"I wasn't alone. I had Miss Pearson, remember?" Mira paused with transferring the biscuits onto the tray. "She took care of us every step of the way. Even though Clare grew up without a father, she had, at one point, three mothers, all of whom loved her madly. Me, Miss Pearson, and Mrs Barker. What more can a child want?" She smiled at him through a veil of tears.
"It must have been unbelievably difficult for you. I cannot even fathom what you must have gone through all those years." He looked haunted. "Do you think… will she… accept me?"
Mira took his hand in hers. "Of course she will. But remember, all she knows is that her father is a blacksmith. I dare say she will be as shocked as I was when she finds out who you really are. As will Miss Pearson."
"Tell me about her," he commanded. "Everything. From the night she was born."
Kit listened with rapt attention as she told him how she'd been born with a shock of black hair; how she'd been a quiet, good little baby, and how she'd turned into a little hellion by the time she was two. How both Miss Pearson and the Reverend and Mrs Barker had adored her, and how she had had a carefree childhood, even after the reverend had died and they didn't have much money, and she'd had to find a position as a housemaid in a London household.
"It made me sad that I could only see her once a week." Mira plucked at a biscuit and accidentally broke off a prong. "Because I was working with the Cullpeppers, you see. But one of us had to make a living."
"You said you ended up in the workhouse."
At one point, as she talked, they ended up sitting next to each other on the floor, leaning against the warm oven, draped by a woollen blanket, eating the biscuits they'd made.
When she had finished, she said, "And now it is your turn. Speak."
He rested his chin on his knees. "I resisted at first when they took me in the carriage. But when the lawyer told me I was the prospective heir to all this, I confess I felt excited. I enjoy the advantages of rank and title, Mira. I won't lie. Who doesn't like being rich? But you see, I did not understand then that on the very day I was told I was to inherit all this, I'd lose everything about my old life. They changed my name. I wasn't asked. I wasn't given a choice. My opinion did not matter. I was stupid and naive and excited, and I thought they would let me bring you here. I thought they would send for you and Miss Pearson. But the old devil had a fit when he found out we were married. He tried to persuade me to divorce you. He wouldn't let me return to you. I tried to go home so many times, but they caught me every time. I was told to forget my old life. I was told to forget you. How could I do that?"
"It must have been terrifying," Mira whispered.
"It was..." He shook his head as he searched for the right expression. "I don't even have the words for it. Terrifying, but thrilling. Confusing, but also exciting. When you take your whole life and turn it upside down, and everything you thought you knew… all the people you love, suddenly they are all gone, and you are to be someone entirely different. That alone blows your mind to smithereens. Do you know what terrified me the most?"
"What?"
"All that power." He was staring at the baked biscuits without really seeing them. "I was just a simple blacksmith, Mira." He drew a hand over his face. "Thanks to some odd quirk of fate, I was suddenly responsible for all this land, all these people, farmers, tenants, servants. There's not only this estate, but three others."
"Hundreds of people to care for." Mira leaned her head against his arm.
"I had so much to learn. So many things I did not understand. Their way of thinking is so different, Mira. I've always been proud of what these hands could do." He raised his hands.
"They are talented hands," Mira said softly.
"I believed that too. But in this upside-down world of ours, in thehaut tonin particular, a man who uses his hands to feed himself is not considered a gentleman. The first time I stole away to the smithy to fix a horseshoe, the old devil had me whipped."
"Kit!"
"A nobleman does not work. A nobleman does not use his hands." He shook his head. "As if it would not only taint the work he does, but his very existence. I am what I am because of my hands. I created with my hands. I made my livelihood with them. But I was no longer allowed to do that. Who am I if I can no longer use my hands? I am nobody, Mira. No one." His voice was laced with bitterness.
"You have lost your entire identity." Mira looked at him sadly.
"A gentleman can ride a horse. He can drive a phaeton, go hunting, shoot, gamble away his entire fortune, but he cannot work. Never work. They pride themselves in not moving a finger, yet they spend riches they never moved a finger to earn. It is a contradiction. An entirely unnatural kind of life."
"But rebelling only caused you trouble."
Kit nodded.
"Then you started pretending." Mira wrapped her arms around her knees. "And you became good at pretending. So very good."
Kit sighed. "What else could I do? If it had not been for Aldingbourne, I would have gone out of my mind. The things I had to learn! What to say and what not to say. All the rules, all the etiquette. All those books I had to read. I was just a country bumpkin who knew nothing. But Aldingbourne taught me. He taught me how to survive in society. I will always be grateful. I quite literally owe him my life."
Mira looked at him solemnly. "And Princess Florentina? What is her role in all this?"
"She is a friend of the family who took pity on the wild, grief-stricken animal that I was and talked some sense into the old devil. It was through her that Aldingbourne befriended me in the first place. We owe a great deal to them, Aldingbourne and the princess. And, most of all, to Miss Pearson."
"Yes, Miss Pearson," Mira agreed. The warmth of the stove enveloped her, and she began to feel sleepy. She rested her head on his shoulder. "Kit?"
"Hmm?"
