Chapter 5
Five
Dominic stood at the far edge of the green, tankard in hand, wondering what in God’s name had possessed him to come.
He hated festivals. He loathed the noise, the press of bodies, and the way people’s eyes slid to his scar and then quickly away, like he couldn’t see them doing it.
He’d avoided every village gathering for the four years he’d been away.
But Graves had mentioned, far too casually while laying out Dominic’s evening coat, that Mrs. Ashford always kept a stall at the Harvest Festival. He’d noted that her cranberry tarts sold out within the hour and suggested it might be worth attending if one were in the mood for decent pastry.
Dominic had told himself he was in the mood for pastry.
So here he was. He lurked in the shadows like a fool, nursing ale he didn’t want and watching villagers enjoy themselves in ways he’d forgotten.
The music grated on his nerves, and the laughter felt like mockery, but every sidelong glance at his face reminded him why he’d stopped attending social functions.
Then he saw her.
The green silk caught the torchlight, shimmering with every movement.
Her raven hair gleamed, the distinctive streak of white showing bright at her temple.
Every curve was on display without apology, like she’d every right to take up space in a world that told women like her to shrink.
She was laughing with an old man. She was dancing badly, stumbling through steps, and looking more alive than anything he’d seen in two years.
His breath stopped in his chest. She was not beautiful the way London debutantes were beautiful, porcelain and practiced, each smile calculated for effect. She was beautiful like a storm. She was like something wild and dangerous that could break a man who got too close.
He wanted to get closer.
He watched the dance end. He watched her curtsy to the old man and make her way to the cider stall. He watched her stand alone at the edge of the crowd with a cup in her hands and a flush on her cheeks. He set down his tankard on a nearby bench and moved before he could think better of it.
The crowd parted as he approached. It always did, whether from deference or discomfort, he had long since stopped trying to determine.
She hadn’t seen him yet. She was looking at the dancers, that almost-smile still playing on her lips.
The green silk hugged her waist and draped over her hips, making his hands itch with a sudden, sharp urge to touch.
He stopped a few feet away, merely looking at her and taking her in.
She turned and saw him. The smile faded from her face, and her shoulders stiffened beneath the fine green silk. She didn’t run, however. She lifted her chin instead, her brown eyes meeting his grey ones without flinching as she waited for him to speak.
“Mrs. Ashford.” He inclined his head, a sudden, unintended grit catching in the back of his throat. “You are looking… festive.”
“Lord Westmore.” She held her cider cup like a shield between them, her knuckles white against the wood. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I came for the tarts.” He shifted his weight, the lie obvious. Her stall was across the green, and he hadn’t so much as glanced in its direction.
Her mouth curved, not quite a smile but close. “Of course you did. Should I fetch you some?”
“Later, perhaps.” He moved closer, drawn by a pull he couldn’t name. “That dress is new.”
“Old, actually.” She didn’t step back, though her fingers tightened further on the cup. “It belonged to my mother.”
“It suits you.” The words scraped out of him, sounding more like a confession than a compliment.
She looked away first, her lashes sweeping down to hide her eyes. “Thank you, my lord.”
The noise of the festival pressed around them with its music, laughter, and the crackle of torches. It all felt distant and muted, the way they existed in a bubble separate from the village.
“Walk with me.” He gestured toward the quieter edge of the green, away from the dancers and the notice already turning toward them.
She hesitated and looked around the crowd. She took in the faces that might be watching and the mouths already shaping gossip. “Five minutes.” She lifted her chin in challenge. “Then I return to my stall.”
They walked side by side, away from the torchlight and into the cooler dark at the edge of the green. Their steps brushed through grass still damp with evening dew. “Why did you really come?” She asked without turning to him. Her focus stayed on the dark ahead.
“I heard you would be here.” He could lie. He should lie. The truth carried risk. The words came anyway. “I wanted to see you.”
She stopped and faced him. Her expression gave nothing away in the dim light. “That is a dangerous thing to say, my lord.”
“I am aware.” He held his place. His hands stayed clasped behind his back.
“People will talk.” She motioned toward the festival. Toward the torchlight and the press of bodies. “They are likely talking already.”
“Let them.” He lifted one shoulder. He did not look away from her.
“Easy for you.” Her expression sharpened. “You are a viscount. Gossip does not touch you. I am a widow with a shop and two children. Gossip decides whether I earn or starve.”
He had not thought of that. He had thought only of his need to be near her. It was selfish. It was reckless. “I did not mean,” he began.
“You did not think.” Her tone stayed calm. “Men like you rarely do.”
He accepted the blow, for he knew he deserved it. “You are right. I saw you across the green in that dress and I,” he stopped, raking a hand through his hair and feeling the familiar pull of the scar along his jaw. “I will go. If that’s what you want.”
She should want that. He could see the war playing out on her face. The sensible part of her was screaming to end this, to send him away, and to protect the fragile life she’d built. But she didn’t move, and neither did he.
“I have bought your tarts. I have learned your name.” He leaned in until the space between them shrank to almost nothing, his words dropping low. “But I know nothing else about you.”
Her brow furrowed as she looked up at him. “And yet here you are.”
“Here I am.” He tilted his head, studying the planes of her face.
“Tell me something true, Mrs. Ashford. One thing that’s not about tarts or shops or proper distances between viscounts and bakers.”
Wariness flickered in her eyes as she took a small, cautious sip of her cider. “Why?”
“Because you intrigue me.” He offered the truth simply, though it was possibly the most foolish thing he’d ever said. A long moment passed. The festival swirled in the distance, but she seemed to notice none of it — yet she watched him, searching for something he couldn’t name.
“I used to play the pianoforte.” She said it quietly, almost reluctantly, as if the words were being pulled from deep within. “Before. I was quite good, actually. I haven’t touched one in years.”
He filed this away, treasuring the small piece of herself she’d offered. “Why did you stop?”
A subtle tension pulled at her face. “I stopped having access to pianofortes.”
There was a story there of pain carefully buried. He didn’t push.
“Your turn.” She lifted her chin, her eyes meeting his, with a renewed sense of challenge. “Tell me something true.”
He considered her request. A dozen lies rose to his lips, easy deflections and charming evasions of the kind he’d used in London ballrooms. But she’d given him something real, and he felt she deserved the same.
“I came back to Hampshire because I couldn’t stand the way people looked at me in London.
” The words felt like gravel in Dominic’s throat as he stared into the trees.
“Here, at least, some of them remember what I looked like before. They remember the boy who raced his horse through the village. In London, I am only the scarred viscount. A cautionary tale mothers whisper to their daughters.”
Nell held his stare. The wariness in her expression shifted, softening into something that might have been understanding. They stood as two people who had lost pieces of themselves, two people hiding from what they had been.
Then she stiffened and glanced toward the distant torchlight of the festival she’d left behind. “I should return to my stall. Daphne will be wondering where I have gone.” She was pulling away. Dominic could feel the walls going back up, the moment of openness closing like a heavy door.
“Mrs. Ashford.” He reached for her arm without thinking, his fingers brushing the air.
She stepped back, moving quickly out of reach. Her face shuttered, the brief warmth gone like it had never existed. “Goodnight, Lord Westmore.” She turned and walked away, back toward the festival.
Dominic stood alone at the edge of the green, watching her disappear into the crowd. The music seemed louder now, more grating. The laughter felt like it was directed at him.
Something on the ground caught his eye. It was a shawl of cream-coloured wool, simple but well made.
It must have slipped from her shoulders while they talked, while she’d told him about the pianoforte and he’d confessed why he’d fled London.
He bent and picked it up; the fabric was soft beneath his fingers, still holding the warmth of her body.
He brought it to his face without thinking and breathed in.
He smelled vanilla, sugar, and something underneath that was simply her, warm and alive.
He felt lost. He was standing in the dark like a besotted fool, holding a shopkeeper’s shawl to his face like it was the most precious thing he’d ever touched.
“Westmore!” His breath hitched, trapped in a lungful of vanilla, as he stood paralysed with the shawl still pressed to his cheek.
Someone called out from beyond the trees.
Dominic let the shawl fall behind him, the cream-coloured wool pooling in the grass at his heels as he turned to find Sir Richard Hale emerging from the shadows.
Sir Richard’s tankard was sloshing, his grin too wide and his eyes bright with the particular gleam of a man who had spotted gossip.
Mrs. Pemberton materialized at Sir Richard’s elbow, her purple bonnet bobbing and her fan already fluttering.
They approached him from the direction of the festival and stopped a few feet away. Their backs were to the torchlight and to the path anyone returning from the green would take.
“Saw you walking with the baker.” Sir Richard studied Dominic with barely concealed curiosity as he took a long draught of his ale. “Taking quite an interest in village life, are we?”
“What is this about a baker?” Mrs. Pemberton’s voice dripped with false innocence.
“Westmore and the baker.” Sir Richard chuckled, swirling the remaining ale in his cup. “I caught them taking a cozy stroll in the dark. Very cozy indeed.”
Dominic’s mouth set in a grim line. They were both watching him now, cataloguing every twitch of his expression and every shift of his weight. Tomorrow the whole village would know—by the week’s end, the rumor would reach the whole county.
Her words echoed in his mind: Gossip decides whether I earn or starve.
He had to kill this now, before it destroyed everything she’d built. He arranged his face into the cold mask he’d worn in London ballrooms, bored, dismissive, and utterly uninterested. It was the mask that had earned him a reputation for arrogance and driven away everyone who might have cared.
“The baker?” He let boredom drip from every syllable, his lip curling with practiced disdain as he looked past them. “She is nothing of consequence.”
Sir Richard laughed, delighted by the cruelty. Mrs. Pemberton giggled behind her fan.
There was a movement behind them, a flash of green in the darkness. Dominic’s eyes lifted over Mrs. Pemberton’s shoulder, over her ridiculous purple bonnet, and his blood turned to ice.
Nell stood ten feet away. She was frozen in the path, her shawl-less shoulders pale in the dim light.
Their eyes met. She’d heard. Every word.
He could see it in her face, in the way her expression shuttered and the light died in her eyes.
Her whole body went rigid as though she were bracing for a blow.
I am a fool. The thought was cold and clear, cutting through the fog of his own stupidity.
He watched her stand there like a statue. Mrs. Pemberton was still talking, her fan beating the air between them, and Dominic could not move, could not follow, could not undo a single word without proving every one of them true.
“Can’t blame you for looking, though.” Sir Richard’s voice crashed through the moment, oblivious and jovial as he clapped a hand on Dominic’s shoulder. “That dress does do remarkable things. For a shopkeeper.”
Mrs. Pemberton tittered, her fan beating faster against her chest. “One can hardly fault a man for appreciating the scenery.”
Nell didn’t run. That was the worst part. She didn’t gasp or cry or cause a scene. She simply looked at him, looked through him. Then she backed away. One step. Two. Controlled and dignified, the green silk swaying gently as she retreated. She turned and walked into the crowd without looking back.
Sir Richard was still talking, something about viscounts and village diversions, but Dominic heard none of it. He stood rooted to the spot, staring at the space where she’d been, feeling something crack open in his chest.
The shawl lay in the grass behind him, still warm and still carrying her scent. He’d told her she intrigued him, while he’d asked her for something true—and then he’d repaid her trust by calling her nothing.
Mrs. Pemberton's fan snapped shut with a sharp click. “My lord? Are you quite well?”
“Fine.” He replied coldly. Dominic cleared his throat and forced his expression back into the cold mask of the aristocracy. “The night air has a chill. If you will excuse me.”
He didn’t wait for their response. He didn’t look back at the shawl lying abandoned in the grass. He walked in the opposite direction from where Nell had gone, toward the stables and his horse, toward Bramwell Park and the empty rooms that were all he deserved.