"Now you're finding out you're not so different after all."
"Now I'm finding out that being different doesn't have to mean being alone." He took her hand under the table. "That's what you've given me, Lydia. Not just love, though I'll be eternally grateful for that, but belonging. A place to fit. People who see me as a person instead of a position."
"You've always been a person."
"I know. But I didn't always feel like one." His eyes met hers. "I feel like one now. With you."
The constable's daughter, a bold young woman of eighteen who was clearly the village gossip in training, asked if it was true that the manor had a ghost. She'd heard stories, she said, about strange noises in the night, about lights appearing in windows that should have been dark.
"I've never encountered one," Frederick admitted. "But the house is old, and old houses make noises. There may be something I haven't discovered yet."
"My grandmother said your grandfather saw a ghost. The ghost of a woman in white, weeping in the garden."
"I've heard that story. It's supposed to be the spirit of Lady Catherine Hawthorne—my great-great-great-grandmother."
"You don't seem like the kind of person who believes in ghosts."
"I don't seem like the kind of person who falls in love with blacksmiths' nieces, either. And yet here I am." He smiled. "Life is full of surprises."
Through it all, Lydia watched.
She watched Frederick adapt to each conversation, adjusting his manner without losing himself. Formal with those who expected formality, casual with those who preferred directness, patient with the elderly and gentle with the young. It wasn't the mask he'd worn when she first met him; that cold, distant facade designed to keep everyone at arm's length. This was something different. Warmer. More genuine.
He was learning, she realised. Learning to be human in a way his upbringing had never taught him. Learning to connect with people who didn't share his education or his background or his assumptions about the world.
And he was doing it for her.
The thought made something bloom in her chest; something warm and fierce and a little bit terrifying.
"You're staring at me," Frederick said, catching her eye.
"I'm admiring you."
"That's worse."
"Is it? I would think a duke would be used to admiration."
"I'm used to flattery. That's different." He turned to face her fully, his expression softening. "Flattery is about what people want from you. Admiration is about what you actually are."
"And what are you, actually?"
"I have no idea. I'm still learning." He took her hand under the table. "But I think, I hope, I'm becoming someone worth admiring."
"You already are."
"You're biased."
"Hopelessly," she agreed. "But I'm also right."
Chapter 18
The crowning moment of the evening came just before closing time.
Molly, who had been lurking near the door for the better part of an hour, too shy to approach but too curious to leave, finally worked up the courage to come to their table. She was clutching a slightly bedraggled bunch of wildflowers, which she thrust toward Frederick with the particular intensity of a six-year-old on a mission.
"These are for you," she said. "For your horses. I picked them myself."
Frederick accepted the flowers with appropriate gravity. "Thank you, Miss Molly. I'm sure both of them will be delighted."
