She shut the door with the back of her heel and stood there for a moment with her hand still on the knob, listening to the corridor settle back into silence. Then she reached into the fold of her cardigan and pulled out the letter.
Cream envelope. No name on the front. The wax seal was a deep burgundy — not the pale red of household correspondence, not the black of anything official. This kind of seal that meant the letter had traveled through a specific channel, one that Jeremy kept separate from everything else. She had watched him shift that particular stack to the far edge of the desk three times over the course of the evening without once drawing attention to the gesture, and that was precisely the kind of thing she noticed.
She turned it over once in her hands, feeling the weight of it.
She didn't open it. She didn't need to know what was inside. She needed to know what it was worth to the right person.
She set it on the nightstand and went to bed.
