Mrs Wrightly, who had been nursing a cup of tea in her usual corner, spoke up for the first time.
"We don't know anything yet. We don't know who this visitor is or what they want. Best not to borrow trouble before it arrives."
"Easy for you to say. You weren't there when the merchant's daughter from Bristol came here, trying to poach our best customers with her fancy city prices."
"That was fifteen years ago, Daniel."
"And I still remember how we sent her back." Daniel, the miller’s son, grown now but still bearing grudges from his childhood, crossed his arms. "We look after our own in Ashwick. Always have and always will."
"Looking after our own doesn't mean starting fights with aristocrats," Mrs Wrightly said firmly. "It means being therewhen we're needed. Supporting Lydia if things go wrong. Showing her she's not alone." She set down her teacup with a decisive click. "It does not mean borrowing Robert's hammer and assaulting anyone who arrives in a fancy carriage."
"It seems like a missed opportunity, if you ask me."
"No one asked you, Daniel."
Mr Holloway, who had been listening to this exchange while polishing glasses behind the bar, cleared his throat.
"Heard something else tonight. From Martha, who had it from the baker's wife, who heard it from someone at the manor."
The room went quiet. Second-hand gossip was one thing; news from the manor itself was quite another.
"The visitor is the duke's aunt. His mother's sister. A viscountess from London."
"What does she want?"
"What do they always want? To put a stop to anything that doesn't fit their precious notions of propriety." Mr Holloway set down his glass and leaned on the bar. "She's here to make the duke marry someone suitable. Someone with a title and a fortune and an education at one of those fancy finishing schools."
"And what about Lydia?"
"What do you think? She's a blacksmith's niece. In their world, she's nothing. Less than nothing. A problem to be disposed of."
The silence that followed was thick with anger and concern and something that might have been fear.
"He won't do it," said Molly's mother; Margaret Whitmore, who had served the duke pie at the fair and watched him discover wonder for the first time. "The duke, I mean. He won't just abandon her. Not after everything."
"How do you know?"
"I saw his face when he looked at her. At the fair, and again tonight, when he was walking to Thomas' house. That's not the face of a man who's playing games." She shook her head. "He loves her. Really loves her. I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Your reputation for making excellent pie?"
"My reputation for reading people. Which is considerably better than my reputation for pie, though both are formidable."
There was a ripple of reluctant laughter, and some of the tension in the room eased.
"So, what do we do?" Robert asked. "Just wait and see what happens?"
"What else can we do? This isn't our fight; not yet. It's between the duke and his family." Mrs Wrightly rose, gathering her shawl around her shoulders. "But if it becomes our fight, if anyone tries to hurt Lydia or her uncle or any of us, then we'll respond. Together. As a village."
"And until then?"
"Until then, we watch. We listen. We make sure Lydia knows she's not alone." She paused at the door. "And we pray that the duke is the man she believes him to be. Because if he's not, if he breaks her heart, then Heaven help him. Because we certainly won't."
She left, and the public house fell back into its usual rhythm of drinking and gossip and speculation. But underneath the familiar sounds, there was a new current; a sense of waiting, of anticipation, of a community preparing itself for whatever might come.
In Ashwick, they looked after their own.
They always had, and they always would.
