He came at ten in the morning, when Damien was at the corporate tower, and Mrs. Aldren brought us tea in the garden room without being asked and then made herself absent with the tact of someone who understood that some conversations needed walls around them.
Callum sat across from me with his hands around his mug and his face carrying the particular expression of a man who has been preparing what to say and has now arrived at the moment of saying it and found it harder than the preparation suggested.
“Nadia approached me,” he said. “Four months ago. Before I came to the estate.”
I said nothing. Waited.
“She knew about my history with the Hargroves. She knew I had reasons to want Damien’s arrangements disrupted.” He looked at his hands. “She came to me with information about the marria
