//CLARA//
The aroma of burnt coffee and boiled kippers was doing absolutely nothing for the nausea currently roiling in my stomach.
Or my patience.
I sat at the breakfast table, poking at a piece of dry toast with a fork that probably cost more than a small country's GDP, wondering if anyone had ever actually murdered their aunt in this century and gotten away with it. There had to be legal loopholes somewhere.
Casimir sat at the head, buried behind a copy of the Tribune that looked thick enough to double as body armor. He hadn't looked at me once since we sat down. Not once. After yesterday, he still couldn't meet my eyes.
The silence was suffocating. The kind of quiet that happens right before something terrible breaks. I'd learned to recognize it. I was starting to crave it, if only because it meant something would finally happen.
I shifted in the chair, the stays of the corset digging into my ribs like a cage made of bone.
God, I hated the Gilded Age.
