An unpredictable variable was dangerous. Especially in an heir. Roy preferred known quantities, manageable assets. This new, perplexing Lloyd was an unknown, a deviation from the meticulously planned trajectory.
He finally picked up his quill, but instead of returning to the tariffs, he tapped it rhythmically against the desk blotter, the frown etched deep between his brows. He needed more information. More observation. This wasn't a situation for immediate reaction, for praise or reprimand. It was a situation demanding vigilance.
Something, Roy Ferrum concluded grimly, the frown tightening almost painfully, has changed.
And he needed to understand precisely what that change entailed, before it disrupted more than just a business lesson or a quiet street. The stability of his house, the future he envisioned, might depend on it.
(Roy was happy inside to see his son's action as a father.)
Night pressed against the tall, leaded glass windows of the shared suite, muffling the distant sounds of the Ferrum estate settling into slumber. Within the room, a fragile truce of silence reigned, punctuated only by the soft whisper of turning pages and the occasional faint crackle from the single oil lamp burning steadily on a small table beside the sofa.
Lloyd Ferrum was ensconced on that familiar, lumpy piece of furniture, legs tucked beneath him, seemingly lost in the dense text of a thick, leather-bound volume propped against his knees. The lamplight cast his face in sharp relief, highlighting the frown of concentration etched between his brows. He wasn't just reading; he was dissecting. Every so often, his hand, holding a slender piece of graphite, would dart out to make a sharp, decisive mark in the wide margins – a line, a question mark, sometimes a brief, cryptic symbol only he understood.
Gods, this is dry, his internal eighty-year-old monologue complained, even as his nineteen-year-old eyes scanned the densely packed script. 'Established Principles of Inter-Provincial Guild Commerce, Third Edition.' Sounds like a guaranteed cure for insomnia. Which, ironically, is useful considering my current sleeping arrangements.
He stifled a yawn, shifting slightly on the unforgiving cushions. The sofa. His domain. His kingdom of itchy velvet and questionable lumbar support. Across the room, shrouded in the shadows beyond the lamp's reach, lay the vast, imposing territory of the four-poster bed. Her territory.
Rosa.
He risked a quick glance towards the shadowed fortress of silk and pillows. He couldn't see her clearly, just a vague shape beneath the covers. Was she asleep? Meditating? Plotting new ways to spiritually flatten him if he dared breathe too loudly? Impossible to tell. Since their… encounter… yesterday, an even thicker layer of ice seemed to coat the air between them. Not active hostility, but a watchful, assessing silence. Like two wary predators sharing a den, acutely aware of the other's presence but choosing, for now, to maintain their distance.
He saw a flicker of movement from the bed, just a subtle shift. A head turning slightly? He quickly dropped his gaze back to the book, focusing intently on a particularly convoluted paragraph regarding taxation reciprocity between the Azure Strait shipping consortiums and the inland weaving guilds. Riveting stuff. Truly.
Did she see me looking? Probably. His internal voice sighed. Paranoid? Maybe. But when your wife can literally crush you with her mind-vibes, a little paranoia seems healthy.
He made another sharp mark in the margin, underlining a sentence that stated, with unwavering certainty, a principle he knew from eighty years of vastly different economic realities on Earth to be fundamentally flawed. 'Intrinsic value stability guaranteed through Guild Charter Mandates…' Absolute rubbish. Value was fluid, driven by supply, demand, perception, technological disruption… things this dusty tome clearly hadn't considered.
The silence stretched, broken only by the rustle of the page as he turned it. He assumed Rosa had dismissed his activity, filed it away under 'irrelevant husband doings', and returned to whatever occupied her own inscrutable thoughts. He continued his work, the graphite stick scratching faintly, methodically deconstructing centuries of accepted wisdom, one flawed premise at a time. This felt more productive than staring at the ceiling, anyway. And who knew? Maybe 'identifying archaic economic fallacies' counted as a System task? Unlikely, but a man could dream.
The next day passed in a blur of routine that felt both familiar and jarringly new. Morning: Operation Canine Cuisine Upgrade, Day Three. Fang, the wolf-spirit, now looked almost… filled out? Less 'starving stray', more 'respectably lean predator'. Progress. Five coins closer. He could practically smell the shop interface.
Breakfast was another tense affair under his father's assessing gaze. No outbursts today, just quiet consumption and a mental review of Master Elmsworth's outdated theories. He wondered if the tutor had dared peek into those dusty ledgers yet.