“Lucy, we need to talk.”
I froze, then slowly faced him. “I’m working.”
“Five minutes,” he said. “Please.”
“I don't have five minutes." It was true. We had at least three rooms of guests right now and it fell to me to make sure everything was done right.
Mom’s voice carried from the back hallway. “Lucy, dear, could you bring up the linens when you have a moment?”
“See? I’m busy right now,” I said quietly.
He took a step closer, lowering his voice. “Whenever you are available. I need to speak with you.”
I rolled my eyes. From experience, I knew that Dex wasn’t going to go away. He might even follow me around. “Fine, let’s go outside. You have five minutes then I’m going to get the linens for my guests.”
The moment I opened the door, the cold air cut across my face. The sky was the color of pewter, clouds heavy with more snow. I stepped onto the porch, wrapping my arms around myself. It felt like the temperature was dropping. Dex followed, closing the door behind him. The house noise faded into muffled laughter and footsteps. Out here, it was just us and the quiet.
Dex took his coat off. He handed it over to me and I put it on, grateful for the warmth even though the coat was too big for me. He was full of contradictions, one minute closed off and the next, doing me a kindness by making sure I was warm. It made me feel off balance.
He stood by the railing, looking out over the yard where the snow had banked up towards the inn with the wind. “I have been thinking. About everything.”
“That sounds serious,” I murmured.
“It is." He turned toward me, his expression unreadable. “The last few days at the lodge made me realize how much my life has changed. Or rather, how much you have changed it.”
I blinked.“Me?”
“Yes. You and your family. You have made me see things differently. I used to think I understood what mattered. Efficiency, order, and reputation were the most important to me. It’s what I was raised with. It’s what I understood. But the inn and your family… it makes all of that feel small.”
It sounded flattering, but something about his tone was too measured, too deliberate and I didn’t understand what he meant. I folded my arms tighter. “Go on.”
He exhaled. “You frustrate me. You argue with me. You defy logic and reason, and somehow you make chaos look admirable. I should be able to ignore it, but I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
My heart stuttered. “Dex—”
He kept talking, faster now, as if the words had built up too long to contain. “You drive me insane. Every sensible part of me knows this would never work. You and I come from different worlds. You belong here with your family, surrounded by noise and warmth and… disorder. I was raised in something else entirely. My parents, if they were alive, would be horrified by what I am saying. I have always done my best to make their memory proud, to hold their values, but despite that, despite knowing it makes no sense, I care for you.
“Your family is without connections, social status, and I suspect economically at risk. There is a disparity in our situations. Your youngest sisters and mother seem to lack verbal restraint, and your father refuses to restrain them. I can’t accuse you or Jane of the same issue, but it is enough to make a man pause in attaching himself to your family. It is certainly something I had never thought that I might entertain the idea.”
The silence after that was sharp enough to hurt. My breath caught in my throat. “I see,” I said carefully. “So you care for me in spite of everything that disgusts you about my family.”
He frowned. “That’s not what I said.”
“That's exactly what you said!” I whisper shouted at him. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to overhear us.
“Lucy, listen." His voice softened as he stepped closer. “You are extraordinary. You are nothing like anyone I have ever met. But you must see how difficult this would be. We are not equals in the way that matters to the world. I am not saying that as an insult—”
“You are doing a fine job of it anyway,” I hissed.
He ran a hand through his hair, visibly frustrated. “I am trying to be honest as you deserve honesty. I am not a man who falls easily, but I have fallen for you. And it terrifies me because it shouldn't have happened, because I can’t see how it would work.”
My pulse thudded in my ears. “You can’t possibly think that's romantic."
“I think it is real. I think it is the truth,” Dex told me, confusion clouding his eyes.
I laughed, the sound brittle in the frosty air. “You are telling me you love me but that my life, my family, my entire world embarrasses you? That we are so beneath you that loving me is a form of humiliation?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
