table. Shelves rose into shadow along every wall. Rain beat softly against the tall windows. Clara sat in a leather chair near the hearth, a book open in her lap, though she was not reading when he entered. She looked up, and for the first time since he had met her, surprise moved clearly across her face. It vanished almost at once. "Your Grace," she said. "Lady Clara, this is unwise." "Yes," Arthur said. She closed the book. "Then why are you here?" He stepped inside and shut the door behind him, though not fully. He left it open by an inch, a small mercy to propriety that changed little and meant everything. "I could not sleep." "Nor could I." "That is not an answer." "It is the only one I have that is simple." He crossed to the mantel and stood with one arm resting against it. The room should have soothed him. Books had always been easier than people, and firelight was kinder than chandeliers. But with Clara watching him, he felt more exposed than he had in the ballroom. "You were right," he said. "About what?" "The garden. The shears. The fear of what might grow without permission." Her expression softened, though not with satisfaction. "I was speaking of hedges." "No, you were not." Clara looked down at the book in her lap. "Perhaps not entirely." Arthur let out a breath and reached for the smooth, bitter voice he used when feeling too much was dangerous. "It is charming in a young lady to speak of freedom when she has never had to keep a dukedom solvent, settle tenants' disputes, answer creditors, preserve a family name, and marry with a hundred dead ancestors leaning over her shoulder. One can afford sincerity when the cost is only being thought odd. The words came sharper than he meant them to.
He knew it as soon as Clara's fingers stilled on the book cover. She could have been wounded. She could have defended herself. She could have reminded him that she had not asked him to come.
Instead, she looked at him with an almost painful calm. "There he is," she said. Arthur frowned. "I beg your pardon?"
"The duke who enters the room when the man is frightened." The sentence struck him with such precision that he turned away from her. Clara stood, setting the book aside. "You need not perform for me, Arthur."
His Christian name, spoken so quietly in the small hours of the morning, went through him with more force than any accusation. "I am not performing," he said, but the denial had no strength. "You are," she said. "You are making yourself harder than you