She handed him the chipped mug every morning at dawn. He smelled of rain, old leather, and hard labor. For 3 months he was just Tom, the quiet, stable hand with grease on his knuckles and a steady, observant gaze. He was the only person on the crumbling estate who treated her like a human being instead of a servant.
Then the black carriages rolled up the gravel drive. The heavy doors swung open and there he stood, not in a rough linen shirt, but wrapped in a dark velvet greatcoat. The new Duke.
The floorboards in the attic room always froze in November. Jane pressed her bare feet against the warped wood, her breath pluming in the gray light of a 5:00 a.m. dawn. There was no fire in her grate. Firewood was for the paying guests, if they ever had any, and for the ground floor, where the damp threatened to eat through the plaster. She pulled a heavy, moth-eaten, woolen shawl over her shoulders. Her fingers were stiff, the knuckles red and chafed from lye soap.
She was the niece of the late master of Fenwick Hall, which meant absolutely nothing in the eyes of the law, but meant everything to the creditors. When her uncle had died, he had left nothing but a mountain of gambling debts and a sprawling, decaying manor in Yorkshire. Jane had stayed because there was nowhere else to go. She was the housekeeper, the accountant, and occasionally the scullery maid, holding the estate together with twine and sheer stubborn spite.
Downstairs, the kitchen was a cavern of cold iron and stone. Mrs. Gable the cook wouldn't be down for another hour. Jane liked this time of day. It was the only hour that belonged entirely to her. She sparked the flint, coaxing a small flame into the hearth, and set the iron kettle over it.
While the water heated, she went to the pantry. On the highest shelf, hidden behind a tin of stale flour, was a small paper bag of loose leaf black tea. A luxury. A ridiculous, unjustifiable luxury she had smuggled from the village market three months ago. She measured out exactly two pinches into a small ceramic pot. When the kettle whistled, she poured the water, watching the dark amber color bleed into the boiling liquid.
She took two mugs from the rack. One was a sturdy brown clay. The other was white porcelain, missing its handle and chipped at the rim. A remnant of a dinner set from 50 years ago. Jane poured the tea. No sugar, no milk. They couldn't afford it.
She wrapped her hands around the hot ceramic, kicked the heavy oak kitchen door open, and stepped out into the biting morning air. The courtyard was frozen solid. The mud hardened into jagged ridges. Frost clung to the dead ivy on the brick walls. Jane walked briskly across the yard, her boots crunching loud in the silence.
The smell of the stables hit her before she opened the doors. A warm, heavy mixture of hay, manure, and horse sweat. Compared to the house, it was an oven. A lantern burned low by the main stalls.
"You're going to break the pitchfork, hitting the stone like that."
The rhythmic scraping stopped. A man stepped out from the third stall, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a linen shirt that had seen better days. The sleeves rolled up past his elbows despite the cold. His boots were caked in muck.
Tom. He had arrived in late August, walking up the drive looking for work. Jane had hired him on the spot, because he asked for half the wages the last stable master had demanded, and because he hadn't looked at her with the pity she usually got from the locals.
"The stone is uneven," Tom said. His voice was a low, rough baritone that didn't entirely match the ragged clothes. His accent was hard to place. Sometimes it slipped into the local rough burr, but other times when he was tired, it flattened out into something sharper, something educated.
Jane didn't ask. Everyone at Fenwick Hall had something they were running from. She held out the chipped white mug.
Tom leaned the pitchfork against the wooden partition. He took a step forward, stripping off his heavy leather work gloves, and reached for the tea. His hands were large, scarred, and stained with dirt. But he took the fragile, broken cup with surprising gentleness. Their fingers brushed. His were freezing.
"Thank you," he murmured.
"Don't thank me," Jane said, leaning against the wooden post of the stall, wrapping both hands around her own brown mug. "It's entirely self-serving. If you freeze to death, I have to muck out the stalls myself. I detest shoveling manure."
A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. It was a good mouth, bracketed by a dark, uneven shadow of stubble. He brought the mug to his lips and drank the tea, black and scalding.
"Barnaby favored his left hind leg yesterday," Tom said, nodding toward the large bay gelding resting in the corner. "I packed it with clay, but he shouldn't be ridden today."
"No one is riding him anyway," Jane said, staring into her tea. "The carriage is rotting in the shed, and we have nowhere to go."
Silence settled between them. It wasn't the uncomfortable silence of strangers, but the heavy settled quiet of two exhausted people who didn't require small talk. This had become their ritual. Every morning for 3 months at 6:00, she brought him tea. They stood in the dim light of the lantern, surrounded by breathing horses, and existed for 10 minutes without being defined by their burdens.
Tom looked at her over the rim of his cup. His eyes were a dark, unreadable gray. He noticed things. Jane knew. He noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the fraying hem of her gray dress, the way she favored her left hip when the damp weather set in, but he never offered unwanted sympathy.
"You were up late," he noted quietly. "Candle was burning in the estate office until 3."
Jane sighed, closing her eyes and resting the back of her head against the wooden post. "The creditors from London sent another letter. They want to assess the timber on the west ridge. If they cut down those trees, the soil will wash away by spring. But they don't care. They just see numbers on a ledger."
"And the owner?" Tom asked, his voice neutral.