He stood there, gasping, water streaming from his hair and clothes, and tried to make sense of his surroundings.
They were in a cottage. Small, clearly abandoned, but intact; the roof held, the walls were solid, and there was even a fireplace with what looked like the remnants of old logs. The single room was furnished with the ghosts of habitation: a broken chair, a table missing one leg, a mattress that looked like it had been home to mice for several generations.
"What is this place?" he asked, when he had enough breath to speak.
"Old groundskeeper's cottage." Lydia was wringing water from her hair, which had come loose from its pins and was hanging in wet ropes around her face. "It's been empty for years; the last groundskeeper died before I was born, and the manor never replaced him."
"The manor. My manor."
"Unless another duke is lurking about that I don't know of."
Frederick looked around the cottage with new eyes, seeing not just the decay but the neglect—his neglect, or at least theneglect of his estate. "I should have.......Someone should be living here. Using this."
"Probably." Lydia found a relatively dry spot near the fireplace and sat down, pulling her wet skirts around her. "But that's a problem for another day. Right now, we need to wait out the storm."
The rain showed no signs of abating. If anything, it was getting heavier. Frederick could hear it hammering on the roof, and he could see it through the single small window. They weren't going anywhere for a while.
He looked at the fireplace. Then at the broken chair. Then back at the fireplace.
"We should probably have a fire," he said. "You're soaked."
"So are you."
"Yes, but I'm…" He stopped himself before he could say something about dukes not minding discomfort, which would have been both untrue and insufferably pompous. "I'm concerned about you catching a cold."
Lydia raised an eyebrow. "I've survived twenty-four years without a duke to worry about my health. I think I shall manage."
"Nevertheless."
He crossed to the broken chair and examined it. The wood was old and dry, perfect for burning. With some effort, he managed to break it into manageable pieces, piling them in the fireplace with what he hoped was reasonable competence. He'd never actually built a fire before; there had always been servants for that, but the principle seemed straightforward enough.
Finding something to light it with was another matter.
"There's a tinderbox on the mantle," Lydia said, watching him with an expression that mixed amusement with something softer. "Behind the candle stub."
He found it; a simple metal box containing flint, steel, and char cloth. He'd seen fires lit before. He understood the theory. Actually making the sparks fall upon the char cloth and take hold was considerably more difficult than it appeared.
After several minutes of increasingly frustrated attempts, Lydia rose and crossed to where he knelt by the fireplace.
"May I?"
He handed her the tinderbox, trying not to feel like a failure.
She struck the flint against the steel with practised ease, catching a spark on the char cloth almost immediately. Within moments, she had coaxed the spark into a flame, transferred it to a twist of dry grass she'd found somewhere, and used that to light the kindling he'd prepared.
"You've done this before," he observed.
"I work at a forge. I light fires every day." She handed the tinderbox back to him. "It takes practice. Don't feel bad."
"I don't feel bad. I feel......Inadequate." He watched the flames catch and spread, filling the small space with warmth and flickering light. "I'm one and thirty, and I've never lit a fire. I've never cooked a meal or drawn my own bath or done any of the thousand things that normal people do without thinking. I've had people serving me my entire life, and I don't know how to do anything useful."
"You know how to run an estate."
"I know how to review ledgers and sign documents. That's not the same thing." He sat back on his heels, staring into the flames. "When I was a child, I used to wonder what it would be like to be one of the village boys I saw from my window. They seemed so free. They could run and play and get dirty without anyone lecturing them about the dignity of their position. They had mothers who hugged them in public and fathers who taught them trades. They belonged somewhere."
"You belonged somewhere, too."
"I belonged to a title. That's different." He glanced at her, then away. "I'm sorry. You're cold and wet and trapped in an abandoned cottage with a duke having an existential crisis. This isn't what you expected, I suppose."
