Chapter 140: Chapter One Hundred-Forty: The First Frost

//CLARA//

The first snow of the season descended like a judgment.

I stood on my terrace, watching the flakes dissolve against the stone railing, each one a brief, bright thing that vanished before it could accumulate. It felt a bit too metaphorical for my liking. My freedom had been just like that.

A few days of light, only to melt the moment it touched the reality of this house.

The cold had teeth. It bit through my woolen robe and the thin nightgown beneath, finding the spaces where I was most vulnerable. I’d been standing there for God knows how long. Long enough that my toes had gone numb inside my slippers, and the lantern’s glow had begun to feel like a hallucination of warmth rather than the real thing.

Five days.

Casimir had locked me in this room for five days. The door opened twice a day for a silent servant to slide a tray in—someone who wasn’t Hattie. He’d forbidden her from entering, stripping me of my only ally.

It was part of the performance. But after five days of staring at the same four walls, my room felt a lot like a tomb.

I wrapped my arms around myself, my numb fingers unconsciously tracing the ring hidden beneath my collar.

The snow was falling faster now, thickening into a blue-white haze in the moonlight. I watched it settle on the baluster, on the stones, on the bare branches of the trees. Everything was being covered. Everything was being made clean and silent.

Then, the baluster moved.

It wasn’t the stone, it was a shadow detaching itself from the darkness, resolving into the shape of a man. He climbed over the railing with the fluid, terrifying grace of a cat burglar or a man who had done this far too many times to be considered civilized.

My breath caught. For one suspended moment, I wondered if the isolation had finally made me snap. Then he stepped into the lantern’s light, and I knew the set of those shoulders anywhere.

His morning coat was unbuttoned, his white shirt damp where snow had melted against the heat of his skin. His dark hair was ruffled by the wind and the climb, making him look less like a man and more like the monster he claimed to be. Well, the monster he is.

I sighed. The sound escaped me without permission, carrying five days of tension and the quiet, nagging doubt that I’d hallucinated our entire elopement.

The heaviness lifted so suddenly I felt dizzy. I didn’t think. I didn’t play it cool. I crossed the distance in three quick steps—numb feet be damned—and threw myself at him. I didn’t care that he was scaling walls like a gothic Romeo with a dark streak.

I was just glad he was real.

He pulled me into his arms before I could even reach for him, his hands finding the small of my back and hauling me flush against his chest. He smelled of snow, expensive tobacco, and that sharp, clean scent that was uniquely Casimir.

He rested his chin on my head, and I could feel the coiled tension in him finally snapping.

"Was I too harsh?" he murmured and the low hum of his voice settled right in my bones.

I shook my head against his damp shirt.

"You did exactly what needed to be done. Although, if you’d gone one more day without checking in, I might have started talking to the furniture. The wardrobe is a particularly judgmental listener."

I felt him exhale a long, slow breath that spoke of his own private hell. He pulled back, framing my face in his hands. His thumbs stroked my cheeks, his touch a desperate reassurance that we were still us.

"I felt every word I spat at you like a blade in my own throat," he rasped. "To look at you and pretend you were a burden... I’ve had to hold back from burning this place down every time I walk through it, little bird. Thinking I am not able to parade you to all of New York as my wife."

"I know," I whispered, covering his hands with mine. "But the performance was a ten out of ten. Aunt Cornelia looked like she wanted to give you a medal for domestic discipline. It was disgusting."

He smiled, looking relieved to hear my familiar spite for the ghastly old spider.

"Did you eat your dinner?" he asked, his brow furrowing as he scanned my face for signs of fading away.

I let out a dry, short laugh.

"If you can call it that. The beef was cold enough to be a weapon, and the servant doesn’t linger long enough to see if I’ve choked. I think they’re afraid my disgrace is contagious."

His mouth tightened, a flash of lethal coldness crossing his features.

"I’ll speak to the steward—"

"No."

I pressed my palm against his cheek to stop the impending rampage. I couldn’t have him blaming some poor soul for our unfortunate situation.

"Don’t. The neglect, the isolation... it’s the only thing keeping them from looking closer at why you’re really spending so much time in your study. If you intervene, you undermine the performance. We have to be perfect, Casimir. We have to be the warden and the prisoner."

He studied my face as if searching for cracks in my composure, for places where I might be lying to spare him guilt. I held his gaze, willing him to see that I meant it, that I understood what he was doing even when it hurt.

"You shouldn’t have to endure cold meals," he insisted, his eyes narrowing at the tray as if he could set it aflame with sheer willpower.

"I don’t want hot food, Casimir. I want a husband who isn’t a walking ghost."

My numb fingers caught the lapels of his coat, pulling him closer. I searched his face, tracing the new, hollow lines around his eyes that even the moonlight couldn’t hide.

"Are you eating well? Or are you just surviving on spite and whiskey?"

He looked away, his gaze drifting toward the darkened garden below. The silence that followed was a confession in itself. Answer received. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"You aren’t sleeping," I said, my voice as flat and biting as the air between us.

"I sleep," he lied. Badly.

"Lying to me counts as a hobby now?"

He looked like a man who was holding the sky up by a single thread, and I hated that I was one of the weights pulling on it.

"Let’s get inside." He ignored my question, his hand settled firmly on my waist. "It’s getting colder, and I didn’t scale three stories to play doctor. Get inside, Clara, before the pneumonia does my work for me."

We stepped into the room, the fire having dwindled to a low, orange glow. Casimir stood in the center of the rug, eyes immediately darting to the door he had ordered bolted. He looked at it with a loathing that was almost physical.

"I hate this," he said. "I hate that I am the one who put you in this cage."

"You’re the one with the key, Casimir. That makes all the difference."

He stared at me for a long moment.

"The matchbook," he said. "I need to see it."

Right. Back to reality.

For a moment, I hesitated. Not because I do not trust him with it. Hell, I trusted him even more than myself. However, the memory of how it came to my possession felt distant now, obscured by everything that had followed.

The sudden collapse of my engagement, our wedding, the flight, the return. And handing it over felt like admitting that this was real. That the danger wasn’t over. That we weren’t safe.

"It’s under the mattress," I said.

He crossed to the bed, lifted the corner, and retrieved the matchbook.

He studied it in the firelight, turning it over in his hands. His thumb traced the embossed letters. His eyes narrowed at the numbers on the back.

"Does it mean anything?" I asked.

He didn’t answer immediately. He just stared at the matchbook as if he could force it to speak.

"I’ve heard of The Velvet Noose," he said finally. "It’s a gambling den. Private. Discreet. The kind of place where men go to lose fortunes without anyone asking questions."

"Sounds lovely," I muttered.

"It’s not. But it’s the kind of place where information changes hands. Where debts are settled. Where men like Elias Russell go when they have nowhere else to turn."

The old Elias, I wanted to say, but I didn’t.

"The numbers?"

"Could be a locker. A room number. A code." He shook his head, tucking the matchbook into his pocket. "I won’t know until I get there."

"You’re going to that place?"

He nodded. A statement of fact.

"Promise me you’ll be careful," I said, my voice small against the vast silence of the room.

His lips curved. Just barely. "I’m always careful."

"You’re not."

"No." He pulled me against him one last time, his lips brushing my forehead with lingering heat. "But I have you to return to. That makes me more careful than I’ve ever been."