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"Victoria married a duke. Duke of Iredell. An honourable man. The household had his protection. They didn't need me."

She nodded. She was not certain what she was nodding at.

"Kit."

He turned. She was closer than she'd meant to be. She'd pushed off the wall without deciding to, her cane forgotten against the stone, and she was standing two feet from him with wood shavings on his hands and the chisel hanging loose at his side and the last of the daylight catching the sweat on his throat.

"Is that why you are here?" she said. "Did Marian ask you to look after me?"

"No."

"Then are you still hiding from those men?"

"No."

"Then I don't understand."

"Neither do I."

He said it quietly. She had seen him indifferent. She had seen him cruel. She had not seen him lost. His eyes held hers and for the first time she saw what was behind the blankness he wore: a longing.

Something turned over in her chest. She did not step closer. Neither did he. But the distance between them shrank without either of them moving, as though the ground itself had shifted, and she could feel the warmth of his body and smell the fresh timber and the sweat, and his eyes dropped to her mouth and she saw it happen and the air between them went tight as a bowstring.

A crow broke from the hawthorn with a crack of wings and they both flinched. He turned back to the door. She picked up her cane.

"I should go in," she said.

"Yes."

Neither of them moved.

"The light is going," he said.

"It is."

She walked back through the tunnel alone, one hand on the wall, the lantern throwing her shadow long behind her. Her lips were tingling as though she'd been kissed, which was worse, because now she would lie awake tonight thinking about the kiss that didn't happen and wondering what would have if the crow had stayed in the tree.

She couldn't sleep. The second night running.

She went downstairs because the kitchen was warm and the bedroom ceiling had nothing left to tell her. The range was banked but the embers still gave off heat and a faint orange glow that turned the flagstones copper at the edges.

He was there. Sitting at the table in the dark with a glass of brandy. She could smell it from the doorway.

She almost turned back. She had been avoiding him with a discipline that was a good deal more difficult than tolerating her marriage had been. And tonight, she would fail.

She walked in. Filled the kettle. Set it on the range. Stood with her back to him and waited for the water.

The silence went on long enough to be uncomfortable.

"Did she suffer?" Audrey asked. "At the end."

A pause. "No. She fell asleep in the chair. I was reading to her."

"What were you reading?"

"Gulliver. She'd heard it forty times. She said it was the only book dull enough to guarantee sleep." A breath that might have been a laugh once. "She went between Lilliput and Brobdingnag. I didn't notice until the fire needed another log."

The kettle hissed. She made her tea. She carried it to the table and sat across from him. Not close. The full width of the oak between them.