//CLARA//
It was a 50-Shades of Gray kind of morning, the sky heavy with the threat of a downpour. I watched the clouds gather, feeling the weight of the Thurston na sitting like lead in my stomach.
Downstairs, the dining room felt like a courtroom.
Casimir didn’t say a word when I walked in, but I felt him. His gaze pinned to as I moved toward the sideboard. I sat across from him, the steam from my tea acting as a pathetic little smoke screen between us. I wasn’t thirsty. I was just trying to rember how to breathe without looking suspicious.
"You are quiet this morning," he said.
"I am thinking about the factory."
He folded his newspaper and set it aside. "Have you found a location yet?"
"Not yet. Oliver is looking at a few sites near the waterfront. We need space for assembly lines, storage, and shipping docks."
"And the manufacturers? Have you found soone to build the machines at scale?"
I studied his face, looking for anything—a flicker, a crack, a tell. There was nothing. His expression was smooth as glass, his voice even.
"Oliver is handling the technical side. I am handling the business." I picked up my tea, set it down again. "You know this."
He held my gaze for a mont. Then he nodded slowly and picked up his newspaper.
"I am glad," he said, "that you are so occupied."
I did not know if he believed . I was not sure I believed myself. The words felt hollow on my tongue.
I watched him closely. The morning light caught the edge of his jaw, the line of his throat.
He looked like a man without a single secret. If I had not known better, I would have believed it. If I hadn’t heard the suicide talk, I’d be thinking about how much I wanted to kiss that jawline instead of wondering if he used it to bite the heads off his competitors.
He raised an eyebrow, looking at through his newspapers. "What?"
"Nothing." I smiled. "Just tired."
He held my gaze for a mont longer than necessary.
I reached for my tea again and let the silence settle between us. But my mind was still turning, still digging for information I had no idea how to find.
Slipping out of the mansion had beco sothing of an art form.
Unlike the first ti, when I had crept through the garden gate in my finest silk like an idiot who had never heard of discretion, I was prepared now. I had asked Hattie for sothing frivolous—a dress that would not turn heads, plain and unremarkable that a shopgirl might wear. She had looked at strangely but produced a gray cotton thing that slled faintly of lavender.
The hat was my own addition. Ridiculously oversized, the kind of thing a wealthy widow might wear to a funeral she was secretly enjoying.
I had found it buried in the back of Eleanor’s wardrobe, and I had fallen in love with it imdiately. The rounded sunglasses were a lucky find—dark tinted glass in wire fras, it might have been fashionable five years ago and now simply looked absurd, especially on a day when the sun had not shown its face once.
I knew I looked ridiculous. But that was the point. No one would look twice at a woman dressed like a eccentric aunt who had lost her way. They certainly would not connect her to Eleanor Thorne.
I walked out the servants’ entrance like I belonged there. No one stopped . No one even looked twice.
Mr. Cromwell’s office was a narrow room above a bakery, the air thick with the sll of bread and old paper.
He did not recognize when I walked in.
"Good morning, madam," he said, rising from his desk with the practiced ease of a man who greeted strangers all day. "How may I be of—"
I took off the sunglasses. Then the hat.
He stopped mid-sentence. His mouth hung open. His pen slipped from his fingers and clattered against the desk.
"Miss Thorne," he stamred, his face draining of color. "I did not—that is, I was not expecting—"
"I know."
I settled into the chair across from his desk, arranging my gray cotton skirts. His eyes followed the movent, traveling from the ridiculous hat to the plain fabric to the scuffed boots I secretly took from Hattie. He looked like a man watching a cat walk on its hind legs. Confused. Alard. Already certain that trouble had just walked through his door.
"Miss Thorne," he finally recovered, lowering his voice as if we were conspiring. "What is this about? Why are you dressed like—" He gestured vaguely at my entire appearance. "Like that?"
"I need information," I said. "And I would prefer that no one knows I am the one asking for it."
He leaned back in his chair, his face settling into the expression of a man who had just realized he was about to be dragged into sothing he wanted no part of.
"I am not sure I can help you, Miss Thorne."
"You can." I folded my hands on my lap. "I am not asking you to do anything illegal. I am asking you to tell where I can find old business records. Newspaper archives. Anything related to a company called Thurston Holdings."
His frown deepened. "Thurston? That is an old na. They went under years ago."
"I know. That is why I am asking."
He stared at for a long mont. Then his gaze traveled back to my dress. Then he shook his head slowly, as if mourning sothing.
"You look like a frustrated spy who has already failed at her mission," he said.
I laughed. "That is the nicest thing anyone has said to all week."
He did not laugh. He fidgeted with his pen, his fingers trembling slightly.
"Miss Thorne, if Mr. Guggenheim were to discover that I had directed you to such a place—"
"Your head on a pike. Yes. I know."
"It is not a jest, Miss Thorne."
"I am not jesting." I held his gaze. "Mr. Guggenheim will not be discovering anything. Because you are going to help , and then you are going to forget we ever had this conversation."
He swallowed hard. "I really do not think—"
"I am not asking you to think, Mr. Cromwell. I am asking you to point in the right direction." I leaned forward. "You helped with the Linotype contract. You helped set up the partnership with Mr. Whitfield. You have been a good lawyer to , and I have not forgotten it. I will not forget this either."
He was silent for a long mont. Then he sighed, reached into his desk, and pulled out a scrap of paper.
"There is a place on Nassau Street," he said, writing down the address. "They keep old business records. Newspapers. Ledgers. Things that would otherwise be thrown out."
He handed the paper. "If Thurston Holdings left any trace, it will be there."
I took the paper and tucked it into my sleeve. "Thank you, Mr. Cromwell."
"Do not thank ." He shook his head, already pretending I had never been there. "Just... be careful, Miss Thorne. Nassau Street. It’s where the ink-stained truth goes to die."
It sounded like exactly the kind of place where soone would bury a family’s reputation.
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