
And the books. Romance. Whole shelves of it.
Limited editions, signed copies, series in matching hardbacks.
Authors I loved and authors I’ve never heard of.
Historical, contemporary, angsty, scandalous, dark.
Far more than any city library had ever stocked for our neighbourhood.
I ran my fingers down some of the spines, and I felt seen in a way that unnerved me.
A sleek desk sat in one corner, with a new laptop and the newest version of my sketchpad set neatly on top.
“Monsieur Kade had this stocked for you,” Isabella said from the doorway, carrying a roll of dust cloths in her arms. “He said you like to read. Is that true, mademoiselle?”