Chapter 3
Some fifteen miles distant, in a house too large for its single occupant and yet somehow too small to contain his restlessness, Frederick Hawthorne was also failing to sleep.
This was not unusual. Sleep had never come easily to him; not as a child, when the nursery shadows had seemed full of criticisms waiting to be spoken; not as a young man, when the weight of impending responsibility had pressed down like a physical thing; and certainly not now, when the reality of that responsibility had proven even heavier than its anticipation.
He was in his study, because the study felt less empty than the bedroom.
A fire burned in the grate despite the August warmth, because light was better than darkness and flickering movement was better than stillness.
A book lay open on the desk before him; estate accounts, the endless arithmetic of rents and repairs and the complex machinery of keeping an old name solvent in a changing world.
He was not reading it.
He was thinking about a girl with soot on her face and steel in her spine.
This was inconvenient; this was inappropriate. This was exactly the kind of distraction his father had warned him about. The pull of attraction toward those beneath him, the weakness that had destroyed better men than Frederick.
Your grandfather, his father had said once, in one of his rare moments of personal disclosure, nearly married a farmer's daughter. Can you imagine? The Duke of Corvenwell, leg-shackled to a woman who smelled of hay. It would have been the end of the family. The absolute end.
Frederick had been fourteen. He had nodded solemnly and filed away the lesson: attachment was dangerous, particularly attachment to the wrong sort of person.
It was better to remain detached, better to remain alone.
It was better to be ice than fire, because ice held its shape while fire consumed everything it touched.
He had followed this philosophy faithfully for fifteen years. He had kept his distance from everyone, noble and common alike, and if this meant loneliness, well, loneliness was preferable to destruction.
So why couldn't he stop thinking about her?
She hadn't bowed, she hadn't curtsied, and she hadn't shown any of the deference that his position supposedly commanded. She had just looked at him, and in her looking there had been something he couldn't identify, something that felt almost like…
Interest. Genuine interest, not the sycophantic variety that he occasionally encountered from those seeking favour, but something simpler and more complicated at the same time. As if she actually wanted to understand him. As if understanding him might matter.
"Your Grace appears troubled."
Frederick didn't jump, Hawthornes didn't jump, but he did look up sharply to find Boggins standing in the doorway with a tray bearing what appeared to be brandy and a distinctly judgmental expression.
"I did not ring for you."
"No, Your Grace. You did not." Boggins crossed the room and set the tray on the desk with the precise movements of a man who had done this exact thing a thousand times before.
"I took the liberty of anticipating Your Grace's needs.
The fire suggested extended wakefulness.
Extended wakefulness suggests either deep thought or digestive complaint.
As Your Grace consumed very little at dinner, I concluded the former. "
"Your powers of deduction are, as always, remarkable."
"I do endeavour to give satisfaction, Your Grace." Boggins poured the brandy with surgical precision, exactly two fingers, the way Frederick preferred, and set the glass within reach. "Though I confess I had an ulterior motive in attending upon Your Grace."
"Did you?"
"Indeed. The household is talking."
Frederick's jaw tightened. "The household is always talking."
"True, Your Grace. But tonight, they are talking about the passage through the village.
More specifically, they are talking about Your Grace's reaction to it.
Several of the younger maids have been talking about your decision to pass through the village today.
They had not expected it, and they have concluded. "
"What sort of conclusions?"
"The romantic sort, Your Grace. The housekeeper has already had to quash speculation about a village sweetheart."
Frederick nearly choked on his brandy. "A village sweetheart. Good Heavens."
"Indeed, Your Grace. I informed Mrs Patterson that such rumours were both inappropriate and absurd, and that Your Grace's interest in the village was purely administrative."
"Thank you, Boggins."
"However." The valet's expression remained perfectly neutral, which lent his words greater weight. "I confess I am curious about the truth of the matter. Your Grace was staring rather intently at the forge as we passed."
"I was not staring."
"Your Grace's head turned precisely seventeen degrees to the left and remained in that position for approximately three seconds. In the dictionary of ducal behaviour, Your Grace, that qualifies as staring."
"You counted the degrees?"
"I estimated, Your Grace. I have been in service long enough to develop a reliable sense of such things."
Frederick set down his brandy glass with perhaps more force than necessary. "There is nothing to tell. I noticed the blacksmith's niece because she was the only person in the village who did not immediately look away or make obscene gestures."
"Ah."
"What does 'ah' mean?"
"It means I understand, Your Grace."
"You understand what, exactly?"
Boggins permitted himself the ghost of a smile, just barely visible, and quickly suppressed. "I understand that Your Grace is protesting considerably more than the situation would seem to warrant. In my experience, such protests often indicate…"
"Boggins."
"Yes, Your Grace?"
"You are dangerously close to overstepping."
"My apologies, Your Grace. I shall endeavour to step more carefully." But his eyes, when they met Frederick’s, held a knowing gleam that suggested no such endeavouring would take place.
Frederick reached for the brandy, then stopped. "Boggins."
"Your Grace?"
"How long have you been in service to this family?"
The question appeared to surprise Boggins, though his expression barely changed. "Thirty-one years, Your Grace. I began as a footman under your grandfather and progressed through the usual channels until your father appointed me valet upon his ascension to the title."
"Thirty-one years." Frederick turned the number over in his mind. "You have served three generations of Hawthornes."
"Indeed, Your Grace. Though I confess the third generation has proven the most... interesting."
"Interesting how?"
Boggins' pause was microscopically longer than usual. "If Your Grace will permit an observation?"
"Since when have you required permission?"
"Since always, Your Grace. I merely choose to interpret silence as consent.
" The ghost of something that might have been humour flickered across Boggins' austere features.
"Your grandfather was a passionate man. Volatile.
He felt everything too intensely and made decisions based on those feelings that caused considerable difficulty.
Your father, in reaction, became the opposite; calculating, controlled, determined, never to let emotion influence judgment. He succeeded, largely."
"And me?"
"Your Grace," Boggins said carefully, "has inherited your grandfather's depth of feeling and your father's determination to suppress it. The result is......Complicated."
Frederick stared at him. In his years of service, Boggins had never spoken so directly about anything personal. Estate matters, yes. Wardrobe concerns, certainly. The correct temperature for shaving water, extensively. But never this.
"You think I feel things," Frederick said finally.
"I think Your Grace feels everything very intensely, and expends considerable energy pretending otherwise. The cost of this pretence is..." Boggins hesitated. "Significant."
"And what would you have me do about it?"
"That is not for me to say, Your Grace. I am merely a valet."
"You are the closest thing I have to a confidant, and we both know it."
The words hung in the air between them, too honest, too raw. Frederick wished he could take them back. Hawthornes didn't make admissions like that. Hawthornes didn't acknowledge vulnerability, need, or the desire for connection that lurked beneath every interaction.
But Boggins didn't flinch, he didn't look away, and he didn't offer false comfort or easy platitudes.
"Then, as Your Grace's confidant," he said quietly, "I would suggest that the current approach, isolation, suppression, the studied avoidance of all human connection, is not serving Your Grace well.
The passage through the village today was.
.. difficult. It is difficult every time. And it does not have to be."
"You think I should…..What? Attend the Harvest Fair? Make friends with the villagers? Host dinner gatherings for farmers and their families?"
"I think Your Grace might start with smaller steps. Speaking to the tenants occasionally. Learning the names of the people whose lives depend on your decisions. Perhaps acknowledging the existence of the forge girl who caught your attention this afternoon."
Frederick’s hand tightened on the brandy glass. "I don't know what you're referring to."
"Of course not, Your Grace." Boggins's tone suggested that he knew exactly what he was referring to and found Frederick’s denial adorably transparent. "Will there be anything else?"
"No. Thank you, Boggins."
"Good night, Your Grace."
The valet withdrew, closing the door behind him with barely a sound. Frederick remained where he was, staring at the fire, the brandy warming in his hand.
The forge girl who caught your attention.
He hadn't been that obvious. Had he?