"I'm always careful."
"I know. Sometimes too careful." He released her and stepped back. "Maybe it's time to be a little reckless."
"Uncle Thomas!" She laughed through her tears. "Are you encouraging me to throw caution to the wind?"
"I'm encouraging you to live. To take chances. To let yourself want things, even if wanting them is terrifying." His eyes were bright with emotion. "Your mother gave up everything for love. Your father risked everything for love. It's in your blood, Lydia. You can fight it if you want to, but eventually, it's going to win."
"Now I definitely need to buy better wine. I can't serve a duke that swill from the public house."
"I told him not to bring anything ostentatious."
"Good. Because if he shows up with a case of French champagne, I'll know he's not paying attention." Thomas picked up his hammer again, but his expression had softened. "Six o'clock, you said?"
"Six o'clock."
"Then we'd better start planning and preparing."
Lydia crossed the forge and hugged him again—fiercely, gratefully, with all the love she hadn't known how to express until she'd almost lost everything.
"Thank you, Uncle Thomas."
"For what?"
"For trusting me. Even when I'm probably being foolish."
"You're not foolish. You're brave. There's a difference." He kissed the top of her head. "Now go get cleaned up. You smell like rain and old cottages, and you've got a dinner to plan."
She went, leaving him alone with his forge and his thoughts and the complicated feelings that came with watching someone he loved step into the unknown.
***
In the village, the gossip machine was already running at full speed.
"They were gone for hours," Mrs Thornton reported to the assembled crowd at theCrossedKeys. "Hours! In that storm!"
"Where did they go?"
"No one knows. But she came back looking like a drowned cat, and he rode off toward the manor like nothing had happened."
"Suspicious."
"Very suspicious."
"Might have just been sheltering from the rain."
"For hours? In each other's company? Without a chaperone?"
"When I was young, sheltering from rain with a handsome man led to my first husband."
"Your first husband was a blackguard who left you for a woman in York."
"That was later. The beginning was very romantic."
Old Mr Wrightly, who had been nursing the same ale for the better part of an hour, cleared his throat meaningfully.
"I saw them earlier," he said. "At the cobbler's. He was getting fitted for boots."
"Boots?" Mrs Thornton's eyebrows rose. "What kind of boots?"
