"You are a terrifying creature, Clara," Arthur murmured, his voice dropping to a rough whisper. "I'm beginning to pity the men who cross us."
"Us?" Clara noted, her voice trembling slightly. "You said 'us.'"
"I did." Arthur's grip on her hand tightened a fraction—a solid, unyielding anchor. "This is not my war anymore. It is ours. Draft the letter."
Frost crept over the windowpanes of Ashbourne House, thick and suffocating, locking the warmth of the study inside. For three weeks, Clara lived a double life that frayed her nerves to a ragged edge. By dawn, she hauled coal and scrubbed the ash from the grates under the hawkish gaze of Mrs. Gable. By noon, she slipped through the heavy oak door of the library and became the architect of a duke's revenge.
The letter to Sweden had been dispatched. The waiting was a brutal, scraping thing.
Clara sat at the massive desk, her fingers cramped and stained blue with ink. She was cross-referencing a stack of Prussian manifests, hunting for any sign that Lord Westfall had discovered their Baltic gambit. Her back ached. Her eyes burned from the dim gaslight.
Arthur sat in the leather wingback chair near the fire, reviewing a ledger. The silence between them had changed over the weeks: it was no longer the heavy, cautious silence of a master and a servant; it was the synchronized quiet of two soldiers sharing a trench. He knew she took her tea black because she was used to bitter things. She knew the jagged scar on his brow ached when the barometric pressure dropped, though he never complained.
A sharp knock at the door shattered the quiet. Clara immediately dropped her pen. She scrambled out of the chair, moving to the corner of the room, clasping her hands in front of her apron and dropping her chin. The transformation was instantaneous: she became invisible.
Arthur's jaw tightened at the sight of it. He hated the performance, though he knew it was necessary. "Enter!" he barked.
His valet, a thin, deeply cynical man named Thomas, stepped into the room carrying a silver salver. Resting on the polished metal was a single letter sealed in heavy, pale blue wax. The seal bore the crest of a rampant lion.
"Arrived by private courier, Your Grace," Thomas said, his eyes firmly fixed on the wall above Arthur's head.
Arthur picked up the letter. "Leave us."
The door clicked shut. Clara did not move until Arthur broke the wax. The sound was a sharp snap in the quiet room. He unfolded the heavy vellum, his eyes scanning the elegant, sprawling script. He could not read the Swedish words, but he recognized the signature at the bottom.