Clara picked up the top letter. The parchment was thick, the ink a faded sepia. She scanned the elegant, looping script. Her father had been a wretched drunk, but he had beaten the syntax of six languages into her head with terrifying precision.
"Your translator is either a fool or a coward," Clara said after a minute. She didn't look up, her eyes moving rapidly down the page. "They are not agreeing to your terms. They are politely stalling. This entire second paragraph is a formal Spanish colloquialism used to delay action while negotiating with a better bidder."
Arthur stopped writing. He slowly raised his head. "Who is the better bidder?"
"They don't name him directly." Clara set the paper down and picked up the next one. "But they mention a 'lord of deep waters.' It is a poetic flourish, but likely a reference to someone with naval dominance. Lord Westfall, perhaps."
Arthur leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked loudly in the quiet room. "Westfall. The man practically owns the southern docks. If he outbids me in Cadiz, half my merchant fleet rots in the harbor by winter." He looked at her, his dark eyes unreadable. "How quickly can you draft a response in their exact regional dialect? Something that implies I know about Westfall, but without making a direct accusation."
"Ten minutes," Clara replied flatly. "If you provide the ink."
Arthur slid an inkwell and a silver pen toward her.
For the next three hours, the only sounds in the library were the scratch of Clara's nib against paper, the ticking of the grandfather clock, and the occasional harsh sigh from the Duke. She worked with brutal efficiency: French demands for textile tariffs, German disputes over land boundaries in Prussia, a furious Italian letter regarding a broken engagement between distant cousins. Clara tore through them all. She stripped away the flowery diplomatic prose and handed Arthur the raw, bleeding truth of each correspondence.
He did not thank her. He absorbed the information like a commander receiving battlefield reports.
When the clock struck four, Arthur stood. He poured a small glass of water from a pitcher and set it on the desk near her. It was a tiny gesture, but in the rigid hierarchy of Ashbourne House, it was an earthquake.
"There is a gathering tonight," Arthur said, turning to stare out the window at the fog. "Lord Westfall is hosting a card game at his townhouse in Mayfair. The French envoy will be there alongside several men who dictate the flow of wealth in this city. They invite me because my title demands it, but they play me for a fool. They speak in French when they want to humiliate me, and they speak in Spanish when they want to rob me."
Clara stopped writing. She carefully wiped the nib of the pen on a cloth. "And you want me there?"
"You will accompany my valet as staff," Arthur said, turning back to face her. The shadows of the room clung to his broad shoulders. "You will serve drinks at my table. If they discuss my ships or Westfall's bids in Cadiz, you will tell me."
"And how do you suggest I do that without speaking, Your Grace? A maid whispering in a duke's ear during a high-stakes card game will draw every eye in the room."