Lawrence filed a legal challenge in the first week of May. Not through the arbitration committee—through a private firm, claiming that Ella's concurrent roles as housekeeper and countess violated an unwritten convention of noble marriage, and requesting the marriage be declared invalid.
The legal basis was thin. Thin didn't mean free. Thin meant several weeks of effort to counter, during which the arbitration proceedings could be complicated.
Ella read the filing, circled the three weakest points, and sent them to Evans with a note: These won't hold. But he's not trying to win—he's trying to delay. Evans would understand.
That evening she was working late, copying the final verification documents to be sent in the morning. The corridor lamp nearest her door had gone out. She was navigating by her own oil lamp when she felt, rather than heard, that someone was in the passage ahead.
"Raymond," she said, without altering her pace.
"Yes." He stepped out of the shadow of the pillar. He looked different from every other time she'd encountered him—not more threatening, but less armoured. There was something around the edges of his usual alertness that she could only call fatigue. Not the surface kind. The kind that came from a long time of doing a particular kind of work.
"You're not here because of a threat," she said.
"No." He fell into step beside her. "He's struggling. These last few weeks—Lawrence, the hunt, and now starting to talk to Elias properly for the first time. The pressure is coming from too many directions." He paused. "I come out when there's danger. I know what to do with danger. This is different."
She stopped and turned to face him.
"You don't know what to do with him being tired," she said.
"No." The admission was simple, undefended. From Raymond, it cost something.
"You don't have to do anything with it," she said. "Being there isn't the same as solving it. You can be present without having a function."
He looked at her for a moment with the flat, assessing gaze she had never quite gotten comfortable with, because it saw too accurately. "You say things like that," he said. "Things that aren't what people usually say."
"What do people usually say."
"They try to fix it. Or they leave." He paused. "You do neither."
"Leaving doesn't appeal to me," she said. "And fixing isn't always the right tool."
He was quiet for a moment. Then, with the same directness he brought to everything: "You're going to stay."
"I don't make very long plans," she said. "But I have no plans to leave."
"That's enough," he said. And then, surprising her—she hadn't known he was capable of being surprised herself, and she certainly hadn't expected to be surprised by him—he said: "Thank you."
Raymond. Saying thank you. She filed it carefully.
"Go sleep," she said.
Something shifted in his expression—fractional, but she caught it. He walked away down the corridor, and the quality of his step was marginally lighter than when he'd arrived, and she noticed that too.