The portrait showed a young woman, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, with dark hair and laughing eyes. Unlike all the others, she was smiling; a real smile, full of warmth and mischief.
"Who is she?"
"Lady Elizabeth Hawthorne. My father's sister. My aunt." Frederick’s voice was soft. "She died before I was born, a riding accident, they said, though there were rumours it wasn't entirelyaccidental. She was betrothed to a man she didn't love, and one day she went riding alone and never came back."
"Frederick..."
"She was the only Hawthorne in three hundred years who smiled in her portrait. The painter said he'd never met anyone so full of life." He touched the frame gently. "Sometimes I come here just to look at her. To remember that it's possible. Being a Hawthorne and still being happy. Even if it didn't last."
Lydia felt her throat tighten. "You never told me about her."
"I don't tell anyone about her. She's... mine. The one ancestor I'm actually proud of, even though she never did anything the family would consider important." He turned to face her. "She reminds me that the cold isn't inevitable. That somewhere in the Hawthorne bloodline, there's a capacity for warmth. I just have to find it."
"I think you already have."
"Because of you."
"Not because of me. I didn't put anything in you that wasn't already there. I just…" She searched for the right words. "I just made it safe for you to let it out."
Frederick was quiet for a moment, looking at the portrait of his aunt.
"You don't look like them," she said suddenly.
"I have the same face."
"You have similar features. But they all look…" She searched for the right word. "Empty. Like portraits of portraits. You don't look like that."
"I used to. Before…" He stopped, glanced at her. "Before you."
"I didn't do anything."
"You did everything." He took her hand and led her further down the gallery. "This is my grandfather. He nearly married a farmer's daughter, apparently. My father used to tell me thestory as a warning; what happens when Hawthornes forget their station."
"What happened?"
"Nothing. His family intervened, the match was broken off, and he married someone appropriate instead. He had children, managed the estate, died bitter and alone." Frederick’s voice was carefully neutral, but Lydia could hear the undercurrent beneath it. "My father said it was a lesson in duty. I always thought it was a lesson in tragedy."
"What happened to her? The farmer's daughter?"
"I don't know. The story never included her fate. She was just an obstacle to be overcome, not a person with her own life and feelings." He turned away from the portrait, his jaw tight. "That's what my aunt sees when she looks at you. Not Lydia Fletcher, with her fire and her strength and her extraordinary ability to see through nonsense. Just an obstacle. A problem to be solved."
"And you? What do you see when you look at me?"
Frederick was quiet for a moment. Then he turned, took both her hands in his, and looked at her with an intensity that made her breath catch.
"I see the first person who ever made me feel like I was more than my name. The first person who looked at me and saw someone worth knowing, rather than something to be managed or appeased. I see someone brave and honest and completely unimpressed by everything that's supposed to impress people." His voice dropped. "I see someone I want to spend the rest of my life trying to deserve."
"Frederick..."
"Too much?"
"No. Just…" She swallowed hard. "Just right. Exactly right."
He kissed her, there in the gallery, surrounded by three hundred years of disapproving ancestors. It was gentle andfierce and everything in between, and when they finally broke apart, Lydia was fairly certain her legs had forgotten how to work.
"More tour?" Frederick asked.
"More tour," she agreed, her voice only slightly unsteady.
