Like a question, waiting to be answered.
He's a duke,she reminded herself firmly.Cold, proud, above us all. Everything they say he is.
And yet.
Those tight shoulders…….
What kind of man braced himself to drive through a village? What kind of fear required that level of defence against nothingmore threatening than disapproving looks and children's mockery?
But Lydia stared at the ceiling and wondered, and wondered, and eventually slept.
Her dreams, annoyingly, were full of ice.
Chapter 3
Some fifteen miles distant, in a house too large for its single occupant and yet somehow too small to contain his restlessness, Frederick Hawthorne was also failing to sleep.
This was not unusual. Sleep had never come easily to him; not as a child, when the nursery shadows had seemed full of criticisms waiting to be spoken; not as a young man, when the weight of impending responsibility had pressed down like a physical thing; and certainly not now, when the reality of that responsibility had proven even heavier than its anticipation.
He was in his study, because the study felt less empty than the bedroom. A fire burned in the grate despite the August warmth, because light was better than darkness and flickering movement was better than stillness. A book lay open on the desk before him; estate accounts, the endless arithmetic of rents and repairs and the complex machinery of keeping an old name solvent in a changing world.
He was not reading it.
He was thinking about a girl with soot on her face and steel in her spine.
This was inconvenient; this was inappropriate. This was exactly the kind of distraction his father had warned him about. The pull of attraction toward those beneath him, the weakness that had destroyed better men than Frederick.
Your grandfather,his father had said once, in one of his rare moments of personal disclosure,nearly married a farmer's daughter. Can you imagine? The Duke of Corvenwell, leg-shackled to a woman who smelled of hay. It would have been the end of the family. The absolute end.
Frederick had been fourteen. He had nodded solemnly and filed away the lesson: attachment was dangerous, particularlyattachment to the wrong sort of person. It was better to remain detached, better to remain alone. It was better to be ice than fire, because ice held its shape while fire consumed everything it touched.
He had followed this philosophy faithfully for fifteen years. He had kept his distance from everyone, noble and common alike, and if this meant loneliness, well, loneliness was preferable to destruction.
So why couldn't he stop thinking about her?
She hadn't bowed, she hadn't curtsied, and she hadn't shown any of the deference that his position supposedly commanded. She had justlookedat him, and in her looking there had been something he couldn't identify, something that felt almost like…
Interest. Genuine interest, not the sycophantic variety that he occasionally encountered from those seeking favour, but something simpler and more complicated at the same time. As if she actually wanted to understand him. As if understanding him might matter.
"Your Grace appears troubled."
Frederick didn't jump, Hawthornes didn't jump, but he did look up sharply to find Boggins standing in the doorway with a tray bearing what appeared to be brandy and a distinctly judgmental expression.
"I did not ring for you."
"No, Your Grace. You did not." Boggins crossed the room and set the tray on the desk with the precise movements of a man who had done this exact thing a thousand times before. "I took the liberty of anticipating Your Grace's needs. The fire suggested extended wakefulness. Extended wakefulness suggests either deep thought or digestive complaint. As Your Grace consumed very little at dinner, I concluded the former."
"Your powers of deduction are, as always, remarkable."
"I do endeavour to give satisfaction, Your Grace." Boggins poured the brandy with surgical precision, exactly two fingers, the way Frederick preferred, and set the glass within reach. "Though I confess I had an ulterior motive in attending upon Your Grace."
"Did you?"
"Indeed. The household is talking."
Frederick's jaw tightened. "The household is always talking."
"True, Your Grace. But tonight, they are talking about the passage through the village. More specifically, they are talking about Your Grace's reaction to it. Several of the younger maids have been talking about your decision to pass through the village today. They had not expected it, and they have concluded."
