"Maybe both."
"Maybe." Mrs Wrightly sighed. "My grandmother used to say that love is like fire; it can warm your home or burn it down, depending on how you tend it."
"And which do you think this is?"
"I think it's too early to tell. I think they don't know themselves yet." She sipped her tea. "But I also think that girl has good instincts, and she's not the type to lose her head over a title. If she sees something in him... Maybe there's something there to see."
"That's remarkably charitable, coming from you."
"I'm old, Robert. I've seen enough to know that people can surprise you." She set down her cup and rose to leave. "I just hope, for both of them, that this surprise is a good one."
The public house fell into contemplative silence after she left. Thomas finished his ale, nodded to the room, and departed to prepare his home for the most unusual dinner guest it had ever hosted.
Behind him, the speculation continued; quieter now, more thoughtful. The village was reserving judgment, but it was watching. Always watching.
That was what villages did.
***
That night, in two very different houses, two very different people lay awake thinking about tomorrow.
Frederick stared at the ceiling of his enormous bedroom and tried to remember the last time he'd looked forward to anything the way he was looking forward to dinner with a blacksmith and his niece.
He couldn't.
His whole life had been a series of events to be endured rather than anticipated. Balls he attended because he was expected to. Dinners with people he didn't care about, discussing topics that didn't interest him. An endless parade of obligations dressed up as social occasions.
But tomorrow was different. Tomorrow was something he wanted. Someone he wanted to know better, a connection he wanted to deepen, a possibility he wanted to explore.
It was terrifying, exhilarating and entirely new.
He thought about the cottage, about the warmth of the fire and the sound of rain on the roof and Lydia's face in the flickering light. He thought about the things he'd told her, secrets he'd never shared with anyone, vulnerabilities he'd spent a lifetime learning to hide. And she hadn't flinched, she hadn't judged. She had just listened, understood, and shared her own wounds in return.
That was what he'd been missing, he realised. Not just connection, but reciprocity. Not just being seen, but seeing in return. A relationship where both people gave and both people received, where vulnerability was met with vulnerability rather than exploitation.
He didn't know what would happen tomorrow. He didn't know if this strange, fragile thing between Lydia and him would grow into something lasting or collapse under the weight of their different worlds. He didn't know if the village would accept him, or if his own class would shun him for reaching below hisstation, or if any of the thousand things that could go wrong would go wrong.
But for the first time in his life, he was willing to find out.
That had to count for something.
He turned onto his side, facing the window where moonlight was beginning to filter through the clouds. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would sit at a blacksmith's table and eat whatever food was placed before him and try to be the kind of man who deserved the chance he'd been given.
Tomorrow, everything might change.
Or nothing might change.
Either way, he would have tried. And trying, truly trying, with his whole heart, was more than he'd ever done before.
Chapter 12
"The green, Your Grace. We discussed this."
"I know we discussed it. I'm having second thoughts."
"Second thoughts are for people who have time to indulge them. You are expected at the blacksmith's house in forty-seven minutes, and you are currently standing in your undergarments debating the merits of various coat colours." Boggins held up the green coat with the patience of a saint. "The green. It brings out your eyes. It suggests someone being approachable. It is not the navy that your father would have chosen, which I suspect is half the point."
Frederick took the coat, put it on, looked at himself in the mirror and saw a man who was about to do something unprecedented and terrifying and possibly wonderful.
