"A letter! A letter expressing the duke's'regrets for the inconvenience'and reminding the miller that his rent was still due on the quarter day. Can you imagine?"
"To be fair," Lydia ventured carefully, "we don't know that the duke himself wrote that letter. Stewards often…"
"The duke is responsible for his steward," Mrs Wrightly said firmly. "If the steward is cold, it's because the master is colder. That's how these things work."
Lydia subsided, taking a long sip from her cup.
"My sister worked up at the house for a time," Mrs Holloway continued. She had said this approximately once a week for the past three years, but the audience never tired of it because it represented the closest thing any of them had to intelligence from behind enemy lines. "She said the staff are terrified of him. Terrified! They're not allowed to speak unless spoken to, not allowed to make noise, not allowed toexisttoo loudly in case it disturbs His Grace's precious sensibilities."
"What does he do all day?" Someone asked. "In that great empty house?"
"Nothing and everything. Who knows?" Mrs Holloway shrugged expressively. "My sister said he eats alone in a dining room meant for forty. Can you imagine? Forty chairs, all empty, and him at the head of the table like a king without subjects."
Lydia thought of this image, the long, polished table, the ranks of vacant seats, the single figure at the end, and felt something twist in her chest that she chose not to examine too closely.
"It's sad, really," she said, before she could stop herself.
Twelve heads turned toward her with varying degrees of surprise.
"Sad?" Mrs Wrightly's eyebrows rose toward her hairline. "Sad for who, exactly? He's a duke, Lydia. He has more money than this entire village will earn in ten generations. If he eats alone, it's because he chooses to."
"I just meant…"
"He could invite people. He could host dinners, balls, whatever the nobility does." Mrs Wrightly was warming to her theme now, her voice rising to carry across the crowded room. "He could open his doors to the community that has existed in his shadow for three hundred years. He could be aneighbour. But he doesn't. He chooses not to. And that's not sad, Lydia. That's selfishness."
The murmurs of agreement were louder now, more emphatic, and Lydia felt herself flush.
"I didn't mean…"
"What did you mean, then?"
She should have let it go. She should have smiled and nodded and admitted that she'd misspoken. It was what the situation called for; the graceful retreat, the acknowledgement that the village wisdom was correct, and her momentary sympathy was misplaced.
But something stubborn in Lydia, the same something that had made her learn the forge despite being a girl, that had made her turn down three perfectly reasonable marriage proposals because she wasn't ready to give up her independence, refused to yield.
"I meant that we don't actuallyknowhim," she said. "We know his father. We know stories about his father, passed down and embroidered until they might as well be fairy tales. We know that he doesn't visit and doesn't write, and doesn't seem to care. But we don't knowwhy. We've never asked."
The silence that followed was the particular kind that Lydia had learned to recognise: the silence of a group deciding whether to be offended or merely puzzled.
"Why would we ask?" Mrs Holloway said, finally. "He's made it clear he wants nothing to do with us. Asking would be…"
"Beneath us," someone supplied.
"Exactly. We have our pride, same as he does."
"Do we, though?" Lydia heard herself say. "Or do we have our assumptions, which we've mistaken for knowledge, and our resentments, which we've polished until they shine like facts?"
This time, the silence was definitely offended.
"Lydia Fletcher." Mrs Wrightly's voice had gone very careful in a way that meant she was controlling her temper. "Your uncle raised you, and the village helped. We fed you when you were hungry. We clothed you when you were cold. We taught you your letters and your manners and everything you needed to know to be a proper woman of Ashwick. And now you sit here, defending the man who has never lifted afingerto help any of us?"
The guilt hit like a punch to the stomach. Lydia felt the blood rush to her face, then drain from it, leaving her pale and slightly sick.
"I wasn't…"
"You were." Mrs Wrightly’s expression softened, but only slightly. "I know you see good in everyone, girl. It's one of your best qualities and one of your worst. But some people do not have good in them. Some people are exactly what they appear to be. And the Duke of Corvenwell appears to be a cold, selfish man who cares nothing for anyone but himself. Perhaps, just this once, you might trust the judgment of the people who love you."
Lydia looked around the room at the faces she had known her entire life. The baker who had given her sweet rolls when she was small. The miller's wife, who had sat with her through fever. The old men who had taught her card games, the young oneswho had pulled her braids and the women who had clucked over her like a collective flock of very opinionated hens.
