It seemed impossible. It probably was impossible.
But he went anyway.
***
In Ashwick, the morning had dawned bright and promising, the kind of late-summer day that seemed specifically designed to make harvest fairs successful. The sky was that particular shade of blue that painters despaired of capturing accurately, and the air carried the mingled scents of fresh bread, roasting meat, and the indefinable sweetness of a community preparing to celebrate itself.
Lydia had been awake since before sunrise, helping Mrs Wrightly set up her jam stall and pretending, very badly, that she wasn't watching the ridge road.
"You're doing it again," Mrs Wrightly observed, not unkindly.
"Doing what?"
"Looking toward the manor. You've done it approximately seventeen times in the past hour."
"I'm looking at the sky. Checking for rain."
"Blue skies do not suggest rain, dear. And you should not need seventeen times to realise that."
Lydia felt heat rise to her cheeks and focused very intently on arranging jam jars. All of them were suddenly fascinating. "I don't know what you mean."
"Mm-hmm." Mrs Wrightly's tone suggested that she knew exactly what she meant and was choosing to be merciful about it. "The duke won't come, you know. He never does."
"I know."
"Even if he wanted to, and I can't imagine why he would, he wouldn't lower himself. It's not in his nature."
"I know."
"So there's no point watching for him."
"I wasn't…" Lydia stopped herself. There was no point in lying; Mrs Wrightly had known her since she was a child covered in mud and asking too many questions. "I just thought maybe this year would be different."
"Why would this year be different?"
Because I talked to him. Because he asked me what I saw when I looked at him, and I told him the truth, and he didn't send me away. Because he said he would try.
But she couldn't say any of that. She couldn't explain the conversation in the manor, the strange vulnerability she'd witnessed in a man everyone assumed had no vulnerability at all. The village would think she was mad, or worse, they would think she was besotted, which she wasn't; she absolutely wasn't, she had merely had a conversation with a lonely man and suggested he might consider being less lonely.
That was all. That was absolutely all.
"No reason," she said instead. "Just a feeling."
Mrs Wrightly gave her a long, considering look; the kind that made Lydia feel seven years old again, caught with her hand in the jam pot. Then she shook her head and returned to her stall arrangement.
"Feelings are dangerous things, Lydia Fletcher. Especially where dukes are concerned."
"I don't have feelings about the duke."
"I didn't say you did. I said feelings are dangerous." Mrs Wrightly adjusted a jar with unnecessary precision. "Your mother had feelings once. About a man who wasn't suitable. Fortunately, she came to her senses and married your father instead."
"I didn't know that."
"There are many things you don't know, child. Most of them are kept from you for your own protection." The older woman's expression softened. "I'm not trying to be cruel. I'm trying to keep you from being hurt. The duke, even if he's not as terrible as we've all assumed, is still a duke. And you're still a blacksmith's niece. Some gaps can't be bridged, no matter how much we might wish otherwise."
Lydia wanted to argue. She wanted to say that she wasn't trying to bridge any gaps, that she was merely curious, that her interest in Frederick Hawthorne was purely.....What? Academic? Humanitarian? Neither word seemed quite right.
"I understand," she said instead, because it was easier than explaining.
