Eleanor's expression sharpened. "How?"
He turned. "It is my name on the gates."
"Names do not grant omniscience."
"No, they grant responsibility."
Something in her face softened, almost against her will. Nathaniel lowered his voice.
"You expected me to defend myself."
"Most powerful men do."
"You have considerable experience correcting powerful men."
"Only the ones who require it."
He laughed then, quietly, and Eleanor stared at him as though the sound had surprised her. The shared silence afterward felt different: warmer, more dangerous.
Nathaniel came back to the table. "Why did you stay at Blackmir after Mercer ignored you, after I failed to answer? You could have let the consequences belong to us."
Eleanor traced the worn edge of one ledger. "Consequences are rarely courteous enough to fall only on the guilty." Her voice lowered. "My father died owing rent after two bad harvests. I remember men discussing his debt while my mother was still choosing his burial clothes. I learned early that an estate can survive numbers that destroy a family."
Nathaniel's hand rested on the table between them, inches from hers. He did not move it closer.
"Eleanor."
It was the first time he had used her given name. Her breath caught so faintly he might have imagined it.
Before either could speak again, the library door opened. Samuel entered, carrying a narrow wooden cash box.
"Your Grace, I found this behind the old contract files."
He set it down. Inside were receipts, canceled drafts, and several unopened letters. Eleanor went still. Nathaniel recognized her handwriting before he touched them: four envelopes, all addressed to him, all bearing Blackmir's seal across the back, not a postal mark. Someone inside his own house had intercepted them.
Samuel lifted one final document from beneath the letters. "There is something else."
Nathaniel unfolded it. His eyes moved down the page, then stopped. Eleanor watched the color leave his face.
"What?" she asked.
Nathaniel looked at the signature at the bottom. "A payment authorization for five hundred pounds."
"To whom?"
He raised his eyes to hers. "To your father."
Eleanor did not reach for the paper. "My father never received five hundred pounds from Blackmir."
Nathaniel watched her face. No calculation appeared there. No hurried defense. Only a slow hardening around her mouth.
Samuel shifted beside the table. "The authorization bears Henry Reed's name, miss."
"My father died owing thirty-seven pounds in rent." Her voice stayed level. "If he possessed five hundred, he chose a remarkably elaborate method of concealing prosperity."
Nathaniel lowered his eyes to the document. "The payment was issued four years ago, three months before his death."
"Then find the corresponding draft."
Samuel moved immediately to the cash box. Eleanor looked at Nathaniel.
"You hesitated."
Two words, quietly spoken. They struck harder than anger.
"I was reading the document."
"You were looking at me."
The fire shifted behind them with a soft collapse of burning wood. Nathaniel could have denied it. Instead, he set the authorization down.