Chapter 23
For a long moment, Lydia couldn't move.
The entire village was staring at her. Waiting for her response. The Duke of Corvenwell had just made the most public, most scandalous, most romantic declaration in living memory, and now the fate of that declaration rested entirely on her.
She thought about all the reasons to say no. The scandal. The whispers. The children who would grow up caught between two worlds.
She thought about Helena's warnings, which had seemed so reasonable yesterday and seemed so hollow now.
She thought about her mother, Eleanor Ashworth, who had given up everything for love and never regretted it.
She thought about Frederick’s mother, who had given up love for duty and died full of regret.
And she thought about Frederick himself. Standing at the front of a village church, having just laid his heart bare for everyone to see. Waiting for her to decide whether his courage had been worth it.
She stood up.
The walk to the front of the church felt endless.
Every step brought her closer to Frederick, closer to a decision that couldn't be undone. She was aware of eyes on her, Thomas's steady gaze, Mrs Thompson's curious expression, Robert's approving nod, but she kept her focus on the man waiting for her.
He looked terrified. Beneath the composure, beneath the determination, he looked like a man who had just bet everything on a single throw of the dice.
She stopped in front of him. Close enough to touch, but not touching. Not yet.
"You shouldn't have done this," she said quietly. "Not publicly. Not like this."
"I had to." His voice was barely above a whisper. "I had to make sure you understood. That there was no going back. That I meant every word."
"You've ruined yourself. Helena will…"
"I do not care about Helena." His jaw tightened. "I've spent my whole life doing what Helena wanted. What my father wanted. What everyone wanted except me. And I'm done. I'm done being cold, and I'm done being safe, and I'm done pretending that duty matters more than love."
"Frederick…"
"I know you were trying to protect me. I know you thought you were doing the right thing." He reached out and took her hands—gently, tentatively, like he wasn't sure she would let him. "But I don't need protection, Lydia. I need you. Just you. For the rest of my life."
She felt tears spilling down her cheeks. "I was so afraid. Helena made me believe…"
"I know what Helena made you believe. She used my mother's story against you, she twisted it, poisoned it, turned it into a weapon.
" His grip on her hands tightened. "But she lied.
My mother didn't sacrifice herself nobly for duty.
She was forced into it, and she spent the rest of her life regretting it.
She wrote it in a letter. She begged whoever found it to choose differently. "
"Thomas told me. About the letter." Lydia's voice was unsteady. "I tried to come back to you. Last night. But the manor was locked."
Frederick’s expression softened. "I thought you didn't want to see me. I was just…"
"Hurting. Like I was hurting."
"Yes."
They stood there, hands clasped, tears flowing, in front of a church full of villagers who were witnessing the most dramatic reconciliation any of them had ever seen.
"I love you," Lydia said. "I never stopped loving you. Not for a moment. I just…I was so convinced that loving you meant letting you go."
"Love never means letting go. Not real love." Frederick lifted her hands to his lips. "Real love means holding on. Fighting for each other. Choosing each other, every day, no matter what the world throws at us."
"I want to choose you." Her voice cracked. "I want to choose you every day for the rest of my life."
"Is that a yes?"
She laughed. "Yes. Yes, you, impossible man. Yes, I'll marry you."
He kissed her.
Right there, in the middle of the church, in front of the entire village, the Duke of Corvenwell kissed a blacksmith's niece.
And somewhere in the congregation, someone started to clap.
The applause spread like wildfire.
It started with one person, Robert, Lydia realised, the carpenter who had promised her father he would look out for her, and then it was Mrs Thompson, and then the miller's wife, and then the chandler, and then what seemed like everyone in the village, rising to their feet and applauding like they were at the theatre.
Frederick broke the kiss, looking stunned.
"Are they…"
"They're applauding," Lydia said, just as stunned. "They're actually applauding."
"I didn't expect that."
"Neither did I."
Thomas was on his feet, his weathered face split by a rare smile. Boggins was dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief, his legendary composure finally cracked. Even Reverend Clarke was clapping, though he looked slightly scandalised by the kiss that had just occurred in his church.
"Well," Frederick said, his voice shaking with something between laughter and tears. "I suppose that's one way to get village approval."
"You're impossible."
"So you keep telling me."
She kissed him again, and the applause grew louder.
***
It took another twenty minutes to escape the church.
Everyone wanted to congratulate them. Everyone wanted to shake Frederick’s hand, to kiss Lydia's cheek, to offer blessings and well-wishes and dire warnings about the hard road ahead. Old Mr Davies told a rambling story about Frederick’s great-grandmother that seemed to have no point but ended with him pressing a lucky coin into Lydia's hand.
Molly broke through the crowd to demand to know if she could still visit the horses, and Frederick assured her that not only could she visit, she could name the next foal.
It was chaos. It was wonderful. It was everything Lydia had never dared to dream of.
And then the church doors slammed open, and Lady Helena Blackmore strode in.
She was dressed for battle.
Black silk, severe and elegant, without a single ornament or softening detail. Silver hair arranged with military precision beneath a hat that would have been fashionable thirty years ago. Eyes blazing with a fury that made everyone in her path step back instinctively.
Behind her, the doors swung wide, letting in a gust of autumn wind that made the candles on the altar flicker and dance.
"What," she said, her voice cutting through the joyful noise like a blade, "do you think you are doing?"
The celebration died. The applause stopped. The crowd parted, creating a clear path between Helena and the couple at the front of the church.
For a moment, no one moved. The tableau held; Helena at the door, radiating fury; Frederick and Lydia at the altar, still holding hands; the village congregation frozen in various stages of celebration.
Then Frederick stepped forward, placing himself slightly in front of Lydia. His voice, when he spoke, was calm and measured; a duke's voice, trained from birth to command.
"Aunt Helena. How good of you to join us."
"Don't you dare. Don't you dare speak to me as if this is some kind of social call.
" Helena's voice shook with rage—real rage, the kind that came from being publicly defied.
"I heard the bells ringing. I heard the rumours spreading through Thornbury like wildfire.
The Duke of Corvenwell, making a spectacle of himself in a village church. Proposing to a common…"
"Choose your next word very carefully," Frederick said. His voice was still calm, but there was steel beneath it now. "That common woman is going to be my wife."
"She is going to be nothing. This farce is over.
" Helena advanced down the aisle, her silk skirts rustling with each step.
The villagers pulled back as she passed, as if afraid her fury might be contagious.
"I gave you a chance, Frederick. I gave you a week to come to your senses.
Instead, you've chosen to humiliate yourself, and our family, in the most public way possible. "
"I've chosen to be happy. That's not humiliation. That's humanity."
"Humanity." Helena spat the word like a curse. "Is that what you call it? Throwing away three hundred years of family legacy for a woman who can't even…"
"I can speak for myself."
Lydia stepped out from behind Frederick, her chin raised, her eyes meeting Helena's directly. She was aware of the entire village watching, aware of what this moment meant, what it would cost if she failed to hold her ground.
But she had spent her life in a forge. She knew something about fire and steel and standing firm when the heat became unbearable.
"You came to my forge," she said. "You offered me money to leave him. And when I refused, you told me a story about his mother; a story designed to make me believe that letting him go was the kindest thing I could do."
"It was the kindest thing. It still is." Helena's eyes were cold, but there was something else there too, something that looked almost like desperation.
"You have no idea what you're condemning him to.
The doors that will close. The respect he'll lose.
The whispers that will follow him for the rest of his life. "
"I know exactly what I'm condemning him to.
He told me himself, at great length, with extensive detail.
" Lydia felt a strange calm settling over her.
This was the confrontation she had been dreading, and now that it was happening, it didn't seem so frightening after all.
"The difference is, I've stopped believing that those things matter more than love. "
"Love." Helena's voice dripped with contempt.
"How touching. How naive. How utterly, devastatingly predictable.
Every generation thinks its love is special.
Every generation thinks that people can overcome the obstacles that have defeated everyone else.
And every generation learns the same bitter lesson—that society is stronger than any individual, and love is no match for three centuries of expectation. "
"Your sister thought differently."