***
Three days later, Frederick arrived in the village at precisely two o'clock.
Lydia knew this because she had been watching the ridge road since noon, despite telling herself firmly that she was doing no such thing. She was simply taking her time with the morning's work. Simply enjoying the fresh air outside the forge. Simply happening to glance toward the manor every few minutes for no particular reason.
When she finally saw him, a lone figure on horseback, no carriage, no servants, just a man riding toward the village like any ordinary person, her heart did something complicated in her chest.
He had come. He had actually come.
She smoothed her dress, her second-best, blue cotton, nothing fancy but clean and presentable, and walked toward theCrossed Keys, where they had agreed to meet. The villagers watched her pass with the barely concealed curiosity that was their speciality. By tonight, everyone would know that the blacksmith's niece had gone to meet the duke. The gossip would be insufferable.
But she found she didn't care.
Frederick was dismounting when she reached the inn, handing his horse's reins to a stable boy with a murmured wordof thanks. He was wearing a green coat she hadn't seen before, a good color for him, bringing out something warm in his usually severe features, and boots that were impractical for the October mud but probably cost more than her uncle earned in a month.
He turned and saw her, and his face did something extraordinary. Not quite a smile, he seemed to struggle with those, but a softening, an opening, as if her presence had unlocked something that was usually kept carefully closed.
"Miss Fletcher." He crossed to where she stood, moving with the careful deliberation of a man who was afraid of making a wrong step. "You came."
"I said I would."
"I know. I just…" He stopped, visibly collecting himself. "I wasn't certain you'd actually want to. After everything."
"After you kissed my hand and asked to call on me properly? After you spent three weeks finding excuses to ride through the village at times when I might be visible?" She raised an eyebrow. "What exactly would have changed my mind?"
He had the grace to flush. "You noticed that?"
"The whole village noticed that. You're not particularly subtle, Your Grace."
"Frederick. Please. I thought we'd established that."
"We had. I was being formal for the benefit of the seventeen people currently watching us through various windows."
He glanced around, suddenly aware of the attention they were attracting. Curtains twitched, faces appeared and disappeared, and theCrossed Keys'front door opened slightly, then closed again.
"Perhaps we should proceed to the cobbler's," he suggested. "Before we become even more of a spectacle."
"The cobbler is three doors down. We'll be a spectacle the entire way."
"Then we might as well give them something worth watching." He offered his arm; a formal gesture, almost courtly, the kind of thing a gentleman did when escorting a lady. "Shall we?"
Lydia looked at his arm, then at his face and then looked at the seventeen windows full of curious eyes.
She took his arm nonetheless, and they started walking.
The cobbler's shop was a small, cluttered space that smelled of leather and wood polish and something indefinably ancient. Mr Marsh himself was a wiry man in his sixties, with sharp eyes and nimble fingers and an air of permanent scepticism that suggested he had seen everything the world had to offer and remained unimpressed.
"Your Grace," he said, the honorific landing somewhere between acknowledgement and accusation. "I heard you'd be coming."
"Rumour spreads with remarkable speed."
"In a village this size, rumour has no distance to go; it is instantly known to all." The cobbler looked Frederick up and down with professional assessment, his gaze lingering on the mud-stained boots Frederick was currently wearing. "What kind of boots are you after?"
"Practical ones. For walking in mud and attending village functions. That sort of thing."
"That sort of thing." Mr Marsh's tone suggested that he had opinions about dukes who suddenly developed interests in village functions. "Those boots you're wearing now…London work?"
"Yes."
