He did not have long to sit with them. The door opened without a knock, and Beatrice swept in, still in her evening gown, her color high. The news had reached her, as such news always did, through the whispering chain of servants before the girl had even left the corridor.
"Tell me it is not true," she said. "Tell me you have not made that wretched creature your assistant!"
"I have," Arthur said.
"You cannot be serious!" Beatrice's voice climbed. "She ruined my gown before half the county! She stood there in her rags and shamed this house! And your answer is to raise her above every honest servant we keep—to set her at your elbow with your private papers?!"
"Private papers are my concern."
"It is an insult to me!" she said, trembling now with anger. "You did this to spite me! The whole summit will be laughing by breakfast: the Duke who promotes the maid that humiliated his wife!"
"No one humiliated you, Beatrice. You did that yourself in front of the guests." He kept his voice level. "The matter is settled. The girl begins in the morning."
For a moment, Beatrice could not speak at all. Then her eyes narrowed to bright, cold slits.
"Settled," she repeated softly. "We shall see how settled it is."
She turned and left, and the door fell shut behind her. But the threat hung in the room long after, sharp as a drawn blade in the candlelight.
The city archives stood behind a row of gray columns: a vast hall of cold stone where the records of the counties slept beneath dust and lamplight.