I admitted, "I do not know how to be courted by a duke."
Sebastian wrote: I do not know how to court a woman who calls me a tyrant. We will be badly matched in knowledge and well-matched in effort.
Inside my own mind, I told myself to be sensible. Then I remembered that sense had once advised me to hide in a wardrobe.
I finally nodded. "Very well. You may court me slowly, properly, with Mrs. Kettle close enough to throw a spoon if needed."
Sebastian smiled. "Agreed."
Mrs. Kettle's voice came from the hall: "I heard that."
I closed my eyes. "Of course you did."
Sebastian looked delighted.
Courtship at Ravensmere was strange, tender, and regularly supervised by household staff pretending not to supervise. Sebastian sent me flowers; Mrs. Kettle inspected them for symbolism, insects, and excessive expense. He wrote me notes in a hand so elegant it made my grocery list look criminal; I answered in plain script with occasional corrections, because he used "nevertheless" too often. He taught me signs until my fingers grew quick; I taught him which servants were secretly kind, which guests were boring, and which cakes were worth risking Cook's temper.
We took walks in the winter garden because it was warm, private, and full of orange trees that did not gossip. Sometimes he spoke, sometimes he signed, sometimes we sat with no words at all. I learned that silence could be full of companionship when no one used it as a cage.
One afternoon, he asked me to describe thunder. The question struck me so hard I nearly dropped my tea. Sebastian watched my mouth carefully.
I said, "Thunder is the sky moving furniture. Badly."
He blinked, then laughed. Sebastian read my description: "That is not poetic."
I answered carefully: "No, but it is accurate. Sometimes it is a long roll, like barrels down a hill; sometimes it cracks like Mrs. Kettle finding mud on clean stairs; sometimes it feels in your ribs before you think about hearing it."
His expression softened. "I remember the ribs."
Sebastian looked at the window.
"Then you still know thunder."
He looked at me for a long time. "Yes."
Spring came to Ravensmere with wet fields, open windows, and legal consequences: Lord Edmund and Lady Portia were indicted; Dr. Mowbray lost his license before losing his freedom; Abelard received protection and employment far from gas valves; the harbor investors withdrew so quickly they nearly left boot prints on the paperwork.
Sebastian returned to public life in his own manner: he attended tenant meetings with an interpreter and a slate; he required speakers to face him—if they forgot, Mrs. Kettle struck the floor with her cane until they remembered. Some men shouted; Sebastian let them finish, then wrote: Volume is not intelligence. The phrase became famous in the county within a week.
I remained at Ravensmere, though not below stairs after summer: Sebastian insisted I could not be courted properly while scrubbing grates; I insisted grates were more honest than drawing rooms. Mrs. Kettle solved the argument by appointing me "Household Correspondence Assistant," a title she invented with terrifying confidence.
I asked Sebastian, "Can she do that?"
He signed: Mrs. Kettle can do anything.
The proposal happened on a windy afternoon in the rebuilt glasshouse. "Rebuilt" is too grand a word: the old glasshouse had been a burned skeleton for six years; Sebastian had avoided it. Then one morning, he ordered the frame repaired, the broken panes replaced, and new orange trees planted.
"Not to erase what happened," he told me, "to stop letting the worst night own the brightest room."
When he brought me there, sunlight flashed through fresh glass; rows of young plants stood in clay pots; a little fountain trembled in the center. On a table lay a folded stack of linen.