"The Baltic Sea," Clara said without hesitation. She traced a line with her ink-stained finger up through the North Sea and toward the Swedish coast. "Timber and iron. The demand in London is skyrocketing with the new railway expansions. If you can secure exclusive timber rights in Stockholm, Westfall's Spanish silk and spices won't matter. You will control the raw materials building this country."
Arthur turned his head. His face was mere inches from hers. The intensity in his dark eyes was staggering. He wasn't just listening to her; he was absorbing her mind, matching her intellect blow for blow. It was an intoxicating, dangerous dynamic.
"The Swedish guilds are notoriously xenophobic," Arthur murmured, his gaze dropping briefly to her lips before snapping back to her eyes. "They refuse English envoys. They only deal through Prussian intermediaries. And those intermediaries take a forty percent cut."
Clara didn't back down from his gaze. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, caged bird. "Then we don't send an English envoy. We bypass the Prussians entirely."
She stepped away from the desk, moving toward a towering stack of ledgers. She pulled a leather-bound book from the bottom, blowing a layer of dust off the cover, and dropped it on the map.
"Two years ago, a minor Swedish noble named Lord Janson lost a heavily uninsured cargo ship in a storm off the coast of Dover," Clara explained rapidly, flipping through the pages. "Your harbormaster pulled his surviving crew from the water and housed them at your expense. Janson is a man obsessed with honor and debts. He is also the cousin of the Swedish Minister of Trade."
Arthur stood straight. A slow, predatory smile touched the corners of his mouth. It was a terrifying expression, one that suited the jagged scar perfectly. "You want me to call in a life debt."
"I want you to write him a letter," Clara corrected, tapping the ledger. "In perfect archaic Swedish—a dialect so formal and respectful it proves you are not the uncultured English brute society claims you are. You remind him of the men you saved, and you ask for a private audience regarding timber."
Arthur stared at her. The silence in the study hummed with electricity. He walked slowly around the edge of the desk until he was standing directly in front of her. The physical difference between them was stark: he was a mountain of muscle and tailored wool; she was a slender woman in severe black bombazine. Yet in this room, they were absolute equals.
"And how exactly am I going to write a letter in archaic Swedish?" Arthur asked softly.
"I will dictate it," Clara said, forcing her voice to remain steady. "You will copy it in your own hand. If they see a secretary's script, they will dismiss it as a calculated diplomatic move. If they see the Duke's own handwriting, errors and all, it becomes personal."
Arthur reached out, his large hand gently closing over hers, halting her nervous tapping on the ledger. His thumb brushed over a smudge of blue ink on her knuckle. The touch was entirely inappropriate: it was intimate, quiet, and profoundly heavy.
Clara stopped breathing. She should pull away. The housekeeper, Mrs. Gable, was already suspicious of the hours Clara spent locked in this room. If anyone saw this, she would be ruined. But her legs felt made of lead; she didn't want to move. For four years, she had been invisible. Now this man saw every sharp, broken piece of her, and he wasn't looking away.