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“That does not always make a man remember.”

“Have I become surprisingly competent?”

“You have become surprisingly poor at accepting a compliment.”

“I was born that way.”

She took his arm where the path widened. The brook ran clear after the rain, though the grass along it still lay flat where the water had risen. A girl ahead of them gathered fallen branches into her apron. Tristan called a greeting and asked after her grandfather. She answered and forgot to curtsey until he had begun to pass, then caught herself and blushed. He pretended not to notice.

“I keep wondering how I shall know what to do here,” Lydia said. “Everyone knows you. Even when they recognize the title, someone has to tell them who I am.”

“They met you today.”

“Four households.”

“An excellent beginning. You cannot learn them all in one morning.”

“I do not expect to. I should like to be useful before I become merely familiar.”

His pace slowed. She knew that hesitation now, the small interval in which he chose whether to make light of something that mattered. He studied her hand on his arm.

“You do not have to earn the right to live here, Lydia.”

“I meant...”

“I know. You will learn what needs doing. You will make mistakes, as I did with that roof. But no examination waits at the end to decide whether you belong.”

The pleasure of it reached her before she could compose an answer. He had given her rooms, books, and freedom to make Ashcombe her home. This went further. She held his arm more closely and watched Collins waiting by the ditch. She had no time to ask whether he understood what he had said. Perhaps it was better to let him say it without finding out all its consequences at once.

At luncheon he went on arguing with Collins about the order of ditch repairs, and she ate more than usual and discovered that a woman could be hungry and happy while listening to drainage. She would not have believed it in London.

By the following week, the conservatory had glass in every frame. The supplier had taken back the wrong panes and replaced them at his own expense. Shelves ran along the brick wall. Samuel brought in two small citrus trees with the reserve of a man who did not mean to promise oranges just because everybody had begun discussing them. Lydia set her drawing board near the basin, with good light on the paper and space behind the chair for someone to pass.

Tristan tested the space by standing in it while she worked. “I believe someone planned this with admirable care.”

“You are blocking the only part I planned for walking.”

“Then you cannot have planned it for me.”

She glanced up, and he bent to kiss her. Samuel was outside with the undergardener, setting young plants beside the door. Lydia had stopped worrying that someone might come upon every small show of affection. She still blushed afterward, which pleased Tristan more than it ought to please a man who now shared her bed, and he kissed her again simply to make her blush once more.

“I have had a letter from my mother,” she told him. “She wants to know whether I am happy— has asked it four different ways in case I misunderstood the first three.”

“And what will you tell her?”

“I have not decided.” She bent over the drawing to hide her face. “I may tell her the conservatory has glass in every frame.”

“That is no answer.”

“It is the answer a lady gives her mother.” She lifted her eyes to his through her lashes. “The other answer is not fit for a letter.”

He laughed, low, and she felt it all the way to her toes.

That evening she wrote to her mother. When she described Ashcombe, she found herself writing about things she had done herself. She paused over that, then went on. Tristan passed the sitting-room door and asked whether she would like him to read while she finished. She said yes before she remembered that she had once made a rule about keeping the quiet house to herself.

He brought a book and took the chair beside the mint, and she finished the letter to the sound of him turning pages.

CHAPTER TWENTY