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Then his eyes dropped to the tea, and something softened in them.

He gave her a small, reassuring smile and the knot in her chest eased.

“Good night, Gwen.”

She nodded and turned towards the door, her steps drawn by the opening notes of a fiddle somewhere in the distance.

“Good night.”

In the weeks that followed, a new routine quietly took shape. For the first time since her father’s death, Gwen was no longer the last to return from the yard at day’s end. Night after night, she found Michael there, elbow-deep in paperwork, his focus unwavering. Oh, she’d tried to coax him toward the door at a reasonable hour each night, but he only brushed her off distractedly, his gaze lowered to his work, solemn brown eyes never lifting from the figures before him.

It became something of a routine, that tea… that smile that seemed to rearrange her insides—parts that surely were not meant to shift about in such a squirmy and unpredictable way.

Still, she liked the feeling, found herself waiting for it more keenly than she ought, anticipating the moment when his singular focus would turn her way. His expression softened in a way he seemed to reserve entirely for her.

Tonight, when she circled back, tea in hand, Michael was leaning back in his chair, elbow propped on the chair arm, fingers massaging his furrowed brow.

Gwen stilled. “What is it?”

Michael’s lips pressed together in a grim line.

“I found this on the floor.” He sighed and held up a letter before setting it back on the desk. “It must have come with today’s post and slipped from the pile. It’s from the insurance firm.”

She picked up the letter and read.

Line by line, dread burned into rage—then went cold, doused beneath rank, stagnant fear.

“He’s gotten to our insurance firm now,” she said, her molars grinding together. “It seems we’re a liability. Without experienced management, the risks to the yard increase considerably.”

She absorbed the blow… unclenched. Breathed. Then read the next line.

“‘Such enterprises require a steadiness of judgment not present in the gentler sex.’ They’ve sacked us,” she scoffed humourlessly. “Or rather, the firm must decline to renew the policy.” Flinging the letter onto the desk, she pressed her palms into her eye sockets, her head falling back with a groan. “What I’d give for five minutes alone in a room with Lord Michael and his shriveled up stones, that cowardly gutless bastard.” A second, louder groan.

That brief but necessary tantrum checked off her list, she straightened.

“Damn fools at the firm don’t even have to break their contract to do it. I had to fight tooth and nail to get them to continue coverage after I inherited, and the only way I managed was to agree to month-by-month renewal for the first year.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Even more infuriating, they’ve sighted issues from when Walter ran the yard as evidence of my incompetence.” Another laugh scraped its way past her throat.

Michael rose to his feet. “He’s not the only underwriter in Wales,” he said, moving to stand beside her. “We’ll find another.”

Gwen was already shaking her head. “It will be more of the same wherever we go.”

When had she begun referring to the yard as we? She pushed that unhelpful observation aside. “No. I’m afraid I must consign myself to the truth. I’m a dainty creature, liable to swoon at the slightest provocation.”

Michael reached for the abandoned tea, meant for him, and offered it to her. “Five minutes in a room with you, and no man would think you capable of ladylike collapse.”

She let out a silent puff of laughter and instantly felt better for it, just as he’d no doubt intended. “Perhaps. But most men require more than five minutes of immutable proof before they’re willing to revise a generations-long assumption.” She stared down into her cup, and the pair of them fell silent.

Five minutes in a room with you, and no man with a pulse would think you even capable of ladylike collapse. She rolled that observation around in her head.

Trust came from proof, from time and consistency.

“What I need is a group of men who know me… who’ve known me for years, and whose livelihood depends on the yard’s success.”

When she looked up again, the remnants of her mood already scattering beneath a burgeoning plan, Michael was waiting for her there, his eyes wide, lips parted. That expression of unchecked admiration did something to her—struck a spark low in her belly that spread beneath her skin, crackling through her veins, as though she might melt from the inside out. His astonishment held a beat longer before refracting into a broad, delighted smile.

“You’re going to form an old-fashioned guild. Appeal to both their pocketbooks and their pride.” He shook his head. “It’s… brilliant.”

He pushed off the desk and began to pace the length of the room, picking up speed as he went. “The town’s reputation, its prosperity, hinges upon the yard. With Llanelli collapsed, merchants would lose the means to fulfill orders, suppliers would lose a key client, and the craftsmen would have to relocate to continue their trade. The town would suffer widespread economic hardship. No man of sound reason could argue otherwise.”