Chapter Five
Isolde
By late afternoon, Isolde had decided that Northglass was not impossible to leave, which was a far more dangerous conclusion than deciding it was.
Impossible places encouraged resignation. Difficult places encouraged planning.
She had spent most of the day pretending she was doing neither.
The trick, she discovered, was not to move like someone searching for a way out.
People became suspicious of repetition, hesitation, and obvious interest in boundaries, so she made herself curious about everything instead.
She walked the south garden because the hydrangeas had gone brown with the season and the grounds crew had begun cutting them back.
She stopped near the east terrace to watch one of the gardeners replace loose stones along a retaining wall.
She asked a security man where the northern path led because the view looked better in that direction, then accepted his answer without pressing when he told her it circled toward an old carriage house before returning to the main drive.
When she crossed the same area later, she did it while carrying a book from the library and pausing often enough to read that it looked less like reconnaissance and more like an unwilling guest attempting to survive boredom.
The guards were harder than the house.
Cameras followed fixed angles. Men adapted.
Some of them were disciplined enough to tell her nothing.
Others, particularly the younger ones, relaxed after several ordinary conversations because Isolde didn't ask the kinds of questions a prisoner was expected to ask.
She didn't demand schedules or names. She asked whether the weather always came off the water that hard in autumn.
She asked whether the security dogs she had heard early that morning belonged to the estate or to one of the men.
She asked a guard named Nico whether the road beyond the outer gate flooded during storms because a section of the lower garden already held standing water.
Nico, who looked barely older than thirty and had a habit of shifting his weight off his right knee when he stood too long, glanced toward the clouds gathering offshore. “Sometimes near the lower bend. Not usually enough to close the road.”
“So you still get deliveries when it's bad?”
“Depends how bad.”
He took a drink from the paper cup in his hand, attention moving instinctively toward the drive when a vehicle passed beyond the trees.
Isolde looked at the same vehicle rather than at him. “I grew up inland. I still forget coastal weather turns this fast.”
“Give it an hour.”
“That reassuring?”
“No.”
His mouth moved faintly around the rim of the cup.
She smiled and continued walking.
It was almost absurd how useful normal conversation could be.
People protected secrets when they believed secrets were being requested. They were far less careful with habits.
Nico favored the right side when standing still and stepped away from his assigned position every few hours to smoke behind the stone maintenance shed.
Another guard, older and heavier through the middle, remained almost perfectly punctual during his rounds but slowed near the north lawn because the grade bothered his left knee.
A third spent too much time checking his phone whenever he was stationed near the service entrance.
None of those details created an escape route on their own, and Isolde wasn't foolish enough to believe one lazy guard or one badly positioned shrub could defeat an organization that had kidnapped her without masks and apparently interfered with a police response.
But every system depended on people.
People had habits.
Habits created gaps.
Near five, she found the first one that mattered.
The western service path curved behind a thick stand of evergreen shrubs before meeting a narrower walkway running toward the edge of the property.
The landscaping had grown unevenly around one of the exterior cameras, leaving several branches in the lower portion of its view. Isolde passed once and kept walking.
Twenty minutes later she returned from the opposite direction.
The obstruction was real.
Not complete enough to hide a person standing still, but possibly enough to distort movement along one section of path if weather reduced visibility further.
She didn't stop to inspect it.
Instead she continued toward the house and found Taddeo waiting on the lower terrace.
He had changed since the morning. The white shirt from his office had been replaced by a dark charcoal one with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, and his suit jacket was nowhere in sight.
He stood near the open terrace doors with one hand in his pocket and a phone in the other, listening to whoever spoke on the line while his attention remained fixed on Isolde.
She kept walking at the same pace.
Whatever Taddeo saw in her expression apparently satisfied him enough that he turned partly away and finished the call.
“No,” he murmured, stepping aside to let her enter before him. “Move the meeting to Thursday. I don't care what Bellini wants. If he wants the contract badly enough, he'll still want it Thursday.”
He listened while Isolde wiped damp soil from one boot against the mat.
“Then tell him that.”
Another pause.
“No, don't explain it more politely than that.”
He ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket.
Isolde glanced at him. “Good afternoon.”
“You've been busy.”
“I went for a walk.”
“Several.”
“The property is large.”
“So I've been told.”
She stepped past him into the warmth of the house. “If you'd rather I sit in my room staring at the wall, you should probably add it to your rules.”
“I don't.”
That made her slow.
Taddeo pulled the terrace door closed behind them and tested the latch automatically. “Walking isn't a problem.”
“As long as I do it where you allow.”
“As long as you don't make someone chase you through the woods.”
“I'll put that on my list of considerations.”
His gaze rested on her for a moment longer than necessary.
Then he walked toward the hall.
Isolde watched him go.
The rolled sleeves had exposed scars she hadn't seen before.
One crossed the inside of his right forearm near the elbow, pale against olive-toned skin.
Another, smaller mark sat near his wrist. They weren't dramatic enough to look ornamental or self-inflicted in any deliberate way, just the kind of old damage that suggested a history she couldn't easily place.
She disliked that she had noticed.
Dinner was worse.
Not because anything happened.
Because almost nothing did.
Elettra appeared at Isolde's door a little after seven and told her Taddeo was eating downstairs if she wanted dinner.
The phrasing was casual enough to make refusal feel childish, and Isolde had no intention of letting spite decide whether she ate.
She followed the sound of low conversation toward a smaller dining room off the kitchen and found Taddeo already seated at one end of a table intended for six rather than twenty, reading from a tablet beside his plate.
He looked up when she entered.
“You're joining me.”
“Elettra implied there was food.”
“That usually works.”
Isolde took the chair opposite him rather than the one beside him.
Elettra placed a bowl of roasted vegetables between them, then a plate of chicken, bread, and a bottle of wine. “If either of you needs anything else, ask.”
“You're leaving?” Isolde looked up.
“For the evening.”
Taddeo didn't lift his eyes from the tablet. “Drive carefully.”
“I've been driving longer than you've been giving orders.”
“I know.”
Elettra pointed at him with one finger. “That wasn't permission to agree with me.”
Then she looked at Isolde. “If he becomes unbearable, there's dessert in the kitchen.”
“Thank you.”
Taddeo waited until Elettra left before lowering the tablet. “You two are getting along.”
“She seems sane.”
“That explains why she stays out of most family business.”
Isolde served herself vegetables. “Does she know what you do?”
“Yes.”
“And stays anyway.”
“Yes.”
He said it without defensiveness.
That irritated her less than it had the first night.
They ate for several minutes with only the clink of silverware and the muted sound of rain beginning against the windows. The weather had worsened since she'd come inside, clouds pressing lower over the water, wind bending the trees along the terrace.
Taddeo tore a piece of bread in half. “What exactly do you do to old paper?”
Isolde looked up.
“That's your dinner conversation?”
“You'd prefer Corwin?”
“No.”
“Then old paper.”
She studied his face for any sign that he was mocking her.
There wasn't one.
“Depends what's wrong with it.”
“Assume it's damaged.”
“That narrows it down almost not at all.”
He reached for the wine. “Water damage.”
“You dry it properly, flatten distortions if they're severe, remove contaminants, stabilize tears, sometimes wash it if the media is stable enough. It depends on what caused the water exposure and what happened afterward.”
Taddeo poured wine into his glass but didn't offer her any until she nudged hers slightly forward.
He filled it.
“People pay you to do that.”
“Yes.”
“With documents they probably never read.”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
Isolde cut into the chicken, considering the question. “Because value isn't always about use.”
“What is it about?”
“History. Rarity. Sentiment. Information. Sometimes money, obviously.”
“Does repairing something increase its value?”
“Sometimes it preserves value. Sometimes bad restoration reduces it.”
He leaned back slightly. “Because people can tell it's been repaired?”
“Not exactly.”
She set down her fork.
This was familiar territory, and she discovered that explaining it to him was easier than trying to understand why he cared.
“The goal isn't usually to make damage disappear,” she continued. “That's more restoration than conservation, and even then you have to be careful. If an object has survived a hundred years, the damage becomes part of its history. You don't erase that just because you find it ugly.”