Two more days, she thought.Two more days until his aunt's deadline.
She didn't know what would happen when the deadline arrived. Helena had made threats, implied consequences, and promised to make life difficult for everyone involved. But threats were just words until they became actions. And Lydia had survived worse than a viscountess's displeasure.
Hadn't she?
The fire was burning steadily now, the forge warming up for the day's work. Lydia selected a piece of iron from the stockpile and set it in the coals to heat. There were orders to fill; hingesfor a farmer in the next village, nails for a building project at the church, and a set of fireplace tools for a local widow. Ordinary work. Useful work. The kind of work that kept a person grounded.
She was reaching for her hammer when she heard the carriage.
The sound was unmistakable; the clatter of hooves on cobblestone, the creak of wheels, the particular quality of expensive springs on uneven roads. Not a farm cart or a delivery wagon but something finer. Something that didn't belong in a village street at ten in the morning.
Lydia set down her hammer and moved to the doorway.
The carriage had stopped directly outside the forge. It was black, elegant, with silver fittings and a crest on the door that Lydia didn't recognise. The horses were matched greys, perfectly groomed, their breath steaming in the cool morning air.
The door opened, and Lady Helena Blackmore descended.
She was exactly as Lydia had imagined from Frederick’s descriptions; silver-haired, severe, dressed in black silk that spoke of wealth and breeding and absolute certainty. She moved with the particular grace of someone who had spent sixty years learning to command any room she entered.
Her eyes swept the forge, the soot-stained walls, the tools hanging from hooks, the fire burning in the hearth, with an expression of polite distaste. This was not a world she understood. Not a world she wanted to understand.
And yet she was here.
"Miss Fletcher," she said. Her voice was cool, measured, without obvious hostility. "I hope I'm not interrupting."
"You are, actually." Lydia didn't move from the doorway. "I have work to do."
"This won't take long. I merely wished to speak with you. Woman to woman, as it were."
"We have nothing to say to each other."
"On the contrary." Helena's eyes met hers. "I believe we have everything to say. The question is whether you're willing to hear it."
Lydia considered telling her to leave. She considered turning her back and returning to her work, pretending the viscountess didn't exist.
But curiosity won out over caution. And fear, if she was honest.
"Five minutes," she said. "Then I have orders to fill."
"Five minutes will be sufficient."
They stood on opposite sides of the forge, the fire between them. Helena had declined to sit, not that there was anywhere to sit, really, unless you counted the anvil, and seemed remarkably unbothered by the heat and smoke.
"I'll be direct," she said. "I don't believe in wasting time with pleasantries."
"Neither do I."
"Good." Helena's lips curved in something that was almost a smile. "Then we understand each other."
"I doubt that very much."
"Perhaps." Helena moved closer to the fire, studying the flames with an expression Lydia couldn't read. "I came here expecting to find a fortune hunter. Someone who had identified my nephew as vulnerable and was exploiting that vulnerability for personal gain."
"I'm not…"
"I know. I realised that within minutes of watching you. You're not interested in his money or his title. You're interested in him." Helena's voice was almost admiring. "That makes you considerably more dangerous."
"I'm not dangerous."
