"That's..." She shook her head. "I want to go back in time and find that boy and give him a hug."
"He would have had no idea what to do with a hug. He'd probably have frozen solid and made everything awkward."
"I'd have hugged him anyway."
The fire had burned low, casting long shadows across the cottage floor. The rain had softened from a deluge to a steady patter—still too heavy to venture out in, but no longer sounding like the end of the world.
"Can I ask you something?" Frederick said.
"You seem to be doing that regardless of permission."
"Indeed." He turned to face her more fully. "When you think about the future, your future, what do you see?"
It was a dangerous question. Too intimate, too soon. But the strange cocoon of the storm and the firelight and the hours of conversation had created something between them, a fragile bridge that could bear more weight than he'd expected.
Lydia was quiet for a moment, considering. "I used to see the forge," she said finally. "Taking over from my uncle when he gets too old to work. Becoming the village blacksmith. Marrying someone, a farmer, maybe, or a tradesman, and having children who would grow up the way I did, surrounded by community."
"And now?"
"Now I don't know." She met his eyes. "You've complicated things, Frederick Hawthorne."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Complications aren't always bad. Sometimes they're just... the universe telling you that your original plan was too small."
"That's a remarkably philosophical way of looking at it."
"I've had a lot of time to think. Storms are good for that." She glanced toward the window, where the rain was still falling in silver sheets. "What about you? What do you see when you think about your future?"
"Until recently? Nothing." The admission came out more starkly than he'd intended. "I saw the estate, the duties, the endless march of days that all looked the same. I saw myself getting older and colder and more alone. I assumed I'd eventually marry someone appropriate; a lord's daughter, probably, someone who would understand the role and wouldn't expect anything from me emotionally. We'd have children, because that's what one does, and I'd raise them the way I was raised, because I don't know any other way."
"That sounds..." Lydia searched for a word.
"Empty? Depressing? Soul-crushing?"
"I was going to say 'lonely.' But those are appropriate too."
"It would have been lonely. It would have been exactly the life my father had, which I think was precisely the point." He stared into the dying embers. "But then I rode through a village and saw a woman at a forge, and she looked at me, actually looked at me, not through me or around me, and something shifted. I don't know what and I don't know why. I just know that suddenly the future I'd resigned myself to seemed unbearable. And that's why I'm here, sitting in an abandoned cottage in a rainstorm, telling you things I've never told anyone."
"Why me?" The question was soft, almost wondering. "Of all the women you must have met, ladies, heiresses, womenwho would have been appropriate, why a blacksmith's niece who insulted you to your face?"
"Because you insulted me to my face." He turned to look at her, trying to put into words something he was only beginning to understand. "Do you know how many people have agreed with me my entire life? How many servants and tenants and social equals have nodded and smiled and told me exactly what I wanted to hear? Hundreds. Thousands. And none of them saw me. They saw the title, the money, the power, and they tailored themselves to fit what they thought I wanted."
"And I didn't."
"You told me I looked like stone. You told me I was tired and alone. You told me my father was dead and I could stop trying to please him." He shook his head. "No one has ever spoken to me like that. With honesty. With the assumption that I could handle the truth."
"Most people assume dukes can't handle the truth."
"Most people are right. Most dukes can't." He reached out and took her hand again, marvelling at how natural the gesture had become. "But I'm trying to be different. I'm trying to be the kind of person who deserves honesty. And you make me believe that might actually be possible."
The rain had slowed even further; barely a drizzle now. The storm was passing.
"We should probably go soon," Lydia said, though she made no move to stand. "People will wonder."
"Let them wonder."
"That is easily said. You're a duke. I'm the one who will have to answer questions about where I was and who I was with."
