Val pocketed the letter from Donovan and headed for his father's office, because if there was one thing the day had produced that was worth anything it was that letter, and he intended to use it before Michael found a way to complicate it.
He paused outside the door. Collected himself. Reached for the handle.
The door swung open from the inside and William appeared, and behind him, close enough to have clearly been mid-conversation, was Michael.
Val's face did what it did when he saw Michael, which was tighten in a way that most people read correctly as a warning.
"Brother." Michael's smile arrived with the warmth of something practiced. "It's been a while. Uncle called me for the family dinner tonight." His eyes moved past Val with the deliberateness of someone making a point. "I hear Lady Rose will be joining us. I've been looking forward to meeting her."
"Refer to her as your sister-in-law," Val said.
Michael opened his mouth with the specific expression of a man about to say something about ceremonies that hadn't technically taken place, and Val reached into his pocket and held out the letter.
"My father-in-law has confirmed the marriage." He looked at Michael the way you looked at something that had wandered into a room it had no business being in. "I don't see why an unrelated party would have any further comment on my personal matters."
William took the letter. Read it. His face gave nothing away, which was its own kind of answer, he handed it back to him before replying.
"I'll expect the girl at dinner tonight," he said.
"Her condition isn't good," Val said. "You're aware of what she's been through. I'd ask that we don't press her."
"There's no harm in a family dinner," William said simply, which closed the subject in the way that William closed subjects — not loudly, just completely.
"Funny," Michael said lightly, tilting his head, "how protective you've become of a marriage you were ready to burn down not two weeks ago." He said it like an observation. Casual. Almost fond. "One might wonder what exactly you're trying to keep hidden, brother."
Val looked at him.
Michael held the look with the serenity of a man who had calculated exactly how far he could push before contact and had stopped one millimeter before it.
"The official ceremony will be arranged tonight," William said, already turning. "That is what this dinner is for." He walked away down the corridor and Michael followed, pausing just long enough to offer Val one last glance over his shoulder — that particular expression, quiet and satisfied and completely aware of itself — before disappearing around the corner.
Val stood in the corridor alone for a moment.
Then he turned and walked back toward his office.
He was already composing the first line of what he was going to say to Jeremy about the definition of the word failed when he pushed open the office door and stopped.
Lora was sitting on the couch.
Not pacing, not standing rigidly by the wall the way she'd been in the bedroom — sitting, leaning forward slightly, looking at something Jeremy was showing her on the table, and there was a brief, small smile on her face as she nodded at whatever he was saying, the kind of unguarded expression that appeared on people's faces when they forgot to be careful for a moment.
Jeremy was talking to her like a person.
She was listening like one.
"What," Val said, "is going on."
Lora's back snapped straight. The color left her face in the same instant, the smile gone so completely it might not have existed, and she stood up from the couch with her eyes going immediately to anywhere in the room that wasn't him — the table, the floor, the middle distance — with the obvious and unconcealed discomfort of someone who had just been informed, not very long ago, that she had shot this person three times and was still in the early stages of processing what that meant for the current dynamic.
Jeremy looked at Val with the expression of a man who had a reasonable explanation and was confident it would hold. "Lady Rosaline wished to speak with you," he said. "I brought her here hoping you'd return shortly." A pause. "She has something she'd like to discuss."
Val looked at Lora. Lora looked at the table.
The silence in the room had a very specific quality to it, two people who had been at each other's throats less than a day ago, now standing in the same space under entirely new circumstances,
Val looked back at Jeremy. "Give us the room."
Jeremy stood, straightened his jacket with the quiet dignity of a man who had done good work today and knew it, and left without comment.
The door clicked shut.
Val moved to the desk and sat down behind it like he owned the room, which he did, and looked at her like she was something that had been brought in for his consideration and he hadn't decided yet whether it was worth his time.
Lora twisted her fingers together and looked at him and then looked at the desk between them and decided the desk was safer.
"Jeremy told me about the situation," she said Jeremy's name as if she had known him for very long. "I'm still not entirely convinced any of it is real. But I don't have a way to prove otherwise right now, so —" She stopped. Steadied herself. "I came to make a deal."
His expression said nothing either, except that he wasn't buying a single word coming out of her mouth, and he wasn't particularly interested in hiding that.
She pressed on anyway. "He told me that I —" She stopped again. Looked at him directly this time, because she needed to see his face when she asked it. "Did I really try to kill you?"
Something moved behind his eyes, and his hand dropped to the desk drawer and opened it with the unhurried ease of someone reaching for something completely ordinary. He pulled out the revolver and set it on the desk in front of him, not pointing it at her, just setting it there between them the way someone might set down a pen, and left his hand resting beside it.
Lora's breath stopped.
"I'll make sure you remember it," he said quietly, "when it's time for me to return the favor."
She took a step back without meaning to. Then another. Her hands came up in front of her, palms out, and she hated how much they were shaking.
"Please." The word came out smaller than she wanted it to. "I know you're angry and you have every right to be, but just — please. A truce." She kept her eyes on his face and not on the gun. "I'm calling a truce. Just listen to me."
He didn't move. But something in the quality of his stillness shifted — the specific kind of shift that meant he was listening even if he wasn't going to show it.
She lowered her hands. Breathed.
"According to Jeremy we are both in a difficult position because of me," she said. "You're in a corner and I'm in a corner and neither of us can move without the other one. So." She held his gaze. "How about we set the personal grudges aside until the problem in front of us is solved. After that you can hate me as much as you like."
Val leaned back in the chair. "What problem?"
Lora stared at him. "I don't remember anything." She said it slowly, like she was speaking to someone who had perhaps not been paying attention. "Isn't that a problem?"
"For you," he said. "Not for me."
She pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose and thought very specifically about how satisfying it would be to throw something at him again and how poorly that had gone for Jeremy. The silence stretched.
Then something shifted in Val's expression — small, barely visible, the adjustment of a man who had run the calculation and arrived somewhere he hadn't intended to arrive but could see the logic of. He looked at her across the desk, at the gun sitting untouched between them, and then he reached over and put it back in the drawer and closed it.
"Fine," he said. "As long as you do what I ask, when I ask it, I'll see what I can do about your situation." He said it the way people said things they had decided to do while still resenting having to decide it. "But understand one thing clearly."
Lora nodded carefully.
"That doesn't settle anything between us." His voice dropped just enough to make the words land properly. "You put three bullets in my chest. I haven't forgotten that and I don't intend to. Whatever arrangement we come to right now doesn't touch that debt. Not even slightly."
The room was very quiet.
Lora looked at him for a moment, at the flat, complete certainty in his face, and nodded once. "I understand," she said, barely above a whisper.