Chapter 2 #2
"And he didn't even look at her," Mrs Holloway was saying as Lydia made her way through the crowd toward the corner where the village women had claimed their traditional territory.
"Poor Mrs Addison, standing right there at her gate, waving, actually waving, if you can believe it, and he looked straight through her like she was made of glass. "
"Ice, more likely," Mrs Wrightly corrected. "That man doesn't see glass. He only sees mirrors; himself reflected at him, over and over."
"Mrs Addison shouldn't have waved," said Martha Fenn, who was notorious for having opinions about everyone's behaviour. "She gave him the satisfaction of being ignored. Better to turn your back and let him know he doesn't matter."
"He should matter, though," countered her sister Elizabeth. "He's the duke. He's responsible for half the county. If he doesn't matter, what does that say about us?"
"It says we have sense. We know better than to rely on someone who can't be relied upon."
"When has he ever failed to be reliable?" Lydia heard herself ask, and immediately regretted it as several heads turned her direction.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Martha demanded.
"I only meant…" Lydia searched for safer ground. "He pays his debts promptly. Uncle Thomas has never had trouble collecting from the manor."
"Oh, he pays his debts," Mrs Holloway agreed. "We should acknowledge that much. But there's more to being a landlord than settling accounts. There's presence, there's care, and there's showing up when people need you, not just when the ledgers require it."
There was a general murmur of agreement. Lydia accepted the drink that someone pressed into her hand and found a seat on the edge of the group, close enough to participate but far enough to observe.
"Remember when the miller's barn burned down?" Mrs Wrightly said. "Three years ago. The whole village came out to help. We passed buckets until our arms ached. We raised money for rebuilding. We took turns feeding the family while they sorted themselves out."
"I remember," Lydia said quietly. She had been there, passing buckets alongside everyone else.
"And where was the duke? In his great stone house on the hill. Not a word, not a penny and not a single acknowledgement that something terrible had happened to people who live on his land."
"His steward sent a letter," someone offered.
"A letter! A letter expressing the duke's 'regrets for the inconvenience' and reminding the miller that his rent was still due on the quarter day. Can you imagine?"
"To be fair," Lydia ventured carefully, "we don't know that the duke himself wrote that letter. Stewards often…"
"The duke is responsible for his steward," Mrs Wrightly said firmly. "If the steward is cold, it's because the master is colder. That's how these things work."
Lydia subsided, taking a long sip from her cup.
"My sister worked up at the house for a time," Mrs Holloway continued.
She had said this approximately once a week for the past three years, but the audience never tired of it because it represented the closest thing any of them had to intelligence from behind enemy lines.
"She said the staff are terrified of him.
Terrified! They're not allowed to speak unless spoken to, not allowed to make noise, not allowed to exist too loudly in case it disturbs His Grace's precious sensibilities. "
"What does he do all day?" Someone asked. "In that great empty house?"
"Nothing and everything. Who knows?" Mrs Holloway shrugged expressively. "My sister said he eats alone in a dining room meant for forty. Can you imagine? Forty chairs, all empty, and him at the head of the table like a king without subjects."
Lydia thought of this image, the long, polished table, the ranks of vacant seats, the single figure at the end, and felt something twist in her chest that she chose not to examine too closely.
"It's sad, really," she said, before she could stop herself.
Twelve heads turned toward her with varying degrees of surprise.
"Sad?" Mrs Wrightly's eyebrows rose toward her hairline. "Sad for who, exactly? He's a duke, Lydia. He has more money than this entire village will earn in ten generations. If he eats alone, it's because he chooses to."
"I just meant…"
"He could invite people. He could host dinners, balls, whatever the nobility does.
" Mrs Wrightly was warming to her theme now, her voice rising to carry across the crowded room.
"He could open his doors to the community that has existed in his shadow for three hundred years.
He could be a neighbour. But he doesn't. He chooses not to.
And that's not sad, Lydia. That's selfishness. "
The murmurs of agreement were louder now, more emphatic, and Lydia felt herself flush.
"I didn't mean…"
"What did you mean, then?"
She should have let it go. She should have smiled and nodded and admitted that she'd misspoken. It was what the situation called for; the graceful retreat, the acknowledgement that the village wisdom was correct, and her momentary sympathy was misplaced.
But something stubborn in Lydia, the same something that had made her learn the forge despite being a girl, that had made her turn down three perfectly reasonable marriage proposals because she wasn't ready to give up her independence, refused to yield.
"I meant that we don't actually know him," she said. "We know his father. We know stories about his father, passed down and embroidered until they might as well be fairy tales. We know that he doesn't visit and doesn't write, and doesn't seem to care. But we don't know why. We've never asked."
The silence that followed was the particular kind that Lydia had learned to recognise: the silence of a group deciding whether to be offended or merely puzzled.
"Why would we ask?" Mrs Holloway said, finally. "He's made it clear he wants nothing to do with us. Asking would be…"
"Beneath us," someone supplied.
"Exactly. We have our pride, same as he does."
"Do we, though?" Lydia heard herself say. "Or do we have our assumptions, which we've mistaken for knowledge, and our resentments, which we've polished until they shine like facts?"
This time, the silence was definitely offended.
"Lydia Fletcher." Mrs Wrightly's voice had gone very careful in a way that meant she was controlling her temper.
"Your uncle raised you, and the village helped.
We fed you when you were hungry. We clothed you when you were cold.
We taught you your letters and your manners and everything you needed to know to be a proper woman of Ashwick.
And now you sit here, defending the man who has never lifted a finger to help any of us? "
The guilt hit like a punch to the stomach. Lydia felt the blood rush to her face, then drain from it, leaving her pale and slightly sick.
"I wasn't…"
"You were." Mrs Wrightly’s expression softened, but only slightly.
"I know you see good in everyone, girl. It's one of your best qualities and one of your worst. But some people do not have good in them.
Some people are exactly what they appear to be.
And the Duke of Corvenwell appears to be a cold, selfish man who cares nothing for anyone but himself.
Perhaps, just this once, you might trust the judgment of the people who love you. "
Lydia looked around the room at the faces she had known her entire life.
The baker who had given her sweet rolls when she was small.
The miller's wife, who had sat with her through fever.
The old men who had taught her card games, the young ones who had pulled her braids and the women who had clucked over her like a collective flock of very opinionated hens.
They loved her, and she loved them. And they were all looking at her with varying shades of disappointment.
"You're right," she said quietly. "I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."
The tension in the room eased. Mrs Wrightly patted her arm.
Someone made a jest about young people and their foolish ideas, and someone else started a story about the time the old duke's horse had relieved itself in front of the church, and gradually the conversation flowed back into its normal channels.
Lydia laughed in the right places. She nodded and agreed and made all the appropriate noises of village solidarity.
But somewhere beneath the performance, a small voice whispered: You saw what you saw. You know what you know.
She told herself to be quiet. She told herself that the village was right and she was wrong, that her momentary sympathy had been foolish, that the Duke of Corvenwell was exactly what everyone said he was.
And she almost believed it.
***
The evening wound down in the way of village evenings, with the crowd thinning gradually as people remembered children to put to bed and animals to feed and all the small responsibilities that kept the wheels of daily life turning.
Lydia stayed later than she should have, nursing her drink and listening to the conversations ebb and flow around her.
It was Mr Wrightly who finally brought up the subject she'd been half-dreading, half-anticipating all night.
"The manor commission," he said, settling into the chair across from her with the groan of a man whose knees had opinions about the day's work. "How's your uncle getting on with it?"
"Nearly finished. Another day or two, and the hinges will be ready."
"And who'll be delivering them?"
Lydia shrugged, aiming for casual and probably missing by a mile. "Me, most likely. Uncle Thomas isn't one for dealing with stewards and clerks."
"Dealing with the duke, more like," Mrs Holloway said from across the room, her ears apparently sharper than her years suggested. "I hear he sometimes comes down to inspect deliveries personally. Very particular about quality, they say."
"I thought he never spoke to anyone," Lydia said.
"He doesn't speak warmly to anyone. There's a difference.
" Mrs Holloway's smile had an edge to it.
"My sister said he once rejected an entire shipment of candles because the wicks were inconsistent.
He made the chandler re-wax the whole lot.
He didn't apologise, and he didn't explain.
He just handed them back with that look of his and walked away. "
"Sounds like he has standards," Lydia said, and then immediately wished she hadn't.
But Mrs Holloway only laughed. "Standards!
That's one word for it. Another might be impossibly demanding.
Another might be incapable of human decency.
" She leaned forward, her eyes bright with something that was probably concern but looked a lot like a warning.
"Be careful when you go up there, girl. Don't let him rattle you.
Don't let him make you feel small. And whatever you do, don't… "
"Don't what?"
The older woman hesitated. "Don't expect anything. Don't hope for anything. Just do your business and get out. The less time you spend in that house, the better."
It wasn't quite advice. It was closer to prophecy, delivered with the certainty of someone who had watched better women than Lydia try to find warmth in cold places and fail.
"I'm just delivering hinges," Lydia said. "Not storming the castle."
"Famous last words," Mrs Holloway muttered, but she let the subject drop.
Lydia walked home through streets that were quiet now, the summer stars scattered overhead like spilt salt against black velvet.
Her uncle's cottage was dark when she arrived; he kept early hours, claiming that the forge demanded it, so she let herself in quietly and climbed the stairs to her small room beneath the eaves.
Sleep should have come easily. The day had been long, the evening longer, and her body knew the rhythm of rest the way her hands knew the weight of a hammer.
But her mind refused to settle.
She kept seeing his face. That moment when their eyes met. The way he had looked at her was like she was the first person to actually see him in a very long time.
You're being foolish, she told herself. He probably looks at everyone like that. It probably doesn't mean anything.
But she had felt something pass between them; something that wasn't hostility or indifference or the careful blank mask that both classes wore when dealing with the other. Something that had felt, for just a heartbeat, like recognition.
Like a question, waiting to be answered.
He's a duke, she reminded herself firmly. Cold, proud, above us all. Everything they say he is.
And yet.
Those tight shoulders…….
What kind of man braced himself to drive through a village? What kind of fear required that level of defence against nothing more threatening than disapproving looks and children's mockery?
But Lydia stared at the ceiling and wondered, and wondered, and eventually slept.
Her dreams, annoyingly, were full of ice.