Four hours in a carriage.
Noel had fallen asleep somewhere around the second hour and woken up to Elodie poking his cheek with one finger, announcing that they had arrived.
He climbed out and looked up.
His jaw dropped.
It wasn't a mansion in the old-money sense — no stone columns, no iron gates, no the-aristocracy-has-lived-here-for-two-hundred-years energy. It was something else entirely. Clean lines. Large windows. Proportions that felt deliberate rather than inherited. It looked like someone had decided what a house should be and then built exactly that, without asking anyone's permission about the style.
He pointed at it.
"Who—"
"One of ours," Elodie said, already walking toward the entrance. "An Architect, she designed it herself." She glanced back at him. "Quite different from all those old dark houses you've been living in, right?"
Noel closed his mouth.
"Right," he said.
