"People are staring less."
"They're still staring."
"Yes, but now they're staring with curiosity instead of hostility. There's a difference."
He considered this. "I suppose I'll have to trust your expertise on the finer points of villager staring."
"It's something of a speciality. Growing up as the blacksmith's niece who insists on working the forge gives one ample opportunity to study the phenomenon."
They had reached a quiet corner of the fair, away from the crowds, shaded by the oak's spreading branches. Someone had set up benches here, and they sat, not too close but not too far, with the noise of the fair a gentle backdrop to whatever conversation might follow.
"Can I ask you something?" Frederick said.
"You seem to be asking me things regardless of permission."
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. "You've noticed that."
"You're not particularly subtle about it."
"No, I suppose I'm not." He was quiet for a moment, looking out at the fair; the stalls and the people and the cheerful chaos of a community celebrating itself. "How do you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Belong." He said the word like it was foreign, precious, something he'd only ever observed from a distance. "You move through this village like you're part of it. Like you fit. Like you've always fit and always will. How do you or how does anyone learn to do that?"
It was such a strange question. Such a sad one.
"I don't think I learned it," Lydia said slowly. "I think it was given to me. When my parents died, the village took me in. They made space for me. They decided I belonged, and after a while, I believed them."
"So it's not something you do. It's something that happens to you."
"Partially. But you have to let it happen. You have to be willing to accept the space they make." She turned to look at him, at his profile against the afternoon light. "You have to show up."
"I showed up today."
"Yes. You did." She let herself smile, just a little. "It's a start."
Frederick was quiet again. The silence between them wasn't uncomfortable; it wasn't the loaded silence of things unsaid, but the easier silence of two people who were still learning each other's rhythms.
"I had a governess," he said eventually. "When I was young. Before my mother died. She used to read stories to me about villages like this one. About fairs and festivals and people who gathered together for no reason except that they wanted to. I thought they were fairy tales."
"And now?"
"Now I'm not sure." He looked at her, really looked, with those grey-blue eyes that saw more than they pretended to. "Now I'm sitting on a bench at a Harvest Fair, covered in mud and gooseberries, talking to a woman who once told me my face looks like stone. And it doesn't feel like a fairy tale. It feels terrifying and wonderful and like something I might actually be allowed to have, if I don't ruin it."
Lydia's heart was doing something inconvenient again, and she firmly instructed it to stop.
"You haven't ruined it yet."
"The day isn't over."
"Then we'd better make the most of it." She stood, brushing off her skirts. "Come on. I promised to show you around, and we haven't even seen the sack race."
"The sack race?"
"It's exactly what it sounds like. Children get into sacks and race. It's deeply undignified and extremely entertaining."
Frederick rose, a little awkwardly, still clearly unused to the informality of the situation. "I'm not sure dukes are supposed to find things entertaining."
