"And me?"
"Your Grace," Boggins said carefully, "has inherited your grandfather's depth of feeling and your father's determination to suppress it. The result is......Complicated."
Frederick stared at him. In his years of service, Boggins had never spoken so directly about anything personal. Estate matters, yes. Wardrobe concerns, certainly. The correct temperature for shaving water, extensively. But never this.
"You think I feel things," Frederick said finally.
"I think Your Grace feels everything very intensely, and expends considerable energy pretending otherwise. The cost of this pretence is..." Boggins hesitated. "Significant."
"And what would you have me do about it?"
"That is not for me to say, Your Grace. I am merely a valet."
"You are the closest thing I have to a confidant, and we both know it."
The words hung in the air between them, too honest, too raw. Frederick wished he could take them back. Hawthornes didn't make admissions like that. Hawthornes didn't acknowledge vulnerability, need, or the desire for connection that lurked beneath every interaction.
But Boggins didn't flinch, he didn't look away, and he didn't offer false comfort or easy platitudes.
"Then, as Your Grace's confidant," he said quietly, "I would suggest that the current approach, isolation, suppression, the studied avoidance of all human connection, is not serving Your Grace well. The passage through the village today was... difficult. It is difficult every time. And it does not have to be."
"You think I should…..What? Attend the Harvest Fair? Make friends with the villagers? Host dinner gatherings for farmers and their families?"
"I think Your Grace might start with smaller steps. Speaking to the tenants occasionally. Learning the names of the people whose lives depend on your decisions. Perhaps acknowledging the existence of the forge girl who caught your attention this afternoon."
Frederick’s hand tightened on the brandy glass. "I don't know what you're referring to."
"Of course not, Your Grace." Boggins's tone suggested that he knew exactly what he was referring to and found Frederick’s denial adorably transparent. "Will there be anything else?"
"No. Thank you, Boggins."
"Good night, Your Grace."
The valet withdrew, closing the door behind him with barely a sound. Frederick remained where he was, staring at the fire, the brandy warming in his hand.
The forge girl who caught your attention.
He hadn't been that obvious. Had he?
He thought of her face, the directness of her gaze, the stubborn set of her jaw. She had looked at him like he was a problem to be solved. Like beneath all the ice and title and studied distance, there might be something worth finding.
No one had ever looked at him like that before. Probably no one had ever looked at him at all, either avoiding him ormocking him. However, she had looked straight at him and had not moved or flinched.
It was probably nothing. Probably just curiosity, the same kind that made villagers gawk at his carriage and children mime his death. She would forget him by morning, if she hadn't already.
And he would forget her. He would. Because that was what Hawthornes did. They forgot, and they endured, and they held themselves apart from a world that had never wanted them anyway.
Frederick drained the brandy in one long swallow and reached for the account books.
Work was easier than feeling. It always had been.
***
But even work failed him eventually, and when the fire had burned down to embers, and the candles guttered in their holders, Frederick found himself standing at the window of his study, looking out across the dark expanse of his lands toward the distant cluster of lights that marked Ashwick.
The village glowed faintly in the darkness; warm lights behind small windows, the promise of families gathered, conversations shared, the simple human commerce of people who knew each other and cared about each other and belonged to something larger than themselves.
He tried to imagine what they were doing. The women atTheCrossedKeys, perhaps, are still talking about him; his cold face, his silent carriage, the sins of his father visited upon his generation. The blacksmith, settling down for the night in the cottage above his forge. The children, being tucked into beds by parents who loved them, who would always love them, who would teach them to love in turn.
