Arthur cut his meat with slow, deliberate precision. "I find the theater tedious, Miss Clara. A room full of people pretending to be things they are not, watched by an audience doing exactly the same."
Silence crashed over the table. Lord Huntington choked on his wine. Lady Margaret gripped her fork so hard her knuckles turned white.
Norah took a slow sip of her water to hide her smirk. Oh, he is going to eat them alive.
"Well," Clara faltered, her smile straining, "I suppose that is one way to view it. But surely you appreciate the arts? Poetry?"
"I appreciate a well-constructed bridge," Arthur replied. "It serves a purpose. Poetry rarely keeps the rain out."
He wasn't being cruel, Norah realized. He was just aggressively literal. He was testing Clara, testing the limits of her conversational endurance.
Norah watched the footman, a local boy named Thomas whom they had hired just for the week. He was approaching Arthur with a heavy silver pitcher of wine. Norah noticed his hands were shaking; the pitcher was too heavy for him, and the angle was all wrong.
"Thomas," Norah said sharply, cutting across her father's desperate pivot to the topic of fox hunting.
The boy froze.
"Approach from the left, and support the base with your towel," she instructed, her tone calm but commanding.
Thomas blinked, adjusted his grip, and smoothly poured the Duke's wine without spilling a drop on the pristine white tablecloth. He shot Norah a look of pure relief and scurried back to the wall.
Arthur watched the exchange. He took a slow sip of the wine, his eyes, dark and assessing, fixed on Norah. "You manage the staff, Miss Norah?" he asked.
"Norah is a great help to her mother," Lord Huntington interjected loudly, terrified that the spotlight had shifted from the golden child. "But Clara is the heart of the home! Why, just yesterday she was arranging the most beautiful centerpieces—"
"I manage the staff, yes," Norah said, ignoring her father completely. She met Arthur's gaze across the flickering candlelight. "Someone has to."
"And the estate?" Arthur asked. "I noticed the eastern fields have been rotated to turnips—a smart choice for the soil quality here, though unusual for this county. Your steward is a forward-thinking man."
Lord Huntington opened his mouth, entirely blank. He didn't even know where the eastern fields were.
"We don't have a steward," Norah said flatly. "And it wasn't for the soil quality, Your Grace. It was because turnip seed was on discount in the village last autumn, and they yield a high volume for winter feed. Economics, not agronomy."
Arthur stopped cutting his meat. He set his knife down. He stared at her for a long, quiet moment.
"Economics," he repeated, rolling the word around as if tasting it.
"Norah reads too much!" Lady Margaret laughed, a high, brittle sound. "She fills her head with ledgers and dirt. Clara, tell His Grace about the tapestry you are weaving."
The conversation was violently wrenched back to Clara, who immediately launched into a rehearsed monologue about colored threads. Arthur turned his head to listen, but Norah noticed something: he wasn't looking at Clara. He was looking at the reflection in the silver candelabra. He was watching Norah casually scrape the rest of her untouched mutton onto a napkin to feed to the barn cats later.
Later that evening in the drawing room, the charade continued. Clara was seated at the pianoforte playing a complex sonata. She hit every note perfectly. It was flawless; it was boring.
Arthur stood by the fireplace, one arm resting on the mantel. He looked exhausted. The deep lines around his eyes were stark in the firelight. He shifted his weight, and Norah noticed a slight favoring of his right leg—an old injury.
She was sitting in the darkest corner of the room, ostensibly knitting, but actually doing complex division in her head regarding the winter coal supply.
When Clara finished, Lord and Lady Huntington erupted into applause. Arthur clapped twice.
"Beautiful," Arthur said. His voice was dead.
"Thank you, Your Grace," Clara beamed, flushing prettily.
"If you will excuse me," Arthur said, stepping away from the fire. "It has been a long journey. I bid you all a good night."
As he walked towards the door, he had to pass Norah's corner. He paused. The rest of the family was still fawning over Clara at the instrument, their backs turned. Arthur looked down at Norah. He noted the cheap yarn in her hands, the ink stain still visible on her index finger, and the defensive, rigid set of her shoulders.
"Turnips," he murmured so low only she could hear.
Norah glanced up. "Poetry," she whispered back mockingly.
A tiny, genuine smile touched the corner of Arthur's mouth. It changed his entire face, making him look suddenly younger, sharper. He didn't say another word. He just nodded once and walked out the door.
Norah stared after him, her knitting forgotten in her lap. For the first time in years, she felt a strange, unsettling flutter in her chest. Not romance—recognition.
Norah was awake before the sun. She had to be. She sat at the small table in the breakfast room, wrapped in a thick wool shawl. A single candle flickered beside her stack of ledgers. She had a mug of weak, lukewarm tea in one hand and her quill in the other. The silence of the house was a comfort; it was the only time she didn't have to listen to her mother's anxiety or her father's delusions.
The heavy oak door creaked open. Norah didn't look up. "Leave the toast on the sideboard, Mary. I'll get to it when I'm done."