SHE HID THE WOUNDED MESSENGER FROM THE SOLDIERS CHASING HIM—UNAWARE HE WAS THE DUKE

The rain came down hard on the road that cut through the woods near Ashkam village. It had been falling since the first light of morning, and now past noon, the trees dripped with a steady patter that never seemed to slow. Petra Ashfield walked along the edge of the road with a basket on her arm, her boots sinking a little into the mud with each step.

 The wind smelled of wet leaves and cold stone, and every so often the distant rumble of thunder rolled over the hills like a slow, tired drum. She pulled her wool shaw tighter around her shoulders, and kept walking. Petra was 22 years old, and she had lived in the small stone cottage at the edge of the village her whole life. Her mother had died when she was 10.

 Her father had died three winters passed. Now she lived alone with a gray cat named Button and a stubborn goat named Hazel. And she made her small living by selling herbs and salves to the people of the village. She was not rich. She was not poor. She was simply quiet and she liked it that way. Today she had gone into the woods to gather willow bark and yrow because Mrs.

Halden’s boy had a bad cough and she had promised to bring something by nightfall. The rain had come sooner than she expected, and now her basket was heavy with wet leaves, and her hair was plastered to her forehead in dark strings. She thought about the fire waiting for her at home, and the kettle and the piece of bread she had left on the shelf.

 She thought about warm feet in dry stockings. She kept walking. Then she heard the horses. They came from the north, a hard drumming of hooves on the wet road, moving fast. Petra stopped in her tracks and turned her head. She could not see them yet through the trees, but she could hear that there were many of them, maybe six or seven, and they were riding without care for the mud.

 She stepped back off the road and pressed herself behind the wide trunk of an old oak. She did not know why she hid. Something in the sound of those hooves told her to hide, and she trusted that feeling. The riders came into view a moment later. They wore red coats, dark with rain, and each of them carried a pistol at his hip and a sword at his belt. Soldiers, king’s men.

 Petra had seen soldiers before, but never so many together, and never riding so hard. They pounded past her hiding place without slowing, throwing up sprays of muddy water. She caught the face of the man at the front, a thick jaw, a hard mouth, eyes that scanned the woods as he passed.

 Then they were gone, and the sound of their horses faded away down the road toward the south. Petra stayed behind the oak for a long moment. Her heart was beating too fast. She could smell her own wet wool and the sharp green of crushed fern under her boot. She did not know what the soldiers were chasing, but she knew they were chasing something.

 She had seen it in the way the leader’s eyes moved. She stepped out from behind the tree and started walking again. She told herself it was nothing to do with her. She told herself to go home, but her feet slowed as she walked, and her eyes kept drifting to the woods on her right, where the ground fell away toward a small stream.

 Something felt wrong. Something felt too quiet. That was when she heard the groan. It was a low sound, barely more than a breath, coming from somewhere down the slope. Petra stopped again. She held her breath and listened. For a moment there was only the rain. Then it came again, a man’s voice, weak, trying not to make noise and failing.

 She should have walked on. She knew she should have walked on. A wounded man in these woods with soldiers riding hard behind him was not a thing a woman on her own should touch. But Petra had been raised by a mother who taught her that kindness did not ask questions first. And so she set her basket down at the foot of the oak, and she stepped off the road and started down the slope.

 The ground was slick with wet leaves, and she had to hold on to the young trees to keep from falling. Her skirts caught on brambles. A thorn drew a thin red line across the back of her hand, and she did not stop to look at it. She followed the sound of the groan down to the edge of the stream where a fallen log lay half in the water.

 And there, behind the log, she found him. He was a big man, tall, even lying down, with dark hair matted to his forehead, and a cut above his eye that was still bleeding. His coat had once been fine. She could see that at once, even through the mud. The wool was heavy and well- cut, and the buttons were silver.

 But the coat was torn along the side, and a dark stain spread from just below his ribs and soaked down into the waist of his breaches. He was breathing, but only just. His eyes were closed. Petra knelt in the mud beside him. Her knees sank at once into cold water. She reached out and touched his face with the back of her fingers.

 His skin was too hot. Fever then on top of the wound. She pressed her hand lightly to his shoulder and he made that low sound again and turned his head a little. “Sir,” she whispered, “Sir, can you hear me?” His eyes opened. They were gray, the color of stone underwater, and for a moment they seemed to look at her without seeing her at all.

 Then they cleared, and he looked at her properly, and something in his face tightened. “Soldiers,” he said. His voice was rough, like he had not used it in hours. Riding south. You must not, they passed, she said. A few minutes ago. Six of them on horses. He closed his eyes. She saw his jaw work. They will come back.

 Yes, she said. I think they will. She looked at him properly. Then his face was long and hard with high cheekbones and a mouth that even now half unconscious held a shape of quiet command. He was not handsome the way the boys in the village called each other handsome. He was something else. He was a man who took up space even flat on his back in the mud.

 Petra did not know why she thought that then kneeling in the rain with her hands on a stranger’s shoulder. But she thought it and she filed it away. Can you stand? She asked. I think so, he said. For a little while, then we must go now. My cottage is not far. I can hide you there. He opened his eyes again.

 He looked at her for a long moment, and something moved behind his gaze. Surprise, maybe, or something older than surprise. Why, he said. It was not quite a question. Because you need help, she said, and they were riding too hard for a fair chase. Come, get up. She got her shoulder under his arm and pushed. He was heavier than any man she had lifted, and he made a sound between his teeth that told her the wound in his side hurt worse than he was letting on.

 But he got his feet under him. He stood, leaning hard on her, and together they staggered up the slope. The rain was falling harder now. It hissed on the leaves and ran cold down the back of her neck. She could feel his breath ragged against her ear, and she could smell blood on him. That copper sharpness mixed with wet wool and sweat and something else that might have been leather.

 His hand had come to rest on her shoulder, and it was very large, and it was shaking. She grabbed her basket from the base of the oak as they passed. She did not want to leave a sign that anyone had been here. She kicked wet leaves over the mud where they had climbed. She was not sure it would help. She kept them moving.

 The cottage was half a mile down the road, then up a narrow path that only Petra used. The stones of the path were slick, and twice the man nearly fell, and twice she caught him and held him up. By the time they reached her door, she was gasping, and he was silent, and she could feel a warm wetness spreading along her own side, where his blood had soaked through her shawl.

 She pushed the door open with her hip. The cottage was small, one main room with a fireplace, a table, two chairs, and a narrow bed in the corner. There was a small back room where her herbs hung to dry, and a loft above with a straw pallet where she slept. The fire had burned down to red coals.

 The cat Button lifted her head from the hearthrug and stared. “On the bed,” Petra whispered. Come on. On the bed. She got him across the room and lowered him onto the narrow bed. He sank down with a sound she pretended not to hear. His head fell back against the pillow. His eyes closed. For one terrible second she thought he had died.

 Then she saw the slow rise of his chest and she let out a breath she had not known she was holding. She moved fast. Then she barred the door. She drew the shutters over the front window and the small side window. She stoked the fire and hung a kettle on the hook and set water to boil. She went to the back room and gathered what she needed.

 Clean linen strips she had rolled last week, a bottle of strong spirit for cleaning wounds, a jar of honey, willow bark, yarrow, comfry root. She laid them out on the table by the bed. Then she turned to him. His coat was ruined. She cut it away with her sewing scissors, slow and careful around the wound, and she peeled the wet wool from his skin.

 His shirt underneath was soaked red on the right side, from the middle of his ribs down to his waist. She cut that away, too. When she saw the wound, her hands went still for one second. It was a pistol ball. It had gone in below his lowest rib on the right side, and there was no exit wound on his back. She had helped her father dig a ball out of a poacher once, 10 years ago when she was 12.

 She remembered how her father’s hands had moved. She remembered him telling her to be steady. She wet her lips. “You are lucky I did not walk past,” she said quietly. She did not know if he could hear her. She was speaking mostly to steady herself. “You are very lucky.” She washed her hands in the hot water. She washed the wound.

 He flinched once hard when she touched the edge of the ball with the tip of her small forceps, but he did not cry out. She worked slowly. She was afraid of pushing the ball deeper. She was afraid of nicking something inside him that could not be mended. Her hands did not shake, but her heart was pounding so loud in her ears that she could hear it over the rain.

The ball came out at last with a small wet sound, and she dropped it into a tin cup on the floor. It clinkedked against the metal. She let out her breath. Then she poured spirit into the wound and this time he did cry out a sharp bittenoff sound between his teeth and his hand came up and caught her wrist. His grip was strong even in fever.

 She held still and let him hold her. I know, she whispered. I am sorry. It has to be clean. I know. His grip loosened. His hand fell away. She kept working. She packed the wound with a pus of yarrow and honey. She wrapped clean linen tight around his side again and again until the bandage was thick and firm.

 She washed the cut above his eye and closed it with a strip of plaster. She stripped off the rest of his ruined shirt and pulled a spare wool blanket over him to the chest. Then, only then did she sit down. She sat on the wooden chair beside the bed. She looked at him. His face was pale and slack in the firelight, and his dark hair was still damp, and his mouth was slightly open.

 The rain drumed on the roof. Somewhere far off, she thought she heard hooves again on the road. She did not move. She thought then that she had done a very foolish thing. She had taken a wounded stranger into her home while soldiers of the king were chasing him. She did not know what he had done. She did not know if he was a criminal or a spy or a deserter or something worse.

She knew nothing about him at all except that he was hurt and she had chosen to help him. And now she could not undo that choice. She reached out and pressed the back of her fingers to his forehead again. Still too hot. She rose and set water for a fever tea to brew. The soldiers did come back.

 She heard them ride past on the road below near dusk, moving slower this time. and she heard voices calling to one another, and once she thought she heard her own name, but it was only the wind. She stood in the middle of her small room and did not move for a long time until the sound of hooves faded again toward the north.

Then she took the tea from the fire, and she sat beside the bed, and she spooned it between his lips, one careful drop at a time. He swallowed. That was all she needed him to do. Night came on. The fire burned low, and then she built it up again. Rain kept falling. Petra dozed once in the chair, her cheek against her hand, and dreamed of hooves on stone.

When she woke, the man on the bed was watching her. His eyes were clearer now. Not clear enough, but clearer. “Where am I?” he said. “My cottage,” she said. “Near Ashkambeay.” He tried to lift his head and she pressed her palm gently against his shoulder to keep him down. He was too weak to resist.

 He let his head fall back. How long? He said, a few hours. It is night. He closed his eyes. She thought he had gone under again. Then he spoke without opening them. You took the ball out. Yes, you are trained. My father was the village barber surgeon. before he died. His mouth moved in something that might in another man have been a smile. “I am in your debt.

 You are in my bed,” she said before she could stop herself. “That is not the same thing.” His eyes opened. He looked at her and now for the first time she saw him seeing her, not through the fog of pain, but really seeing her. It made her look away. “What is your name?” he said. She hesitated. She did not know his name. She did not know what he was.

But he was helpless in her house. And lying to him seemed pointless. “Petra! Petra,” he said. He said it like he was testing the sound of it. “Petra what? Petra Ashfield.” “Petra Ashfield,” he said. He nodded once, “Small, I will remember it.” “And you?” He was quiet for a long moment. She could see him weighing something behind his eyes.

 At last, he said, “Callum, just Callum, for now, Miss Ashfield, just Callum, if you would allow it.” She looked at him. She looked at the coat she had cut off him, and thrown in a heat by the fire, the fine wool, the silver buttons. She looked at his hands, which were large and hard, but not the hands of a farmer.

Nails clean, a pale mark on one finger where a ring had recently been. “For now,” she said quietly. “Just Callum, if you tell me one thing, ask, are the soldiers chasing you because you did something wrong, or because someone wanted you dead?” His gray eyes held hers for a long moment. The fire snapped in the hearth.

 A drop of rain fell down the chimney and hissed on the coals. “Someone wanted me dead,” he said. “I have done nothing wrong, but I cannot prove it to you. So you must decide whether to believe me.” Petra looked at him. She looked at her own hands, which was stre with dried blood, his blood, and a little of her own from the thorn on the way down the slope.

 She looked at the barred door and the dying fire and the dark corners of her small safe cottage that she had chosen to open. “I believe you,” she said. He closed his eyes. She thought she saw the corner of his mouth move again. “Go to sleep, Miss Ashfield,” he said. “You are more tired than I am.” She almost laughed.

 Instead, she got up and climbed the little ladder to her loft, and she lay down in her clothes on the straw pallet, and she listened to the rain and to the slow breathing of the stranger in her bed below. She thought she would not sleep. She slept. The next morning, she woke to the smell of woods and cold air. She climbed down from the loft.

 Callum was still asleep. She checked the bandage. No fresh blood. She touched his forehead. Cooler. not gone, but cooler. She let out a long breath. She went about her day the way she went about every day, only quieter. She fed the goat. She milked her. She fed the cat. She swept the stones outside her door and looked hard down the road for red coats and saw none.

 She came back inside and made porridge on the fire, and she sat beside Callum and spooned it between his lips when he woke enough to swallow. Two more days passed like this. The rain stopped on the second day. On the third, weak sunlight fell through the shutters when she opened them. And Callum sat up in the bed on his own.

 He was still weak. His face had a gray tint under the tan of his skin, but he was awake, and his eyes were clear, and when she brought him a cup of broth, he took it from her hand himself. Miss Ashfield, he said. Petra, she said. In my own house. Petra. Petra. He looked at her over the rim of the cup.

 How long have I been here? 3 days. And no one has come. Two men came yesterday. Not soldiers, village men. They wanted to know if I had seen strangers on the road. I told them I had not. He was still for a long moment. You lied for me. I did, she said. I am not proud of it. But I did. Why? She had thought about this. She had thought about little else.

 Sitting up in the loft at night listening to him breathe. She set the empty cup on the table and looked at him. Because I made a choice down at the stream, she said. And once I made it, I meant it. He nodded. He looked at the fire for a long time. His hand lay still on the blanket. Long fingers spread. She watched them and then she looked away because looking at his hand made her feel something she did not want to name.

 That afternoon she brought her mending into the front room and sat by the fire while he slept. She sewed a tear in her second best apron. Button the cat came and stretched herself out on the hearthrug and closed her eyes. It was very quiet. She could hear him breathing. She could hear the small pop of a log in the fire. She could smell yarrow and honey from the bandage and the faint sweetness of the beeswax she had rubbed into the table that morning.

 It was almost, she thought, as if he had always been there. That thought frightened her a little. She sewed faster. On the fourth day, he was strong enough to sit up in the chair by the fire while she changed the bedding. She caught him watching her as she shook out a fresh sheet. She turned her back to him and pretended not to notice.

 She could feel his eyes on her shoulders. Miss Ashfield Petra. Yes. How long have you lived alone here? 3 years, she said. Since my father died, and before that only ever with him. My mother died when I was 10. You have no brothers, no sisters, none, no suitor. She turned then. She did not know what her face looked like, but he was watching her carefully, and he did not look away when she met his eyes.

 That is a strange question, she said, from a man in my bed. His mouth twitched. It was, she realized, the closest thing he had to a smile. It is a strange thing to be in your bed. Answer me one then if I have to answer yours. Why were they chasing you, Callum? He looked at the fire. A long time passed. There is a man, he said at last, who wants my life.

He does not want it because I have wronged him. He wants it because I stand between him and something he wishes to have. He arranged an attack on the road 3 days ago. He hired the men. He gave them uniforms so that anyone who saw would believe it was the king’s business. It was not the king’s business.

 It was murder made to look official. Who is he? She said quietly. A man who thinks himself very clever. He is not as clever as he thinks. And who are you that a man wants your life this much? He looked at her then. His gray eyes were very steady. “A man in your bed,” he said, with a hole in his side, and no way to pay you back for what you have done except with the truth when it is safe to give it.

 She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded once and turned back to the bed. “Fair enough,” she said. That evening she sat in the chair across from him at the small table and they ate together bread and cheese and broth and small tart apples from the barrel in the back room. He ate slowly, still favoring his side. He did not talk much.

 Neither did she, but it was not an uncomfortable quiet. It was the quiet of two people who did not have to fill the air to know they were both there. When she gathered the plates, his hand brushed hers on the table. It was an accident. Her breath caught anyway. She did not look up. She carried the plates to the basin.

 Behind her, she heard him say very softly, “Thank you. You have thanked me before. Not for the food. For not asking me who I am.” She rinsed the plates. She did not turn around. “You will tell me when you can. I can wait.” He was quiet. Then he said, “Yes, I will tell you when I can.

 That night she climbed to her loft and lay staring at the beams above her head. She listened to him below, the slow, even sound of a man healing. She thought about what she was doing. She thought about how her life had been 3 days ago and how it was now. She thought about the shape of his hand on the blanket. She thought about the pale mark where a ring had been. She slept badly.

On the fifth day, he tried to walk. He got up from the chair, put his hand on the mantel, and took three steps across the room before his knees gave, and he sat down hard on the hearthrug. Petra was at his side in a moment, both hands on his arm. “You fool,” she said. “You proud fool.

 Sit,” I sat, he said from the rug. The floor came up to help me. She looked at him. His face was very close to hers. His gray eyes had a small light in them that she had not seen before. She laughed once before she could stop it, a startled sound, more breath than voice. He looked at her when she laughed. He looked at her as if he had heard something he did not know he had been listening for.

 She got to her feet quickly and made a lot of noise about fetching him water. That was the day the boy came to the door. His name was Tim Holden and he was 10 years old and he wanted to know if the willow bark was ready for his mother. Petra had forgotten about him. She stepped outside quickly and closed the door behind her and she gave him a small packet she had prepared the day before.

 She told him to run home. He looked up at her with wide curious eyes. Miss Petra, he said, there’s a fine gentleman staying at the inn now. He came yesterday. He is asking after any strangers in the village. He gave my father a whole shilling for a bit of talk. Petra kept her face still. Did he now? He said there was a man run off wounded.

 He said the man was dangerous. And what did your father say? Tim shrugged. That he had not seen anyone, but he took the shilling. Petra pressed the packet into the boy’s hand and made him promise to give it straight to his mother, and she watched him run down the path. Then she stood on her step for a long moment, looking down at the village below, at the smoke rising from the inn’s chimney.

Her hands felt cold. She went inside. Callum was in the chair by the fire, half asleep, but he looked up when she came in and saw her face and sat forward at once. What a gentleman is at the inn, she said, asking after wounded men, paying for answers. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, describe him.

 I have not seen him. A boy told me. Tall, short, old, young. The boy did not say. He nodded slowly. He rubbed one hand along his jaw. His face had gone very still. It was the face, she thought, of a man used to making decisions that other men had to live with. I must leave, he said. You cannot walk across the room.

 I cannot stay here and bring soldiers back to your door. You cannot walk across the room. He looked at her. She looked at him. Neither of them looked away. Petra, he said quietly, if they find me here, they will not be gentle with you. Do you understand that? I understand it. Then help me leave. No,

 Petra. No. She sat down opposite him. She put her hands flat on her knees so that they would not shake. You will die on the road. You will fall in a ditch and bleed to death, and I will have wasted three days of my life. I will not help you do that. He stared at her. She stared back. You are the most stubborn woman I have ever met,” he said.

 “I am the only woman you have met in a week. Your sample is small.” He almost laughed. She saw it, the flash of something startled and warm behind his eyes. He looked away first. Then what do you propose? He said, “I propose we wait. Three more days. By then you can walk. By then you can ride. If we can find you a horse. In 3 days you go. and not before.

 And if the man at the inn finds us before 3 days, he will not. How can you be sure? Because she said, “No one comes up my path. I am the herb woman. I am the woman who lives alone. People do not think of me. That is my greatest weapon, and it always has been.” He looked at her for a long moment.

 There was something in his face she could not read. Very well, he said. 3 days. She nodded. She stood. She went and got him more broth. Now, here is the moment that changed things. On the sixth day, while Callum slept, a knock came at the door. Petra froze where she stood, mending in her lap. Button the cat lifted her head from the hearthrug.

 The knock came again. Miss Ashfield, a voice said. A man’s voice, polite, unfamiliar. Miss Ashfield, are you within? She set the mending down. She looked at Callum, who was awake now, and half sitting up and reaching for something under the pillow that turned out to be nothing at all. His face was pale.

 The back room, she whispered, behind the herbs, behind the drying rack. Do not move. Do not breathe. He obeyed. He rose with terrible slowness and pain. and she helped him across the room and into the back room and she pulled the heavy drying rack across the doorway so that the strings of yarrow and lavender fell like a curtain in front of him.

 Then she smoothed her apron and she took a slow breath and she opened the front door. A man stood on her step. He was tall but not as tall as Callum. He wore a fine dark coat and polished boots and a hat with a wide brim. His face was smooth shaven and pleasant in the way that a fresh apple is pleasant right before you find the worm inside. He smiled at her.

Miss Ashfield, he said, forgive the intrusion. My name is Mr. Larkser. I am a gentleman visiting the county on private business, and I understand you are the local herbalist. I am, she said. I wondered if I might trouble you for a headache remedy. I have had one for 2 days now that will not shift.

 Of course, she said. She kept her hand on the door. She did not step back to let him in. Might I come in a moment out of the wind? I would rather bring the remedy out to you, sir. My cat is unwell and does not like strangers. Mister Larker smiled again. His eyes moved past her over her shoulder into the room behind her.

 She saw them scan the fire, the bed, the two chairs, the coat that she had thankfully hidden the night before in a chest under the loft ladder. His eyes came back to her. How very considerate of you. I shall wait. She went inside. She left the door half open behind her because closing it would look wrong. She moved fast.

 She mixed feverfw and lavender and willow bark in a small twist of paper. Her hands were steady, her heart was not. She could feel his eyes on her back through the door. She came back and pressed the packet into his hand. Steep it in hot water, sir. A pinch is plenty. How much do I owe you? Nothing, sir.

 I do not take money from travelers. How very kind. He did not leave. He turned the packet over in his fingers as if he did not quite know what to do with it. Then he looked up at her and his pleasant face had a small hardness in it now and he said, “Miss Ashfield, I must ask you a question. Have you seen any strangers passing through these woods in the past week?” “No, sir.

 No riders, no wounded men, no one asking for help.” “No, sir. You are quite certain.” “Quite certain, sir, I keep to myself. I see very little of the road.” He studied her. He studied her for a long, slow moment. She held his gaze because she was afraid that if she looked away, he would know. The wind stirred the leaves in the yard, and somewhere in the woods a wood pigeon called, and the smell of woodsm smoke drifted from her chimney.

 She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. She did not blink. Very well, Miss Ashfield. If you should see anyone, please send word to the inn. There will be a reward, a generous one. Yes, sir, he tipped his hat. He walked away down the path. She watched him until he was out of sight around the bend.

 Then she closed the door. Then she barred it. Then she leaned her back against it and slid down to the floor and let her hands shake at last. After a moment, she heard a small sound from the back room. She rose and pulled the drying rack aside. Callum was sitting on the floor with his back against the stone wall.

 His face was wet with sweat. His right hand was pressed hard against his side. She could see a small dark stain spreading through the bandage. “You have torn something,” she said. “I have not. You have come to the bed.” She got him back to the bed. She unwrapped him. The wound had opened a little, but only a little.

 She cleaned it again and rebandaged it. Her hands were steadier now. “That was him,” Callum said. His voice was very quiet. That was the man, the one who wants you dead. Yes, he does not look like a killer. That is why he is so good at it. She sat down on the chair beside the bed. She rested her hands on her knees. She was not shaking anymore, but she felt cold all the way through.

 “He will come back,” she said. “Yes, he knows something. He suspects he does not know yet.” She looked at him. How long can we keep him from knowing? Callum was silent for a long moment. Then he said, “Petra, come here.” She came. She stood beside the bed. He reached up and took her hand in his carefully as if she might pull away. She did not.

 His hand was warm and dry and very large around hers. “Listen to me,” he said. “I want you to think about what I am about to say. I do not want you to answer quickly. All right. Tomorrow night, if my strength holds, I will leave. I will not go far. There is a place in the woods, an old shepherd’s hut on the ridge above the stream, half fallen down.

 I know it because because I have seen this county before. I will go there. I will lie low. I will not come here again. But I need one thing from you before I go. What a message carried not by you, by someone you trust. There is a house 4 mi east of here. A large one set back from the road with black iron gates.

 You will not enter. You will send the message only. It must reach a man named Mr. Hollow who works there. He will know what to do. She looked at his hand around hers. She looked at his face. She looked at the pale mark on his finger where a ring had been. Callum, she said quietly. the house 4 mi east.

 That is the Duke of Marchwart’s estate. He did not answer. She looked at him. She looked at the fine coat crumpled in the chest. She looked at the silver buttons. She looked at his hands and the mark on his finger and the way he had spoken to her and the way the servants at any house he had ever entered had likely shifted around him without knowing why. “Oh,” she said.

He closed his eyes. “You are the Duke of Marchwater,” she said. It was not a question. “I did not want to lie to you,” he said. His voice was rough. I did not want you to change how you spoke to me. “Do you understand? For 6 days, you have looked at me like a man. Not a title, just a man.

 I have not I have not had that in many years.” She stood very still. She felt something turn over inside her chest. Something that might have been anger or might have been a kind of sorrow or might have been the beginning of something else entirely. She let his hand fall. She walked to the fire. She stood with her back to him. She looked at the coals.

 “You let me put you in my bed,” she said. “You let me cut your clothes off. You let me feed you soup from a wooden spoon. And you are a duke, Petra. I called you a fool. I said you were in my bed. I laughed at you when you fell on the rug. You did. A duke. Petra, please look at me. She did not turn. Her back stayed straight.

 She could feel her cheeks burning, but not from shame. From something more complicated than shame. Why did you not tell me? Because he said, “The moment I told you this, she heard the small movement of his hand on the blanket. This would be gone.” She was quiet for a long time. Outside, a crow called once from the top of a pine.

 The fire popped, button. The cat rose from the hearthrug, stretched, and walked slowly across the floor, and pressed her side against Petra’s ankle. Petra bent down and picked her up and held her against her chest and pressed her face into her soft fur. She stayed that way for a long moment. Then she turned around. You are still a man in my bed with a hole in your side, she said.

 Nothing about that has changed. But do not lie to me again, Callum of Marchwater. Not once. Do you hear me? I hear you. Say it. I will not lie to you again. Good. She set the cat down. She came back to the chair. She sat. Now, she said, “Tell me about Mr. Larker.” He told her. The man called Larker was really named Ambrose Wexley, and he had been a cousin of Callum’s late father, and he had spent 20 years believing that he ought to have been the Duke of Marchwater instead of Callum.

 He had been patient. He had been quiet. He had waited until Callum was riding alone through a stretch of wood a week ago, and he had arranged an ambush by six hired men in fake uniforms. and he had been so certain of Callum’s death that he had already begun to move in on Marchwater House, telling the household that Callum had been killed by highwaymen and that he, Wexley, had come to see to affairs.

 He does not know I lived, Callum said. He suspects, but he does not know. If I appear alive at the estate in front of witnesses, he loses everything. He knows this. So, he must find me first and finish what his men could not. And if he does not find you, then in 3 days I ride to the estate and I show myself to my household in full daylight and I have him arrested.

 Petra nodded slowly. Then we have 3 days, she said. The next day, the seventh day, was strange and quiet. They spoke less than they had before, but the quiet felt different now, heavier, more careful. She caught him watching her more than once. Each time he did not look away. Each time she did. That evening she brought him a cup of tea and set it on the small table beside the bed.

 Her hand shook a little as she set the cup down. She had not eaten much that day. She had barely slept. She turned to leave. His hand caught hers. Not tightly. Just enough. Petra. Yes. Sit. She sat. She did not know why. Something in his voice. He held her hand in both of his. He looked at her hand and not at her face.

 When I first opened my eyes down at the stream, he said, “I thought I was dying. I thought I would die in the mud with rain on my face and no one to know where I had gone. And then I saw you, a woman kneeling in the mud beside me with wet hair and a scratch on her hand from a thorn. And you were angry with me for being where I was, and you were also going to save my life, and both of those things were in your face at once.

” And I thought his voice roughened. He stopped. He started again. I thought if I live through this, I would like to know that woman for the rest of my days. She could not breathe. I am not saying this to you to bind you to anything. He said quickly, “I am a man who has been a great fool. I have lied to you for 6 days.

 I have brought danger to your door. I have no right at all to say what I am saying. But you told me not to lie to you again. And this is what I would be lying about if I did not say it. So I am saying it and I will not say it again, Petra Ashfield. Unless one day when this is over you tell me you would like to hear it a second time. She looked at his hands around hers.

 She looked at his face. She thought about the willow woods in the rain and the ball dropping into the tin cup and the sound of him breathing in the dark while she lay awake in the loft above him. She did not say anything. She lifted his hand, the big one, with the pale mark where a ring had been, and she pressed it once very gently against her own cheek. His breath caught.

 She let his hand go. She stood. Drink your tea before it goes cold,” she said. Her voice was not entirely steady. Then she climbed to the loft and she lay down and she pressed her hand against her cheek where his had been, and she stayed that way for a long time before she slept. The eighth day was the day everything happened.

 It began with a boy at the door again, not Tim this time, but the inkeeper’s son, Rob, who was 14 and out of breath from running up the path. Petra opened the door with her heart in her throat. Miss Petra, he gasped. Miss Petra, the gentleman at the inn. Mr. Larkper, he is asking questions all through the village.

 He has offered £5,5 miss to anyone who can tell him where a wounded stranger might be hiding. Old widow Marshant said she saw a man in a fine coat helped up the path here six nights ago. She was pulling herself along the road. she said. Nobody thought she saw straight because she was drunk. But now the gentleman has heard her.

 He is coming. He is coming up here now with three men. Petra felt the world stop for one breath. Then she moved. Rob, she said, “Rob, listen to me. You did not come here. You did not tell me anything. If anyone asks, you were at home all morning. Do you understand me?” Yes, miss. Go. Go fast.

 Go through the trees, not the road. He went. She shut the door. She dropped the bar. She turned. Callum was standing in the middle of the room. He had pulled on the shirt she had washed for him and his breaches and his boots. His face was gray. His hand was pressed to his side. He was upright. Barely. How long? He said.

 Minutes, maybe less, he nodded. He looked around the small room once. He looked at her. Petra, get out. Take the goat. Take the cat. Take the road down to the village and stay there in a full room with witnesses. Do not come back until dark. No, Petra. No, you cannot fight three men. Not like this. I do not need to fight them.

 I need to survive them until nightfall. There is a way. But not with you here. She stared at him. She stared at him and she thought of a dozen things to say and could not say any of them. She thought of Wexley’s smooth, pleasant face and his cold eyes moving past her shoulder into the room. She thought of what he would do to her if he found Callum here.

 She thought of what he would do to Callum. She looked at the fire. She looked at the coat in the chest. She had an idea. “Take that off,” she said. “What? Your boots? Your shirt? Get back in the bed now. Under the blanket. Turn your face to the wall. Petra, what? Do it now. Callum, trust me. He did not argue. He sat on the bed and pulled his boots off, and she pulled them across the floor and dropped them into the chest with the coat and slammed the lid. She helped him lie down.

 She turned him gently on his good side, face to the wall. She pulled the blanket up over his shoulder, over his hair. She left only a small piece of dark hair showing. Then she took a jar of yaropus and she smeared it around the edge of the blanket and on the pillow and on his neck.

 She rubbed lavender in her hands and pressed her palms into her own face and neck. She rubbed the pale gray ash from the fireplace along her cheeks and under her eyes. She pulled her hair loose from its pin so it hung around her face in strings. She stripped off her clean apron. She wrapped a wet cloth around her own throat. She looked at herself in the small looking glass on the wall.

 She looked like she had not slept in a week. She looked like a woman half out of her mind with worry. Good. She heard the horses on the path. They stopped outside her door. She heard men dismount. She heard the ring of a boot on the stone step. Then the knock. Sharp three times. Miss Ashfield, open the door. She opened the door.

 Wexley stood on her step with three men behind him. His pleasant face was not pleasant anymore. It was thin and hard. His eyes went past her at once into the room and stopped on the bed. “There you are,” he said. “Please,” Petra said. She let her voice crack. She let her hands twist in her apron.

 She let her tears spill down her cheek. It was not hard. She had been holding tears back for a day and a half. Please, sir. Please, you cannot come in. He has the fever. He has the black fever, sir, and I have been alone with it 3 days, and I do not know if I have it too, Wexley stopped. One of the men behind him stepped back.

 The black fever, Wexley said, his voice sharpened. Yes, sir. I found him on the road, sir, in a fine coat, and I did not know then. I thought only he had fallen, and I brought him in, sir, and by morning the spots were on his neck, sir. The black spots. I have never seen the like, and now he is out of his mind with it, and cannot speak, sir. And the smell.

Please, sir, do you smell it? Please, sir, please leave. Please send the surgeon. Send anyone. But do not come in, sir, for the love of God. She was crying now. Real tears from fear, from the smell of yrow and lavender that was thick in the air. From the sight of Wexley’s men shrinking back from her doorstep.

 Wexley took one step forward. He looked past her at the bed. He saw the dark hair, the still shape under the blanket, the yellow green smear on the pillow that he took in his fright for something worse. He saw the ash on her face and the wet cloth on her throat. His face, Wexley said, turn his face to me. Sir, no.

Please, if you see, turn his face, woman, she wailed. She threw herself in front of the door and clutched at his sleeve. Sir, I beg you, sir. My father died of the black fever. I know it. I know what it does. Please do not make me touch him. Please. Wexley pulled his arm away from her as if she had burned him.

He stepped back. One of his men had already retreated to the horses. Another was covering his mouth with a handkerchief. The third would not meet Wexley’s eyes. Sir, said the youngest of them, from behind, sir, if it is truly the black silence. But he stepped back another pace. Petra sank to her knees in the doorway. She wept.

 She wept hard and loud, the way village women wept over their dead, and she said, “Please, sir, please, if he is anyone to you, please send for a priest. Do not leave me here alone with him another hour, please.” Wexley stared at her. He stared at the bed. He stared at his men. Then he turned on his heel. “Burn it,” he said.

“When he is dead, burn the cottage. I do not want it standing, sir. Burn it. Now come.” They mounted. They rode. The sound of the hooves faded down the path. Petra stayed on her knees in the doorway until she could not hear them anymore. Then she rose. She shut the door. She barred it.

 She leaned her forehead against the wood. She started to laugh. It was a small shaky laugh at first and then it grew and then it turned into a shaking that was not quite laughter and not quite tears. She sank down to the floor with her back against the door and pressed her hands over her face and let it come out of her.

 She felt a hand on her shoulder. Callum was kneeling beside her. He should not have been kneeling. He should not have been out of the bed. She could see through her fingers the pain lines around his mouth. But he was kneeling beside her on the stone floor and his hand was on her shoulder and he was looking at her with an expression that she would remember she thought for the rest of her life.

 Petra, he said very softly. Do not, she whispered. Do not say anything. Not yet. He did not. He simply stayed there on his knees with his hand on her shoulder and let her breathe. The fire crackled. The smell of yrow and lavender and ash filled the small room. Somewhere outside a wood pigeon called. It was, she thought later, the longest quiet moment of her life. He did not move. She did not move.

The whole world had stopped, and she could hear each small thing in it, the drip of water from the eaves, the shift of a log in the fire, the soft sound of his breath, the faster sound of her own. She could feel the warmth of his palm through the fabric of her sleeve. She could feel the cold stone under her legs.

 She could feel her heart at last, beginning to slow. At last, she lowered her hands. “You should not be up,” she said. “Neither should you. I am not the one with a hole in my side. You are the one who just told a killer you had the black fever and made him run away. He did run, did he not? Her voice trembled between laughter and something else. He ran.

 He is riding for the county road now. If I know him, he will not stop until he has crossed into the next Shire. He will not come back here, he said. To burn the cottage. His men will not touch it. Not with fever inside. She nodded. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She left a smear of ash across her cheek.

 He looked at her for a long moment. Then he lifted his other hand slowly and with the pad of his thumb wiped the ash away. She stopped breathing. His thumb moved along her cheekbone once very lightly and then his hand fell. “Petra Ashfield,” he said. His voice was rough. “You are the bravest person I have ever met.

” She did not know what to say. So she said, “You need to lie down before you fall down.” He almost smiled. She helped him back to the bed. He was shaking with the effort of what he had done. She got him under the blanket. She sat on the edge of the bed and unwrapped his bandage and looked at the wound. It had held.

 It had bled a little, but it had held. She washed it. She rewrapped it. She did not look at his face while she worked. She could feel him watching her. When she was done, she sat still with her hands in her lap. I have to send word to your Mr. Hollow, she said. Now, tonight, Wexley may be gone, but you need your people here before he finds his nerve again.

 Yes, I will send Rob. He can be trusted. He is 14 and he thinks I am a witch. He will not fail me. Petra. Yes. Come here. She looked up. He held out his hand. He did not say anything else. She looked at his hand for a long moment. Then she put hers in it. He drew her hand up and pressed it once to his mouth. His lips were warm.

Her breath caught. He let her hand go. When my people come, he said, everything will change. You need to understand that there will be a carriage. There will be a surgeon. There will be men in livery. I will be moved to the estate. I will be back in a life that has nothing to do with a small stone cottage on a hill.

 Do you understand? I understand. I want you to know that none of that changes what I said to you last night. None of it changes what has happened here in this room. If anything, it makes it more true. Do you hear me? I hear you. Good. She stood. She turned away. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and she went to send Rob.

 Mister Hollow arrived at the cottage 2 hours before sunset with four men, a surgeon, a covered carriage, and a horse tied behind for himself. He was a thin gray man with sharp eyes and a soft voice. When Petra opened the door to him, he bowed low, lower than any man had ever bowed to her in her life, and said, “Miss Ashfield, his grace’s household is in your debt.

 Whatever you require of us for the rest of your natural life, you have only to ask.” She could not think what to say. She stepped aside. Callum was moved with great care. The surgeon spoke to Petra with formal respect and examined her work on the wound with quiet astonishment. This was clean, he said. This was very well done.

 Whoever taught you taught you well. My father, she said, he was the barber surgeon in the village. The surgeon nodded gravely. He asked her three questions about her method, and she answered them. Then Callum was carried out to the carriage on a litter. He looked up at Petra as they lifted him past her. He did not speak. He did not need to.

 His gray eyes said what she needed to hear. Mr. Hollow lingered a moment on the step. Miss Ashfield, he said, his grace has instructed me to say that he will send word within 3 days. He has instructed me to say that you are to remain here in your home and to change nothing until he has spoken with you again.

 He has instructed me to say here the old man’s voice softened that he did not know how to thank you but that he would find a way. She nodded. She could not speak. The carriage pulled away down the path. Petra stood on her step until the sound of its wheels had faded. Then she went inside. She closed the door. The cottage was empty in a way it had not been empty before. Button.

 The cat sat on the hearthrug and looked up at her with wide green eyes. “Well,” Petra said. Her voice was thin in the still air. “Well, then she sat down at the table. She looked at the empty bed. She looked at the chair where he had sat. She looked at the two cups on the small table beside the bed. She rose. She washed the cups. She washed her face.

She combed her hair. She fed the goat. She fed the cat. She went about her work. Three days passed. On the second day, a boy came up the path with a basket. In the basket were a wheel of good cheese, a loaf of white bread, a small bottle of dark wine, a tin of tea such as she had never tasted, and a folded paper on which was written in a careful hand only three words, I am mending.

There was no signature. She did not need one. On the third day, she saw the carriage coming. It was not the same carriage. This one was larger, and it was polished until it shone in the afternoon light, and it had a small crest painted on the door. A stag with its head lifted. Two men in fine livery rode ahead, two more behind, and in the carriage window, as it came up the path and stopped in her yard, she could see the shape of Callum sitting up, alive, awake, watching for her.

 She stood in her doorway with her hands twisted in her apron. He got out of the carriage by himself. He was moving slowly, and one arm was pressed against his side, but he was on his feet, and he walked to her without help. Behind him, all his men stood very still. They did not move. They did not speak.

 She realized in a strange still way that they were watching, that this, whatever this was, was going to happen in front of witnesses. She thought of him crossing a ballroom in front of a crowd to speak to a woman he had chosen. She had not been at that ballroom, but she thought suddenly that this was that moment for her.

 Only her ballroom was a stone step and a muddy yard and a gray cat sitting in the doorway. And the crowd was four men in livery who had known him since he was a boy. Callum stopped in front of her. He looked at her for a long moment. His gray eyes were tired, but they were clear. He was holding something in his hand.

 She saw that it was a small folded paper. Miss Ashfield,” he said, his voice carried in the quiet yard, low but firm. “I have come to speak to you in front of my household. I want them to hear what I am about to say.” She could not speak. She nodded. 8 days ago, he said, “I would have died in the mud beside a stream 3 mi from this cottage. You knelt beside me in the rain.

 You lifted me. You hid me from men who would have killed me. You cut a pistol ball from my side. You fed me from your own store. You lied to a killer’s face and sent him running. You did all of this without knowing my name, without knowing my rank, without any promise of reward. You did all of this because a stranger needed help.

 And you are the kind of woman who helps. He paused. She could see his hand tighten on the small folded paper. Behind him, none of his men moved. Behind her, the fire crackled softly in the hearth. I have been a duke for 11 years, he said. In that time, I have been thanked and flattered and courted and lied to, and I have grown very tired of it.

 I did not know I was tired until I lay in your bed for 6 days and had none of it. In 6 days in your house, I was a man. Only a man. You gave me back something I had lost. I did not know it was gone until you gave it back. She felt her eyes fill. She did not let the tears fall. Not yet. I told you once, he said, that I would not say what I said one night again, unless you told me you wish to hear it.

 I am not going to say it now. I am going to say something else instead. He held out the folded paper. She did not take it. What is that? She said quietly. A deed, he said. to this cottage and to the 10 acres of woodland around it. It is common land at present and it should never have been. I have had it drawn up in your name, Petra Ashfield, in perpetuity for you and any heirs of your body with the rents of two neighboring farms attached to support it.

 Whatever else happens between us from this day forward, no man on earth can take this house from you. Not me, not any man. She stared at the paper. She stared at him. Callum, I am not finished. She was quiet. I want you to have this because it is yours by right and because I owe it to you and because I want you to know that whatever answer you give me now or in a year or in 10 years or never. This is yours.

 You are not beholden to me. You are not in my debt. You never were. I am in yours. He held out the paper again. This time she took it. Her hands were shaking. The paper was heavy and smooth. She held it against her chest. “And now,” he said, and his voice softened, and for the first time, he stepped a little closer so that the men behind him could no longer quite hear.

 May I ask you something?” “Yes, would you like to hear me say it a second time?” She looked up into his gray eyes. She thought of a woman kneeling in wet leaves beside a fallen log. She thought of a man’s hand catching her wrist in the firelight. She thought of a thumb wiping ash from her cheek.

 She thought of a stone step and a muddy yard and four men in livery pretending very hard not to watch. Yes, she whispered. I would. He drew in a long breath. Then, quiet enough that only she could hear, he said, I would like to know you for the rest of my days, Petra Ashfield, if you will have me. Not a duke, only a man. The man you knelt beside in the rain.

 She could not stop the tears. Then they came and she did not wipe them away. She reached out. She put her hand, the one with the small scar from the thorn flat against his chest, over his heart. She could feel it beating strong and even under her palm. “Yes,” she said. “I will have you.” His hand covered hers. He bowed his head.

 She heard him let out a slow shaking breath. Behind him, one of the men in livery, she thought it might have been Mr. Hollow, cleared his throat very softly, in a way that sounded unmistakably like a smile. A year passed. On a bright autumn afternoon at Marchwater House, in a small sitting room off the East Garden, a woman sat with her feet tucked up beneath her in a wide chair by the fire.

Her hair was pinned loosely at the back of her head. She wore a plain gray gown and a shawl that had once belonged to her mother. On the small table beside her were three cups, one of tea, one of milk, one empty, and a folded piece of mending and a book she had not opened. A gray cat lay stretched along the arm of the chair, one paw hanging down.

 The door opened. She did not look up at once. She had learned the sound of his step, and she smiled a small smile before she raised her eyes. The Duke of Marchwater crossed the room. He was moving well now. No stiffness, no favoring of the side. He carried in his hand a small wooden box he had gone to the village to fetch.

 He set it on the table beside her. “For you,” he said. “What is it? Open it.” She lifted the lid. Inside on a small square of linen sat a fresh sprig of yrow still cool from the field and a single silver button. She looked at it for a long moment. She looked up at him. You went to the field yourself, she said. I did. You should not stoop.

 I stoop very well now. I have practiced. He knelt down beside her chair, not on his knee like a man asking a question, but on the rug easy like a man in his own home. He rested his arm along her chair. The cat opened one green eye at him. Closed it again, satisfied. The button, she said quietly.

 From the coat you cut off me, he said. Mister Hollow saved them. All six. I keep the other five in a drawer. This one is for the box. I thought he almost smiled. You should have something to hold on the days when you cannot quite believe any of it happened. She closed the lid of the box. She set her hand on his where it lay along the arm of the chair.

 Outside, somewhere in the garden, a wood pigeon called. The fire made its small familiar sound. The smell of yrow rose faintly from the little box between them. She did not need to say anything, neither did he. They had said the important things a year ago in a muddy yard, in front of witnesses, and every day since then, in the small, quiet ways that mattered more.

 She squeezed his hand. He turned his over, and their fingers laced together, and they sat that way for a long, easy while, and the rain that had once fallen on a stranger in the woods felt at last like the beginning of a story that had ended exactly the way it was meant to. She had knelt in the mud for a wounded man, and the wounded man had turned out to be a duke, but neither the mud nor the title had ever been the point.

 The point had always been that she chose him first when he was nobody at all, and he had spent every day since choosing her back.