“It’s not your choice to make.”
“No, it’s not. But you do not understand the consequences of the one you’re making.”
I made to protest, but he shushed me.
“You understand it intellectually. But the actual experience—it’s not the same. We’re different, you and me. Rumors have swirled around me since I was a schoolboy. Something about me, the way I am, people just know. But you, I never suspected. No one would. You could live out your days in town with a pretty wife and handsome children and not a single person would ever question you. You wouldn’t risk ostracization and hanging.”
“But I wouldn’t be happy.”
He sighed, the effort raising my chin on his chest. “There is a happiness to be found in security, in anonymity. It may not be perfection—but there is no perfection, not for people like us.”
“You’re determined then to never strive for perfect happiness?”
“Spoken like a man who has never struggled to blend in. A man with no concerns but his own.”
Fury found me in that moment—how dare he presume to know me? I shot upright. It was an awkward maneuver given the undersized, over-occupied bed.
“I have concerns. That you have not taken the time to know them does not mean that they do not exist,” I snapped.
“I didn’t—that is not what I meant.”
“Because I’m not a duke, I know nothing of responsibilities? Because what I am is not obvious to all, it is easy? You are tortured because you are seen by all, but no one sees me, has ever seen me, and that is its own kind of torture.”
“Tom, please…”
“I think you should return to your bed, Your Grace. After all, it wouldn’t do for you to be found here. It might ruin my reputation.”
He rose but dropped his forehead to mine in a way that had my heart clenching even amid the anger swirling in my stomach. “I want toseeyou, desperately. I just could not bear it if you lived to regret me. I’ll see you in the morning,” he whispered.
With a parting kiss to my forehead, he left. The door snicked shut behind him and I was left alone in the waning moonlight.
The sun hadn’t yet kissedthe horizon when I was up and out of bed. I found my trunk in the corner of the kitchen—forgotten in the exhaustion of the night before—and changed into fresh clothes before setting out for the shed.
My body still ached, but my mind was finally, blessedly numb. The ax called to me, rusted, and in desperate need of a sharpening, but strong and powerful. Unfortunately, we needed the pine for Fenella’s pen, not firewood, and I couldn’t manage the pit saw alone.
Instead, I yanked open the shed and set about emptying its contents onto the lawn. Various pieces of farming equipment whose uses I had only the vaguest notion of, small garden tools, twine and stakes, a rusted toolbox, a wooden ladder, hoes, shovels, the lot of it lined the lawn before the sun began to crest.
I found a broom and set to work upsetting the spiders next, wiping away their hard work from the now empty shed, before sweeping the floor. A mouse hole was left behind and I found a small piece of wood to cover it and tried to remember what the housekeeper at Thornton had used to keep them at bay. Cinnamon, perhaps?
Every time thoughts of Xander brushed against the corners of my mind, I pushed them back. That I’d had this thought yesterday—to clean up the shed and turn it into a private place—when we were interrupted by the return of Godfrey and Lock, was a coincidence.
I had just begun to work on the windows with a rag and spit when I was greeted by a pleasant bleat.
“Hello, Fenella.”
She snuffed a greeting, nudging my shoulder.
“We’ll finish your pen today. How does that sound?”
There was no reply, but she let me scratch behind her ear.
“I don’t know why everyone is so hard on you. You just want a little love, don’t you? And that’s not a bad thing to want. No, it’s the same thing everyone wants. But foolish people think they know what’s best for you, don’t they?”
My musings earned me a huff, but it was more likely due to the fact that I had stopped scratching.
“They try to keep you out of the house, but you’re just lonely. I understand, no one wants me around either.”
“Iwant you around.” Xander’s voice washed over me, soothing an ache I’d been able to ignore thus far.
