"I was already ruined, Beatrice," Arthur said quietly. "Then you walked into my kitchen."
Spring arrived with a desperate, beautiful violence. The gray moors turned a vivid, shocking green. The ancient apple trees in the overgrown orchard, long thought dead, exploded into pale pink blossoms. Harrow Gate was still a crumbling stone giant—its roof still missing slate in the east wing, its grand hall still dusty and empty—but the kitchen garden was thriving, neat rows of carrots and cabbages pushing through the dark soil.
The debts remained. The threat of ruin still hung over them, heavy and real. But something fundamental had shifted: they were no longer waiting to die; they were fighting to live.
It was late May, the evening air warm and smelling of damp earth. Beatrice was in the kitchen, standing by the massive prep table. She was shelling peas into a wooden bowl. She wore a simple cotton dress she had sewn herself, her hair pinned up off her neck.
The back door opened, and Arthur walked in. He had spent the day working with the tenant farmers, repairing the stone walls that divided the pastures. He was covered in dust, his linen shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sweat gleaming on his throat. He looked exhausted, but there was a quiet, profound peace in his eyes that hadn't been there six months ago.
He didn't go to the washbasin. He walked straight to the table. He stood across from Beatrice, watching her hands move efficiently over the pea pods. He set something down on the wood between them.
Beatrice paused. She looked down. It was the heavy gold pocket watch—the one he had nearly pawned to the butcher in the winter. She looked up at him, confused. "Arthur?"
"I rode into York two days ago," Arthur said. His voice was steady, but there was a faint tremor in his hands as he braced them on the table. "I sold the watch to a jeweler. I paid the butcher his remaining balance. I paid the baker for the slate. I paid off the three smallest tenant debts."
Beatrice stared at the gold watch sitting on the table. "But it's right here."
"I sold the casing. I sold the gold," Arthur corrected quietly. He reached out and tapped the watch. "The mechanism inside—the cogs, the wheels, the gears—I kept. I put it in a cheap brass shell. It still tells time; it just doesn't look like a duke's watch anymore. It looks like a working man's."
Beatrice's breath caught in her throat. She understood exactly what he was saying: the crest was gone, the title was gone. He had stripped away the gold and kept only what functioned.
Arthur walked around the table. He stopped in front of her, so close she could feel the heat radiating off him. He reached down and took her hands, pulling them away from the wooden bowl. His calluses scraped gently against hers.
"I have nothing to offer you, Beatrice," he said, his voice dropping into a fierce, quiet intensity. "The debts will take years to clear. This house will be drafty for a decade. I have no servants to draw your bath, no carriages to take you to London. I am a man who chops his own wood and peels his own potatoes."