"I didn't expect that."
"Neither did I."
Thomas was on his feet, his weathered face split by a rare smile. Boggins was dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, his legendary composure finally cracked. Even Reverend Clarke was clapping, though he looked slightly scandalised by the kiss that had just occurred in his church.
"Well," Frederick said, his voice shaking with something between laughter and tears. "I suppose that's one way to get village approval."
"You're impossible."
"So you keep telling me."
She kissed him again, and the applause grew louder.
***
It took another twenty minutes to escape the church.
Everyone wanted to congratulate them. Everyone wanted to shake Frederick’s hand, to kiss Lydia's cheek, to offer blessings and well-wishes and dire warnings about the hard road ahead. Old Mr Davies told a rambling story about Frederick’s great-grandmother that seemed to have no point but ended with him pressing a lucky coin into Lydia's hand. Molly broke through the crowd to demand to know if she could still visit the horses, and Frederick assured her that not only could she visit, she could name the next foal.
It was chaos. It was wonderful. It was everything Lydia had never dared to dream of.
And then the church doors slammed open, and Lady Helena Blackmore strode in.
She was dressed for battle.
Black silk, severe and elegant, without a single ornament or softening detail. Silver hair arranged with military precision beneath a hat that would have been fashionable thirty years ago.Eyes blazing with a fury that made everyone in her path step back instinctively.
Behind her, the doors swung wide, letting in a gust of autumn wind that made the candles on the altar flicker and dance.
"What," she said, her voice cutting through the joyful noise like a blade, "do you think you are doing?"
The celebration died. The applause stopped. The crowd parted, creating a clear path between Helena and the couple at the front of the church.
For a moment, no one moved. The tableau held; Helena at the door, radiating fury; Frederick and Lydia at the altar, still holding hands; the village congregation frozen in various stages of celebration.
Then Frederick stepped forward, placing himself slightly in front of Lydia. His voice, when he spoke, was calm and measured; a duke's voice, trained from birth to command.
"Aunt Helena. How good of you to join us."
"Don't you dare. Don't you dare speak to me as if this is some kind of social call." Helena's voice shook with rage—real rage, the kind that came from being publicly defied. "I heard the bells ringing. I heard the rumours spreading through Thornbury like wildfire. The Duke of Corvenwell, making a spectacle of himself in a village church. Proposing to a common…"
"Choose your next word very carefully," Frederick said. His voice was still calm, but there was steel beneath it now. "That common woman is going to be my wife."
"She is going to be nothing. This farce is over." Helena advanced down the aisle, her silk skirts rustling with each step. The villagers pulled back as she passed, as if afraid her fury might be contagious. "I gave you a chance, Frederick. I gave you a week to come to your senses. Instead, you've chosento humiliate yourself, and our family, in the most public way possible."
"I've chosen to be happy. That's not humiliation. That's humanity."
"Humanity." Helena spat the word like a curse. "Is that what you call it? Throwing away three hundred years of family legacy for a woman who can't even…"
"I can speak for myself."
Lydia stepped out from behind Frederick, her chin raised, her eyes meeting Helena's directly. She was aware of the entire village watching, aware of what this moment meant, what it would cost if she failed to hold her ground.
But she had spent her life in a forge. She knew something about fire and steel and standing firm when the heat became unbearable.
"You came to my forge," she said. "You offered me money to leave him. And when I refused, you told me a story about his mother; a story designed to make me believe that letting him go was the kindest thing I could do."
"It was the kindest thing. It still is." Helena's eyes were cold, but there was something else there too, something that looked almost like desperation. "You have no idea what you're condemning him to. The doors that will close. The respect he'll lose. The whispers that will follow him for the rest of his life."
