"You've been building toward this for a year," he said. Not a question.
"I've been building toward the work being in a position to continue," she said. "The capital is where the work needs to go next."
Fenwick nodded slowly.
"All right," he said. "I'll need to get my formal correspondence clothes out of storage." A pause. "They'll need pressing."
The tension in the room broke along the line his words created, the specific release of it that Fenwick had apparently decided was his function in this household and executed with reliable precision.
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Later, when the room had sorted itself into the usual post-meeting arrangements — some people working, some planning, some simply existing in the shared space — Caius came to stand beside her at the window.
