She opened her mouth, then closed it, frowning. "It's the principle of the thing."
"The principle of not trusting me even when I'm being trustworthy?"
"The principle of being cautious with someone who's already proven himself capable of significant deception."
"Fair point."
"I know it is."
They stood there glaring at each other while Thomas and the other helpers watched with undisguised interest.
"Should we start on the roof?" Thomas suggested. "Only it's getting colder and my mum says I have to be home before dark."
"Yes," Marianne said, still looking at Alaric. "Let's see what His Grace actually knows about roof repair."
The work that followed was not the genteel sort a duke might boast of over port, but four unvarnished hours of labor that bit bone and pride alike. Alaric had, to his credit, practicedwith Thomas upon a leaning shed behind the Ironwells' barn; yet a shed in fair weather was a different creature from a bakery roof in a knife-edged wind, with December light paling toward afternoon and Marianne Whitby standing below with her arms folded and her expression set to skeptical.
Slate rang beneath his hammer. Once, the head glanced and found his thumb instead. Twice, the gusts shouldered him so hard his boot scraped perilously along the eaves. And once his foot disappeared between two joists and had to be coaxed free by Thomas, Mr. Ironwell, and a length of rope that would later become a village story told with improvements. Still he went on, awkward but stubborn.
His hands, soft from a lifetime of paper, pen, and the sort of reins one held only on a fine afternoon, began to betray him. Skin lifted. Blisters pearled, then broke. The hammer’s haft grew slick. Each time he drew breath, cold crept under his coat and set up house along his spine; each time he set a tile, the wind inquired whether he meant to keep it there.
"You're going to hurt yourself," Marianne called up at last, after the third involuntary flinch had crossed his face like a cloud over sun.
"I'm fine."
"You're bleeding."
"Only a little."
"Bleeding is bleeding. Come down."
"The roof's not finished."
"The roof can wait."
"Can it? Because you have buckets catching drips and it's supposed to snow again tonight."
"That's my problem, not yours."
"I'm making it my problem."
"Why?"
"Because that's what neighbours do."
"We're not neighbours."
"Your bakery is in my village on what was until very recently my property. That makes us neighbours."
"That makes us... I don't know what that makes us."
"Complicated?"
"That's one word for it."
He kept working as the sun set and the other helpers gradually departed for their own dinners. Thomas was the last to leave, his mother arriving to collect him with stern words about the foolishness of working in the dark.
"You should go too," Marianne told Alaric. "The roof's mostly done."
