The next two weeks passed with a quality of fragile, unguarded happiness that Aria would later think of as the calm specifically engineered to make the storm that followed more devastating by contrast.
Damien did not hide the relationship, not from the household and, gradually, not from the wider network of associates and allies who moved through the periphery of his world. He introduced her, when introductions became necessary, with a directness that left no room for ambiguity about what she meant to him, and Aria watched the household reconfigure itself around this new fact with a warmth she had not expected: Mrs. Fenn's reserve softening into something like open affection, the kitchen staff including her in conversations they had previously kept professionally distant, even the guards
