***
The walk to the manor had never felt so long.
She took the back paths, avoiding the main road where she might meet neighbors who would want to talk. She needed silence and needed space to think, to prepare herself for whatever was coming.
The manor loomed ahead of her, its grey stone walls catching the morning light. It looked different today, somehow. Less forbidding than usual. The curtains were open in several windows; something that had never happened before Frederick started changing—and there was smoke rising from chimneys that usually stood cold.
The house was waking up, she thought. Just like Frederick was waking up.
And she was about to ask herself whether she had the right to be the one who woke him.
***
She didn't go to the front door.
Instead, she circled to the side entrance—the one Frederick had shown her during the manor tour, the one that led through the kitchen gardens to the servants' quarters. It felt appropriate, somehow. She wasn't here as a guest today. She was here as something else entirely.
The gardens were beautiful in the morning light, the frost-touched herbs glittering like jewels. She paused by the bench where Frederick had told her about running away as a child, about Mrs Chen talking him down, convincing him to stay and fight.
Stay and fight.
That was what everyone kept telling her. Robert at the public house. Thomas at the forge. Boggins with his thirty-one years of watching Hawthornes choose wrong.
But what if fighting was the wrong choice? What if staying meant destroying the very person she was trying to save?
Suddenly, she heard voices.
They were coming from the study, the room with the tall windows that overlooked the garden. Frederick’s voice, and another that she recognised after a moment as Boggins'.
She shouldn't listen. She should announce herself, make her presence known, and give them privacy.
Instead, she moved closer to the window, hidden by a climbing rose that had lost its blooms but not its thorns.
"I have already sent word to Lord Norton," Frederick was saying. "And to Lord Ashford, and to the other moderates in the Lords. They need to know what I'm planning before Helena has a chance to poison them against me."
"And what are you planning, Your Grace?" Boggins' voice was careful, neutral.
"To make a public declaration. To announce my betrothal, assuming Lydia accepts me, and to make it clear that anyone who objects can take their objections and leave."
"That is... considerably more aggressive than your usual approach."
"My usual approach has gotten me thirty years of misery and a reputation as the most boring man in England. I think it's time for a change." There was a sound of papers being shuffled. "I've also drafted a letter to my aunt. It's... not kind."
"May I read it?"
"If you must."
Silence stretched while Boggins presumably read the letter. Lydia held her breath, her heart pounding so loudly she was certain they could hear it.
"Your Grace." Boggins' voice was strange, tight, almost emotional. "This letter informs Lady Helena that you are severing all ties with her. That you will not attend any family functions she hosts, you will not respond to any correspondence she sends, and you will not acknowledge her existence in any public forum."
"Yes."
"You are cutting off your only remaining family connection."
"Helena isn't family. She's a gaoler." Frederick’s voice was hard. "She has spent an entire life trying to control me, trying to shape me into what she thinks a Hawthorne should be. I'm quite done with being formed and directed by others. Henceforth, I shall be nothing but what my own judgement permits."
"And what do you choose to be, Your Grace?"
