_Rowena’s POV_
I had been awake for thirty-six hours when Celeste sat down across from me.
She looked at the laptop, at the open account ledgers spread across the desk, at the three empty tea cups lined up along the edge, and at me, and she did the specific thing Celeste did when she had an opinion she was choosing to deliver carefully.
She poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Velvet had refreshed an hour ago, sat down, and said nothing for a full minute.
“You burst into her room at two-thirty in the morning,” she said finally.
“I had reason.”
“You had suspicion,” she said. “Which is different. And now Alice is downstairs telling my grandmother that you chased a man onto the roof and accused her of embezzlement without a single piece of paper to show for it.”
“Sh
