But she was beginning to suspect. And the suspicion was doing something strange to her heart; something that felt like hope and fear and gratitude all tangled together, impossible to separate.
***
Mr. Harrington departed in the late afternoon, leaving behind the medicine, and a promise to return in one week to check on Mr. Whitcombe's progress. He also left behind Lillian's certainty that nothing in her life would ever be quite the same.
She spent the rest of the day in a fog of confused emotion. She sat with her father, who was already breathing more easily thanks to the new medicine. She helped her mother with the household tasks that had been neglected during the crisis. She ate dinner without tasting it and went to bed without sleeping.
Her mind kept returning to Daniel. To the offer he had made. To the words he had spoken in this very parlor:If there is anything you need, anything at all, you only have to ask.
She had refused. She had sent him away. And yet here was help arriving anyway; anonymous, unsolicited, asking nothing in return.
That was not how the world worked. That was not how powerful men behaved. In Lillian's experience, gifts always came with strings attached, kindness always carried a price, and generosity was simply another form of transaction.
But Daniel was not offering a transaction. He was not asking for gratitude or acknowledgment or anything at all. He was simply... helping. Quietly. Secretly. Without any expectation of reward.
This is how he feels, Lillian realized.Not in words, but in action. Not in declarations, but in deeds.
He had told her, in the folly, that he did not know how to feel things safely. That he feared emotion because his parents had wielded it as a weapon. That he had built walls to protect himself from becoming what they were.
But this, this hidden care, this anonymous generosity, this was feeling. This was love, or something very close to it, expressed in the only language he knew.
Lillian lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling, and felt something crack open in her chest.
She had been so afraid of hoping. So certain that whatever existed between them could not lead anywhere good. So determined to be practical, sensible, resigned to the limitations of her circumstances.
But Daniel was not being practical. He was not being sensible. He was being reckless in the most careful way imaginable; pouring resources and attention and care into her family's crisis while asking for nothing in return.
That was not the behavior of a man who felt nothing. That was not the behavior of a man protecting himself from emotion.
That was the behavior of a man in love.
***
The following morning, Lillian discovered that the physician was not the only gift.
She had risen early, intending to review the household accounts before her mother woke, when she heard the sound of hammering from outside. Frowning, she went to the window.
A crew of workmen had arrived at Hartfield. Six men, perhaps eight, with ladders and tools and stacks of fresh timber. They were already on the roof, her roof, the roof that had caused her father's fall, working with efficient purpose.
Lillian threw on a shawl and hurried outside.
"What is this?" she demanded of the nearest workman. "Who authorized this work?"
The man paused, hammer in hand, and touched his cap respectfully. "Morning, miss. We're here to fix the roof. Orders came yesterday."
"Orders from whom?"
"I couldn't say, miss. The foreman arranged it." He nodded toward a man standing near the ladder, consulting a sheaf of papers. "You'd have to ask him."
Lillian approached the foreman with the determined stride of a woman who intended to get answers.
"Excuse me. I am Lillian Whitcombe. This is my family's home. I would like to know who sent you and who is paying for this work."
The foreman looked up from his papers, his expression politely blank. "I can't rightly say, miss. The arrangements were made through an intermediary. We were told the work was needed urgently, and that payment had already been settled."
"Already settled. By whom?"
"I couldn't tell you, miss. The money came through a solicitor in London. All very proper, all very discreet." He shrugged. "It happens sometimes. They don't always want their names attached to their good deeds."
