Chapter 6 #2
"There are many things you don't know, child.
Most of them are kept from you for your own protection.
" The older woman's expression softened.
"I'm not trying to be cruel. I'm trying to keep you from being hurt.
The duke, even if he's not as terrible as we've all assumed, is still a duke.
And you're still a blacksmith's niece. Some gaps can't be bridged, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. "
Lydia wanted to argue. She wanted to say that she wasn't trying to bridge any gaps, that she was merely curious, that her interest in Frederick Hawthorne was purely.....What? Academic? Humanitarian? Neither word seemed quite right.
"I understand," she said instead, because it was easier than explaining.
"Good." Mrs Wrightly patted her arm. "Now help me move this table. The angle is all wrong for the afternoon sun."
The morning continued while the village filled with the sounds of preparation; the sound of hammers everywhere, children shrieking with excitement, the fiddler warming up his instrument with a series of experimental scales that set everyone's teeth on edge.
By noon, the fair was in full swing. Stalls lined the village green, selling everything from pies to preserves to hand-carved wooden toys.
Games had been set up for the children. The smell of food was in the air, and somewhere, someone had started a batch of mulled cider that perfumed the entire area with cinnamon and cloves.
It was, Lydia thought, exactly like every Harvest Fair she had ever attended. Warm and familiar and entirely predictable.
Which was why, when the cry went up from the edge of the green, she knew immediately that something unprecedented was about to happen.
"There's a carriage!"
She turned, heart suddenly pounding, and saw what everyone else was seeing: the gleaming black shape of the ducal carriage, making its slow and stately way down the ridge road toward the village.
"It's probably just passing through," someone said.
"On fair day? The road doesn't go anywhere else."
"Maybe he's lost."
"Dukes don't get lost. They have people to prevent that sort of thing."
The carriage drew closer, and the crowd grew quieter. By the time it reached the edge of the village green and stopped, actually stopped, not slowed down and continued like every year before, the silence was so complete that Lydia could hear her own breathing.
Then the carriage door opened.
And Frederick Hawthorne, seventh Duke of Corvenwell, stepped out into the Ashwick Harvest Fair.
He was overdressed. He knew it the moment his boots touched the ground, and he saw the assembled crowd in their simple clothes, their practical shoes, their expressions of naked astonishment.
The navy coat, which had seemed acceptable in his dressing room, now felt like armour; too fine, too formal, too obviously the garment of a man who didn't belong here.
His boots, still gleaming from their morning polish, were already attracting mud like magnets.
His cravat, perfectly tied by Boggins' expert hands, suddenly felt like a noose.
Everyone was staring at him.
He had expected that. And he had prepared for it as much as one could prepare for being the centre of attention in a place where one was historically unwelcome. But the reality of all those eyes, curious, hostile, disbelieving, was more intense than he had anticipated.
For a moment, he considered getting back in the carriage. Boggins would understand. The villagers would nod knowingly and say they had expected nothing better. Lydia would…
He found her in the crowd almost without meaning to, his gaze drawn to her like a compass needle finding north. She was standing near a stall covered in jam jars, her hair escaping its pins as usual, her expression caught somewhere between surprise and something that looked almost like hope.
She was watching him. Waiting to see what he would do.
He stepped forward.
The crowd seemed to hold its collective breath as he approached, parting before him.
Old Mr Wrightly was the first to speak. He materialised from somewhere in the crowd, his white eyebrows drawn together in an expression that could have been hostility or mere curiosity.
"Your Grace." His voice was carefully neutral. "We didn't expect to see you here."
"I received an invitation."
"You've received an invitation every year for eight years."
"Yes." Frederick forced himself to meet the old man's eyes. "I thought it was time I accepted."
A murmur ran through the crowd; speculation, disbelief, and underneath it all, the faintest hint of something that might have been interest.
"Well." Mr Wrightly gave him a long, assessing look. "Fair's that way. And mind the mud."
He turned and walked away, leaving Frederick standing alone in a sea of curious faces.
Mind the mud. Such a simple instruction. Such an impossible one.
Frederick looked down at his already-stained boots, then at the churned earth of the village green, and made a decision. If he was going to fail today, and he almost certainly was, he was going to fail trying.
And suddenly he stepped into the mud.
***
The first hour was a disaster.
Not a dramatic disaster, not the kind with shouting and recriminations and clear villains.
It was worse than that. It was the slow, grinding disaster of social failure; the accumulation of small awkward moments and unintentional offences that left Frederick increasingly certain that he should have stayed home.
It started with the candles.
A woman, whose name he couldn't remember, was selling beeswax candles from a stall near the edge of the green. They seemed well-made, and Frederick, desperate for something to do with his hands and his attention, approached.
"These are quite fine," he said, which was true.
"Thank you, Your Grace." The woman's voice was stiff, wary.
"The colour is particularly good. Consistent." He picked one up and examined it. "And the scent is quite pleasant. Floral, almost."
"It's the local clover, Your Grace. The bees favour it."
"Ah. Excellent." He set down the candle and reached for his purse. "I'll take a dozen."
"A dozen, Your Grace?"
"Yes. For the manor. We use quite a lot of candles."
He thought he was being complimentary. Supportive of local industry. The kind of thing a good landlord was supposed to do. But something in the woman's expression shifted, a tightening around the eyes, a flattening of the lips.
"What price would Your Grace consider appropriate?"
"I..." He hadn't thought about the price. "Whatever you normally charge, I suppose."
"Our normal price is three pence per candle. But perhaps Your Grace has... standards?"
The word landed like a slap. He remembered, too late, the story of the rejected candles, the chandler forced to re-wax an entire shipment because the Duke of Corvenwell found fault with the wicks.
"Three pence per candle is perfectly acceptable," he said, but the damage was done. The woman took his money with the tight-lipped efficiency of someone who wanted the transaction over as quickly as possible, and Frederick retreated with his candles, feeling worse than when he'd arrived.
And it went on like that.
At the next stall, a farmer was selling vegetables; carrots and turnips and the last of the summer squash, arranged with evident pride. Frederick approached, determined to do better.
"Fine produce," he said.
The farmer, a weathered man with hands like old leather, grunted acknowledgement.
"The carrots in particular. Very..." Frederick searched for the right word. What did one say about carrots? "Very orange."
"They're carrots, Your Grace. Orange is generally expected."
"Yes. Of course. I only meant…" He was floundering. He could feel it. "What soil do you use? For the growing?"
"Soil, Your Grace?"
"Yes. The, ah, the earth. In which things grow."
The farmer stared at him as if he'd sprouted a second head. "I use the soil that's in my field, Your Grace. Same as everyone."
"Right. Naturally. I wasn't suggesting…" Frederick stopped, took a breath and started again. "I apologise. I'm not very good at this."
"At what, Your Grace?"
"Talking to people. About vegetables." He gestured helplessly at the stall.
"I don't actually know anything about farming.
I have tenants who farm, and I review their yields in ledgers, but I've never…
I don't know how any of this actually works.
The growing. The harvesting. The..." He waved vaguely, "the vegetable parts. "
The farmer's expression shifted; not quite softening, but losing some of its defensive edge. "The vegetable parts, Your Grace?"
"I realise that's not a technical term."
"No, Your Grace. It's not." But there was something that might have been amusement in his voice now. "Would you like to buy some carrots?"
"Yes. Please. However many is normal."
"A bunch is normal, Your Grace. That's tuppence."
Frederick handed over a shilling. "Keep the change. As an apology for the interrogation."
The farmer took the money, shaking his head. "You're a strange one, Your Grace. Not what I expected."
"I'm finding that's a common theme today."
He moved on, clutching his bunch of carrots and feeling marginally better about the interaction. That was progress. Little, awkward progress.
The feeling lasted approximately three minutes, until he tried to buy a meat pie from a stall run by a red-faced man with impressive muttonchops.
"How much for a pie?" Frederick asked.
"Sixpence, Your Grace."
Frederick reached for his purse and realised he only had pound notes and gold sovereigns, and felt his heart sink. "I'm afraid I don't have anything smaller than…"
"A sovereign?" The man's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. "For a pie?"
"I could take... several pies?"
"That's still not…Your Grace, I can't make change for a sovereign. I don't think anyone at this fair can give change for a sovereign."
Frederick looked at the golden coin in his hand, then at the pie, then at the growing line of customers behind him who were watching this exchange with varying degrees of impatience and amusement.
"Perhaps I could pay you later? Send the money?"
"You would send the money for a meat pie?" The vendor's tone suggested this was the most absurd thing he had ever heard. "Your Grace, just take the pie. Consider it a gift. Please. You're holding up the line."
"I can't simply take…"
"You can. You're a duke. Dukes take things. It's what you do."
The words landed like a slap. Frederick set down the sovereign on the counter, far too much, he knew, but he couldn't bear to take the pie for nothing, and retreated without his purchase, his face burning.
He complimented a farmer on his crops and somehow made it sound like an interrogation.
He asked a child her name, and the child burst into tears, apparently convinced that any attention from the duke was a precursor to being thrown in a dungeon.
Her mother scooped her up and hurried away, shooting Frederick a look of mingled fear and accusation that made him want to sink into the mud and disappear entirely.
By the time an hour passed, Frederick had managed to alienate approximately half the fair's population without meaning to alienate anyone at all.
He found himself standing at the edge of the green, near where his carriage waited, contemplating retreat. The coachman was watching him with carefully concealed curiosity. It would be so easy to climb back in, to return to the manor, to forget that this experiment had ever happened.