"Lady Rosalind, these—there are more of them again..."
Morning in the office. Anna, Rosalind's secretary, dumped an armful of letters onto the corner of the desk, far more than she could hold.
The sealing wax made a neat row of colors. Crimson, ultramarine, spring green, silver, gold. Every one bore the crest of some royal house, gleaming in the morning light.
Rosalind looked up from a half-finished column on her balance sheet and glanced at the little mountain.
"...My. How lively."
"It's not a question of lively, it's, um, you see—"
Anna's voice cracked.
Rosalind set down her quill and picked up the letter on top.
She broke the seal and ran her eyes over the flowing script.
"From His Highness the Second Prince of the Kingdom of Clarc. A proposal for lifelong economic cooperation—"
"L-Lady Rosalind—"
"Yes, a request that we invest long-term in his country's harbor construction, I take it."
Rosalind promptly drew her financial tables toward her and began calculating, in her head, the Kingdom of Clarc's revenue structure and its payback period.
"Clarc relies chiefly on mineral resources and textiles. For a long-term investment, we'll want a cap on the investment ratio, the payback period, and a clause on sharing exchange-rate risk... Anna, a sheet of paper for the minutes, please."
"No, um, that one—it isn't about investment, you see—"
"Pardon?"
Rosalind knitted her brows dubiously and checked the end of the letter.
"'I ardently desire a lifelong contract with you'—yes, a stock phrase to show commitment to a long-term contract. I saw the same wording among the merchant houses back home. Nothing wrong with it."
"There is something wrong with it."
Anna sounded very nearly in tears.
Rosalind blinked and tilted her head.
"Oh dear. Have I misread something?"
"No, it's, how shall I put this..."
Anna opened her mouth to go on.
She opened it—and then, noticing the gaze of the other person seated at the desk at the back of the office, shut it tight.
Lucas had not lifted his eyes from his papers.
His pen tip, however, had stopped.
A gaze like a blade of thin ice was pressing silently against Anna's back.
—Quiet.
She felt as if she had heard it, and Anna quietly caught her breath.
"...No, it's nothing at all. Your reading of it is, yes, probably, quite correct, Lady Rosalind."
"Correct, is it?"
"It is, it is, quite correct."
"Well, if it's correct, then very good."
Rosalind nodded easily and drew the paper toward her.
"Then let's begin with the figures for Clarc. As a precondition for long-term investment, the fiscal structures of both countries..."
Scritch. The quill began to move.
Behind her, Lucas quietly rose to his feet.
Lucas reached for the pile at the corner of the desk.
One letter from the top.
"—I'll review this."
"Ah, Your Grace, that one—"
Without waiting for Anna to finish, he slid the letter into his own desk drawer. The click of a lock.
The second.
"I'll handle this."
He walked over to the fireplace and set it, unopened, on the small table beside it.
The third.
Without hesitation, he tossed it into the fire.
The wax cracked with a snap, and the paper curled, turned the color of blue flame, and burned away.
Anna pretended not to see.
The fourth, the fifth, the sixth.
His handling varied with the sender on the envelope. Into the drawer, onto the side table, into the fireplace. One in every three vanished into the flames.
Absorbed in her balance sheet, Rosalind gave the briefest twitch of her nose at the smell of burning paper.
"Your Grace, the fireplace—it's smoking."
"Clearing out old papers."
"I see. I'm much obliged to you for taking these matters off my hands when you're so busy," Rosalind said, with gratitude from the very bottom of her heart.
(Your Grace has his own work to attend to, and yet he's even sorting misdirected mail for me. What a thoroughly attentive superior.)
Her pen began to move again.
In front of the fireplace, Lucas's hand stopped for just a moment.
With trembling fingers, Anna picked up the last letter remaining on the desk.
She was about to check the sender's seal—when Lucas, sensing it, reached over from the side and took the envelope from her.
Ordinarily, he would have thrown it straight into the fire.
But Lucas's fingers stopped over the sender's name.
His brows moved, just slightly.
The crest on the seal belonged to a certain royal house across the strait. It was the family crest of a man he had faced in person at the diplomatic table only once before.
Lucas did not burn the envelope.
He did not put it in the drawer, nor set it on the side table.
He slipped it, without a word, into the inner pocket of his coat.
Then, in a very low voice, he murmured as if to himself.
"—This one will come in person, I expect."
Anna pretended not to hear.
And while pretending not to hear, she let out a deep sigh inside.
(Lady Rosalind, Lady Rosalind. The very fact that there's a sender His Grace takes in hand himself is, well, it's, you see...)
(No, never mind. I won't say a word.)
(If I did, I'd probably be the one thrown into the fireplace.)
"Anna, the next item."
Rosalind looked up, drawing a large circle on the first page of her balance sheet.
"I've finished a rough draft for the long-term investment in Clarc. Your Grace, might I have some of your time this afternoon?"
"No," Lucas answered at once.
"We will pass on investing in Clarc."
"Oh? Why?"
"The returns wouldn't justify the investment."
His voice was short, the same as always.
Satisfied, Rosalind set down her pen.
"Understood. Then I'll keep the investment figures for Clarc on file, just in case. They may prove useful someday."
(Though another proposal may well arrive before the day is out. A third one came in a little while ago, after all. —No, wait, I believe His Grace dealt with that one.)
Rosalind wrote only "Clarc: On hold" on her balance sheet.
Just beyond the tip of her pen, Lucas put a hand to his inner pocket and touched the corner of the envelope with his fingertips, once.
The morning light stretched long across the office floor.
Word of a visitor would arrive that same afternoon.