"You seem to be asking me things regardless of permission."
"Fair point. Why do you care?"
Frederick blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Chapter 5
"About the tenant. About the village. About any of this." She gestured broadly. "You're a duke. You could ignore us entirely, and it wouldn't make a whit of difference to your life. Why does it matter to you whether we like you or not?"
It was the kind of question no one had ever asked him, the kind of question that assumed his feelings were worth examining in the first place. Frederick found himself at a loss for words, which was unfamiliar territory.
"I don't know," he said finally. "I've been asking myself the same thing. My father certainly didn't care. He was content to be feared. He said respect followed fear, and love was for those too weak to demand respect."
"That sounds lonely."
"It was, and it is." He corrected himself without quite meaning to. "The truth is that I've spent thirty years being told that being liked doesn't matter. That a duke doesn't need to be liked. That needing to be liked is a weakness. And I believed it. I still half believe it."
"But?"
"But I watched you yesterday. The way the village people gathered after the carriage passed, the laughter, the conversation, the... warmth. And I realised I've never had that. Not once. Not with anyone." His voice was very quiet. "And I wondered what it would feel like to belong somewhere. To have people who knew you and cared about you and wanted you around."
Lydia felt something in her chest that she firmly refused to name.
"That's not weakness," she said. "That's being human."
"My father would disagree."
"Your father is dead."
The words hung in the air between them, blunt and true. Frederick looked at her sharply, and for a moment she thought she had gone too far; but then something in his expression shifted. Softened. Like ice beginning to melt at the edges.
"Yes," he said slowly. "I suppose he is."
Despite everything, Frederick felt that twitch at the corner of his mouth again. "I have been told I have a certain severity of expression."
"That's one word for it." But she was smiling now, a real smile that reached her eyes. "Another word might beintimidating.Another might beterrifying to small children."
"I don't mean to terrify children."
"I believe you. But meaning and effect aren't always the same thing."
They stood there for a moment, the space between them charged with something Frederick couldn't name. She had insulted him; mildly, but still. She had laughed at him, and she had presumed to explain his own failures to him like he were a slow student who needed guidance.
And somehow, impossibly, he didn't mind.
"The Harvest Fair," he said suddenly.
Lydia blinked. "What about it?"
"It's in three weeks. The village committee sent me an invitation. I was going to refuse."
"You always refuse."
"Yes. But…" He hesitated, then pushed forward. "What if I didn't? What if I attended?"
Something flickered in her expression. Surprise, maybe, or hope. Or just the particular wariness of someone who has been disappointed before and has learned to protect herself from it.
"Why would you do that?"
