She hesitated and looked around the crowd. She took in the faces that might be watching and the mouths already shaping gossip. “Five minutes.” She lifted her chin in challenge. “Then I return to my stall.”
They walked side by side, away from the torchlight and into the cooler dark at the edge of the green. Their steps brushed through grass still damp with evening dew. “Why did you really come?” She asked without turning to him. Her focus stayed on the dark ahead.
“I heard you would be here.” He could lie. He should lie. The truth carried risk. The words came anyway. “I wanted to see you.”
She stopped and faced him. Her expression gave nothing away in the dim light. “That is a dangerous thing to say, my lord.”
“I am aware.” He held his place. His hands stayed clasped behind his back.
“People will talk.” She motioned toward the festival. Toward the torchlight and the press of bodies. “They are likely talking already.”
“Let them.” He lifted one shoulder. He did not look away from her.
“Easy for you.” Her expression sharpened. “You are a viscount. Gossip does not touch you. I am a widow with a shop and two children. Gossip decides whether I earn or starve.”
He had not thought of that. He had thought only of his need to be near her. It was selfish. It was reckless. “I did not mean,” he began.
“You did not think.” Her tone stayed calm. “Men like you rarely do.”
He accepted the blow, for he knew he deserved it. “You are right. I saw you across the green in that dress and I,” he stopped, raking a hand through his hair and feeling the familiar pull of the scar along his jaw. “I will go. If that’s what you want.”
She should want that. He could see the war playing out on her face. The sensible part of her was screaming to end this, to send him away, and to protect the fragile life she’d built. But she didn’t move, and neither did he.
“I have bought your tarts. I have learned your name.” He leaned in until the space between them shrank to almost nothing, his words dropping low. “But I know nothing else about you.”
Her brow furrowed as she looked up at him. “And yet here you are.”
“Here I am.” He tilted his head, studying the planes of her face.
“Tell me something true, Mrs. Ashford. One thing that’s not about tarts or shops or proper distances between viscounts and bakers.”
Wariness flickered in her eyes as she took a small, cautious sip of her cider. “Why?”
“Because you intrigue me.” He offered the truth simply, though it was possibly the most foolish thing he’d ever said. A long moment passed. The festival swirled in the distance, but she seemed to notice none of it — yet she watched him, searching for something he couldn’t name.
“I used to play the pianoforte.” She said it quietly, almost reluctantly, as if the words were being pulled from deep within. “Before. I was quite good, actually. I haven’t touched one in years.”
He filed this away, treasuring the small piece of herself she’d offered. “Why did you stop?”
A subtle tension pulled at her face. “I stopped having access to pianofortes.”
There was a story there of pain carefully buried. He didn’t push.
“Your turn.” She lifted her chin, her eyes meeting his, with a renewed sense of challenge. “Tell me something true.”
He considered her request. A dozen lies rose to his lips, easy deflections and charming evasions of the kind he’d used in London ballrooms. But she’d given him something real, and he felt she deserved the same.
“I came back to Hampshire because I couldn’t stand the way people looked at me in London.” The words felt like gravel in Dominic’s throat as he stared into the trees. “Here, at least, someof them remember what I looked like before. They remember the boy who raced his horse through the village. In London, I am only the scarred viscount. A cautionary tale mothers whisper to their daughters.”
Nell held his stare. The wariness in her expression shifted, softening into something that might have been understanding. They stood as two people who had lost pieces of themselves, two people hiding from what they had been.
Then she stiffened and glanced toward the distant torchlight of the festival she’d left behind. “I should return to my stall. Daphne will be wondering where I have gone.” She was pulling away. Dominic could feel the walls going back up, the moment of openness closing like a heavy door.
“Mrs. Ashford.” He reached for her arm without thinking, his fingers brushing the air.
She stepped back, moving quickly out of reach. Her face shuttered, the brief warmth gone like it had never existed. “Goodnight, Lord Westmore.” She turned and walked away, back toward the festival.
Dominic stood alone at the edge of the green, watching her disappear into the crowd. The music seemed louder now, more grating. The laughter felt like it was directed at him.
