"The Fletcher girl is there. In the doorway."
Frederick's gaze shifted before he could stop it, drawn by something in Boggins' observation; a quality of particular attention that the valet usually reserved for noting stains on Frederick's cravat or dust on his boots.
She was there. Standing in the entrance to the blacksmith's forge, her frame silhouetted against the orange glow of the fire within. Soot smudged her jaw and dusted her apron, and herdark hair had escaped its pins in a way that suggested she had better things to do than worry about appearances. Her arms were crossed, not in hostility, he realised, but in something more like consideration.
She waslookingat him.
Not glaring, like the baker. Not turning away, like the women. Not mocking, like the children. She was simply observing. Assessing. Her head tilted slightly to one side, her brow furrowed, as if he were a puzzle she was attempting to solve and finding the pieces unexpectedly complicated.
Their eyes met through the carriage window.
Frederick should have looked away immediately. He should have returned to his studied indifference, his practised distance, his way of being above, that kept him safe from the wanting and the wishing and the simple hope that someone, somewhere, might see past the ice to whatever remained beneath.
He held her gaze instead. Two seconds… Three… An eternity in the language of meaningful looks.
She did not flinch, she did not bow, and she did not curtsy or simper or show any of the deference his position supposedly commanded. She justlookedat him, and in her looking there was something that felt almost like…
Recognition. As if she could see something the others had missed.
Frederick looked away first.
He told himself it was because she was beneath his notice. A blacksmith's niece, probably. Certainly, no one of consequence. The Hawthornes of Corvenwell did not concern themselves with the assessing gazes of village girls who smelled of smoke and iron.
He told himself this, and if his heart was beating slightly faster than before, that was simply the heat of the day.
"Interesting," Boggins murmured, so quietly that Frederick could pretend not to have heard.
The forge fell behind them, and the village continued its parade of hostility. Frederick resumed his rigid posture, his rigid expression and his rigid determination not to care about any of it.
But his hands, beneath their immaculate gloves, were clammy and clenched into fists.
Chapter 2
The carriage passed, and Ashwick exhaled.
It was remarkable, Lydia Fletcher thought, how much air the village seemed to hold when the duke was near; as if everyone collectively drew breath to brace themselves and only released it once the danger had passed. Not that the Duke of Corvenwell was dangerous, precisely. He had never raised a hand to anyone, never evicted a family, never done much of anything at all except exist in that great cold house on the hill and occasionally pass through their midst like a winter wind that didn't understand the calendar.
But absence could be its own kind of cruelty, and indifference could wound as sharply as action. And the duke, by all accounts, had perfected both.
Lydia turned back to the forge, where her uncle Thomas was pretending he hadn't been watching the spectacle with everyone else. He was a broad man, her uncle, with arms like oak branches and a beard that had gone more silver than brown in the years since her parents died. He had taken her in at seven, raised her alongside iron and fire, and taught her that honest work was its own reward even when the world tried to convince you otherwise.
"Back to work, then," he said, not looking up from the horseshoe he was shaping. Sparks flew with each strike of his hammer, bright and brief against the forge's deeper glow. "That hinge set won't finish itself."
"I know." Lydia retrieved her own hammer from its hook, rolling up her sleeves. The familiar weight settled into her palm like a handshake from an old friend. "Uncle Thomas?"
"Mm."
"Have you ever actually spoken to him? The duke, I mean."
Her uncle's hammer paused mid-swing; barely a hesitation, but noticeable to someone who had spent seventeen years learning to read his silences. "I can't say I have. His steward handles the business. He always has, as far back as I can remember."
"So, we don't actually know what he's like. As a person."
Now Thomas did look up, his weathered face creased with something between confusion and concern. "What's this about, girl?"
Lydia shrugged, focusing on her work with perhaps more intensity than the task required. "Nothing. I was just thinking."
"Dangerous habit, that."
