"Boots. Or rather, my help in selecting boots. I offered at the fair. Three weeks ago."
"And he's only now taking you up on it?"
"He said he wanted to give me time. I told him 'not yet' when he asked to call on me properly." Lydia folded the note carefully, running her fingers along the creases. "I suppose this is his way of respecting that while still finding an excuse to see me."
Thomas was quiet for a moment, studying her face with the same attention he gave to metal that needed shaping.
"Are you going to say yes?"
"I don't know." But that wasn't true, and they both knew it. She had known the moment she'd read the note. She had known, if she was honest with herself, since the fair. Since he'd looked at her like she was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life. "Yes. I'm going to say yes."
"Then why are you still standing here?"
"Because I'm terrified." The admission came out before she could stop it. "Because he's a duke and I'm a blacksmith's niece, and this can only end badly, and I should know better than to let myself hope for anything else."
Thomas took the note from her hands, glanced at it, and handed it back.
"Sit down," he said. "I want to tell you something."
They sat on the bench outside the forge; the same bench where Lydia had spent countless hours as a child, watching her uncle work, learning the rhythms of fire and metal. The autumn sun was warm on their faces, and the village moved around them with its usual unhurried pace.
"I've never told you much about your mother," Thomas began. "Not the real things. Not the things that mattered."
"You've told me she was kind. That she loved my father. That she was happy here."
"All true. But not the whole truth." He leaned back against the forge wall, his eyes distant with memory. "Your mother was Eleanor Ashworth. Daughter of John Ashworth, who owned the largest trading company in Bristol. When she met your father, she was supposed to marry a banker's son. Very respectable. Very appropriate. The kind of match that families arrange when they want to consolidate wealth and position."
Lydia felt something shift in her chest. "I didn't know that."
"There's more." Thomas's voice roughened. "Your father was delivering ironwork to her family's warehouse. He saw her through a window, just a glimpse, just a moment, and he said later that he knew. He knew that she was the person he was supposed to find, the person he'd been waiting for his whole life without realising he was waiting."
"That sounds like a fairy tale."
"It does. But it happened." Thomas turned to look at her, his expression serious. "He proposed within a week of meeting her. I told him he was mad, that he didn't know anything about her, that she'd never survive in a village like this, that he was setting himself up for heartbreak. He just smiled and said he knew everything he needed to know."
"And she said yes?"
"She said yes. She gave up her inheritance, her family, and her father disowned her when she refused to break it off; shegave up her entire life. She went from silk dresses and servants to living above a forge, doing her own washing, learning to cook on a budget that would have made her old friends weep." Thomas's voice cracked slightly. "And she never regretted it. Not once. Not even at the end."
Lydia felt tears prick at her eyes. "Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because you're standing where she stood. Looking at a man from another world, wondering if it's possible to bridge the gap between you." He reached out and took her hand; a rare gesture from a man who expressed love through actions rather than words. "I'm not saying your situation is the same. The duke isn't a blacksmith's son, and you're not a merchant's daughter. The gap between you is wider, the obstacles higher. But the question is the same."
"What question?"
"Is he worth the risk?" Thomas squeezed her hand. "That's all any of us can ask when we're thinking about love. Not'is this safe?'Or'is this sensible?' But ‘is this personworth riskingeverythingfor?' Your mother decided your father was, and she never looked back."
"How do I know? How can I possibly know, after a few conversations and one afternoon at a fair?"
"You can't. Not for certain. That's what makes it a risk." He released her hand and stood, brushing dust from his trousers. "But I'll tell you this: I was wrong about your mother. I judged her before I knew her, I assumed that because she came from one world, she couldn't belong in another. She proved me wrong every day for many years. I'm not going to make that mistake again."
"You'd give the duke a chance?"
"I'd give you a chance to find out if he deserves one." Thomas picked up his hammer, then paused. "Write back tohim. Say yes to the boots. See what happens. But be careful, Lydia. Not because I don't trust your judgment, I do, but because hearts are fragile things, and they don't always survive being broken."
He went back into the forge, leaving her alone with the note and her thoughts and the terrifying, exhilarating possibility of what might come next.
She wrote her reply that afternoon. One word:Yes.
