Morning light warmed the study walls while Cass skimmed messages with coffee in hand. The dean's office had confirmed an early meeting. The editor sent a polite reminder. Rowena left a single line that made him smile.
'Practice later. Bring trouble.'
He set the cup down and gathered the papers for his meeting. The Vale Scholarship Trust would not be a headline. It would be an engine.
They ate quickly in the smaller dining room. Toast, eggs, fruit, calm.
Cass smiled. "You are learning the sport."
They ate quickly in the smaller dining room. Toast, eggs, fruit, calm. Cass kissed his mother's temple and clapped his father's shoulder, then took the Jaguar into a city that was already learning to yield.
The university's old buildings held their usual calm, stone faces pretending to be indifferent to anything new. Cass crossed the quad and nodded to students who tried not to stare. The secretary outside the dean's office stood as he approached, then seated him without the usual fuss. The door opened with a soft click.
The dean rose from behind a broad desk. He was the sort of man whose respect cost effort and whose smile meant he had counted correctly.
"Mr Vale," he said. "You have created quite a discussion."
"I prefer results," Cass said.
They sat. Cass laid out the trust documents with unhurried precision. Endowment size. Matching clause. Independent trustee. Ethical screens. A student advisory board chaired by Sienna Reed, with senior oversight to prevent theatre from replacing work.
"We will begin with one million," Cass said. "If the university matches, I double. If an outside donor matches again, I double once more. No donor control over recipients. Anonymised applications. Need and excellence weighed together."
The dean's eyes sharpened.
"You want the halo effect," he said. "Without the usual strings."
"I want velocity," Cass said. "Talent that is starving today should be performing next term. And I want our students to stop mistaking loud voices for real outcomes."
The dean leaned back, fingers steepled.
"The trustee," he said. "You recommend a name."
"Margaret Hales," Cass said. "Retired from the Charity Commission. No patience for nonsense. Loves rules because they protect the quiet."
The dean smiled for the first time.
"You did your homework," he said.
"I do my work," Cass said.
They discussed governance until the clock forgot to move. When they stood, the dean extended his hand with clear intent.
"This is not a donation," he said. "It is an institution."
"It is a beginning," Cass said.
[Quest Complete: Establish the Vale Scholarship Trust]
[Reward: £10,000,000 grant credit for philanthropic use. Skill Unlocked: Philanthropy Lv.1. Perk: Institutional Weight.]
[Institutional Weight: Public bodies and universities treat your proposals as baseline credible. Red tape reduced. Doors open.]
Cass felt the shift like a hum through the floorboards. Processes that usually dragged would now walk to meet him.
The dean cleared his throat.
"May I ask a personal question?" he said.
"You may," Cass said.
"Why now?" the dean asked. "Why here?"
"Because I remember hunger," Cass said. "And because I dislike waste."
The dean nodded once, a man who had run out of reasons to argue and discovered he did not mind.
Cass left the office with the trustee's number already queued. Margaret Hales answered on the third ring, her voice brisk and dry. By the time he reached the courtyard, she had agreed to meet that afternoon and had emailed a list of demands that made him like her more.
Rowena waited by the steps, hair caught in a ribbon, eyes bright.
"How was your meeting?" she asked.
"Productive," Cass said. "Trustee secured by three if she likes my face. She will."
Rowena fell into step beside him.
"You have the editor later," she said.
"At the mansion," Cass said. "He gets one hour and three rooms, and he will not write to my parents without their permission."
Rowena laughed softly.
"You are a tyrant with boundaries," she said.
"I am efficient with kindness," Cass said.
They crossed the quad, moving through murmurs that felt different now. Admiration had weight. Envy had found new targets.
Sienna walked quickly past with a folder thick with drafts. She avoided looking at them. That was the best detail.
At the gate, Rowena touched his sleeve.
"Will you come to rehearsal after the interview?" she asked.
"I will bring you a piano," Cass said.
She blinked. "What?"
"You heard me," he said, and left her laughing to tell herself he could not possibly mean it.
The Jaguar carried him back to the mansion with the quiet promise of a machine that had never needed to prove itself. The editor arrived on time, which pleased Cass, and did not bring a photographer with opinions, which pleased him more.
They began in the conservatory among white orchids and clean light.
"Not a puff piece," the editor said. "A profile. Where did you come from? Where are you intending to go?"
"I came from a house that was honest and overlooked," Cass said. "I am going to a place where that combination is impossible."
They walked through the gallery where two new canvases hung. The editor tried to name them and stopped before guessing wrong.
In the music room, Cass paused by the piano and let his fingers land once, a single chord that settled in the air and made the man forget his next question.
"Who are you when you are not performing?" the editor asked.
"I am always performing," Cass said. "Good manners are a performance that makes everyone comfortable. Power is a performance that makes everyone efficient."
"And kindness," the editor asked.
"Kindness is the performance that makes a room worth owning," Cass said.
They ended in the small sitting room where photographs from the old house sat proudly on the mantel. The editor looked at them a long time and understood without being told that the story would have been written differently if these frames had been missing.
"One last question," he said. "What should my readers call this moment you are in?"
"Chapter one," Cass said.
The editor smiled and closed his notebook. He left with the expression of a man who had not expected to like what he had found and did not mind being corrected.
Cass checked his watch. Enough time to meet Margaret Hales at a quiet legal office near Lincoln's Inn. She met him with a handshake that measured and passed him. Her questions were sharp and unadorned. Cass answered with structure and fewer adjectives than usual. When he finished, she nodded once.
"You will try to go too fast," she said.
"I will go as fast as integrity allows," Cass said.
"That is still too fast for some," she said.
"Then I will choose different partners," Cass said.
Her eyes warmed at the edges.
"Fine," she said. "I will sign."
They parted with a sense that neither would waste the other's time. The trust had a spine now and a guardian who liked rules because they kept the wrong kind of people out.