By the next morning, the estate had settled into a different kind of order.
It was not the usual discipline that came with Darius's household. That was something I had already learned to recognize, quiet, efficient, almost invisible unless you knew where to look. This felt sharper. More deliberate. The servants moved as if they had been given new instructions overnight, and the air in the corridors carried the same brittle stillness that comes before a storm finally breaks.
I noticed it before Eliot said a word.
He was waiting for me when I came out of the dressing room, a stack of folded correspondence in one hand and the expression of a man already regretting the next part of his morning.
"That looks promising," I said, adjusting the cuff of my sleeve. "Usually when you stand like that, someone is about to ruin my day."
Eliot glanced at me, his face remaining perfectly neutral. "Your day was never especially secure to begin with, my lord."
