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Gwen was several steps into her office before realising she was not alone. Not only was she not alone, but whoever had braved the early morning chill had been there long enough to coax an enthusiastic fire from the hearth. Papers were organised in a myriad of tidy stacks across her desk, and a mug of indeterminate liquid sat on a chair that had been dragged close—cool enough now that no steam rose from it.

“It was a touch more difficult than usual, but as you can see, I did eventually manage it—getting up, that is.”

She startled, turning to find Michael leaning casually against the doorframe, watching her with a cheeky smile.

“It’s not yet six o’clock. Harry isn’t even here,” she said, crossing to her desk and scanning the stacks of paperwork: repair logs, harbor records, old contracts, shipping receipts—some arranged by date, others grouped according to vendor. There were even five or six piles on the floor adjacent to the desk, where he’d run out of space and just carried on like ants marching in a line. Off to the side lay a pad of paper with notes in an unfamiliar hand. It was upside down from her vantage point, so she couldn’t make out much of what he’d written, but the word “insufficient” was underlined twice. Lord Michael’s correspondence had also been exhumed from their resting place in her bottom drawer and now sat at the corner of her desk.

“What is all this?”

He grinned down at her with almost ecstatic ruthlessness, an expression that might have been terrifying had they not been on the same side.

“War.”

With what could only be described as a jaunty step, he crossed the remaining distance to the desk and retrieved his pad of paper, studying it for a moment before closing the cover and dropping it back atop the paperwork. “Until now, the better part of your energy has been funneled into repairing Lord Michael’s maneuvering after it’s already occurred. And do not mistake me—you’ve done a commendable job of it. You’re quite the clever little thing, in truth. But it seems your primary strategy for dealing with his meddling has been to dodge the balls he hurls and hope that, sooner or later, his arm grows tired. The flaw to that method is, of course, that your leaping and dodging is far more exhausting than anything Lord Michael need do to make trouble.”

He crossed to the narrow shelf beside the hearth, where a collection of cups sat waiting to be filled. He quickly rifled through the options and selected her teacup.

It was a modest piece of cream earthenware, once decorated with a delicate green pattern that had long since faded to ghostly traces along the rim. A thin crack ran nearly from lip to base, its progress halted when she’d sealed it with a touch of resin some years ago.

He filled it from the waiting teapot, then returned to her, extending the cup between them. He’d even added a bit of sugar, not entirely dissimilar to what she would have prepared for herself.

“We need to shore up your walls,” he continued, ”put invisible defenses in place that halt his progress without requiring us to expend extra effort every time he attempts a siege.” He reached for his own cup, took a sip, then winced, but his obvious disgust did not prevent him from taking a second, longer swallow of the tepid brew. “Sound border protection prevents you from having to race out with the cavalry every time he’s spotted—or worse, waste essential resources extinguishing the fires he’s already lit.”

He drew closer. “You’ve already put this stratagem into practice, in part, and thwarted Lord Michael’s maneuvering on a number of occasions. Your accounting practices are so sound you likely never even noticed his attempts.”

He lifted an invoice, then reached for her ledger, flipping through until he found one of many pages he’d marked with one of her hair ribbons.

The man had no boundaries whatsoever. Her desk, her private correspondence, items meant to be worn directly on her person—he made no compunction about using whatever he wanted. Indeed, she would not have been in the least surprised to find he’d strode into her rooms and helped himself to one of her bed linens to fashion into a campaign map.

Michael continued, prying her thoughts away from his brazen intrusiveness. “Look here.” He leaned closer. “Your iron supplier billed you nearly four percent more for fastenings than the agreed upon rate. Had your clerk not matched the invoice against the contract, you’d have paid it without question.”

She nodded, and as she did, a pin apparently doing the lion’s share of the work keeping her plait coiled into a somewhat tidy bun shimmied free and clicked against the wooden floor. A moment later, her plait slithered down, dropping heavily between her shoulder blades.

Gwen cast an irritated glance toward the fallen pin, then reached back and dragged the plait over one shoulder. “But why such a minuscule amount? Surely he could not believe such a paltry sum would see us bankrupt.”

Michael bent to retrieve the pin and set it on the desk. “Testing the waters, I presume, to discern the vigilance of your clerk.”

”Here’s another.” He retrieved a second ledger from where it rested beside her hand, his smallest finger grazing the outside of her hand. Gwen’s thoughts seemed to ripple in and out of focus at the sensation, but if Michael was similarly affected by the touch, his eyes did not stumble from the papers.

“And here,” the tap of his forefinger brought her attention to a star he’d drawn in the margin. Her gaze strayed first to the strong line of his knuckles, before settling on the line he was indicating. “A client by the name of Lord Callahan accosted your dock foreman. It looks as if he claimed to have contracted the completion of his pleasure cutter a full fortnight before the records suggest.”

Her eyes traveled down the ledger, although there was no need. “Yes, I remember. I was away, meeting with a supplier, but Harry mentioned it to me after the situation had been sorted. Apparently the viscount made himself rather disagreeable when Harry insisted upon confirming the date against the original contract. Harry’s not one to back down from a flash of temper—not even in the face of an irritable nobleman.”

“I suppose by that point Lord Michael had already determined my immutable nature, but was still uncertain how malleable my managers might be.” Gwen wove the tail of her plait between her fingers, considering. “It stands to reason he deliberately chose a time when I was away from the yard.”

“My thinking as well.” Michael didn’t look up, his attention intent upon the stack of papers he was shuffling through. When he found the one he sought, he held it out to her.

“In this instance your clerk failed to notice when the yard was billed on two separate occasions, but it looks as if you later realised the error.”

She nodded distractedly, recalling what a monumental undertaking it had been to get the harbormaster to admit his mistake and remit the overpayment.

“I’ve marked a number of similar cases, as well as several less blatant instances where tampering could not entirely be ruled out: a supplier claiming non-payment, a shipment of inferior timber, sailcloth briefly misdirected to another dock and so on.”

She pressed her forefinger to the star. God, there were so many of them, scrawled onto the margins.

Gwen had thought each of Lord Michael’s attempts to tamper with the yard’s production had been accompanied by one of his taunting letters, but this Michael had laid out a veritable constellation indicating otherwise. Missiles had been ricocheting harmlessly off her castle walls, entirely beneath her notice.

She should be pleased, she supposed. But the deftness with which Michael had seen it all…. How effortlessly he’d swept in and assumed command….