She stopped. Shook her head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't……This isn't appropriate. I should go."
"Wait."
The word came out sharper than he intended. Desperate. Not at all ducal.
She paused halfway to the door. "Your Grace?"
"Frederick," he said, and immediately wished he could swallow the syllables back. What was he doing? What was hethinking? "That is……Never mind. Please stay, just for a moment."
She should have left. Any sensible woman would have left. The duke was behaving erratically, saying strange things, breaking every rule of appropriate conduct between their respective stations. Leaving was the wise choice.
She turned back instead.
"What do you see?" He asked, and his voice cracked slightly on the question. "When you look at me. What do you actually see?"
For a long moment, she didn't answer. She studied him the way she might study a piece of metalwork; evaluating, considering, looking for flaws and strengths in equal measure.
"I see a man who is very tired," she said finally. "And very alone. And very afraid of something, though I don't know what. I see someone who has been told his whole life that he can't afford to be human, and who believed it, and who is only just starting to realise it might not be true."
Frederick felt something crack in his chest, some wall he had built so long ago, he had forgotten it was there. Some defence hehad maintained so carefully that he had convinced himself it was actually him.
"That is..." He had to stop, clear his throat and start again. "That is a great deal to see from a carriage window."
"I notice things." A faint smile touched her lips. "It's something of a family trait."
"Miss Fletcher…"
"Lydia." She said it firmly, meeting his eyes with something that looked almost like a challenge. "If you're going to be Frederick, then I should be Lydia. Fair is fair."
"Lydia." Her name felt strange in his mouth. Unfamiliar. Like a word in a language he had never learned. "I don't know how to do this."
"Do what?"
"This. Talking. Being... seen." He gestured vaguely at the space between them. "I was taught that dukes don't explain themselves. Don't apologise. Don't show weakness or uncertainty or any of the things that make people actually human. I was taught to be above it all. And I believed it, because believing it was easier than acknowledging that I was just…"
"Lonely," she finished for him. "Yes. I thought so."
"The village hates me."
"The village doesn't know you."
"Does that matter? The result is the same."
Lydia was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was thoughtful. "Do you know how I came to live with my uncle?"
"No."
"My parents died when I was seven. Fever. They went within days of each other, and I was left with nothing; no family, no home, no idea what would happen to me." She paused. "The village took me in. The whole village, not just my uncle. Everyone helped, and everyone cared. They didn't haveto because I wasn't their responsibility. But they did it anyway, because that's what community means."
"I don't see…"
"They did it," she interrupted gently, "because they knew my parents. Because my parents had been part of Ashwick, had given to Ashwick, had shown up for every fair and festival and crisis for years before I was born. The village helped me because my family had helped them first. That's how it works."
Frederick stared at her. "You're saying it's my fault. That they hate me because I haven't…"
"I'm saying that trust goes both ways. You can't expect people to care about someone who has never shown any interest in caring about them. It doesn't matter that you haven't hurt them; not actively hurting people isn't the same as actually being there for them. The absence matters too."
It was, Frederick realised, exactly what Boggins had been trying to tell him. Just stated more directly, without the comfortable buffer of irony.
