Chapter 5 - The Winter of Proof
The months that followed were neither gentle nor quick.
Winter descended upon the Blackwood Valley with a cold, relentless fury. The snow fell six feet deep across the high passes, burying the marble terraces of Ashcombe Hall and the low, stone roofs of Elm Ridge under a thick, blinding mantle of white.
Yet the road between the two estates was never closed.
Every morning at eight o'clock, regardless of whether the sky was clear or heavy with gray storm clouds, a single black sleigh pulled by a matched pair of gray geldings cut a deep track through the snow drifts down to Elm Ridge.
Alaric did not come with an escort of footmen. He came alone, wearing a heavy sheepskin coat, his hands encased in plain leather work gloves.
For three months, the Duke of Ashcombe worked the Marlowe farm.
He helped Thomas rebuild the collapsed roof of the western barn, his long hands wielding a hand-saw and draw-knife until his knuckles bled and healed into thick, dark calluses. He shoveled three feet of frozen manure from the winter cattle sheds; he hauled forty-pound sacks of feed through drifts that reached his waist; and when the old draft horse came down with lung-fever in January, Alaric stayed up forty-eight straight hours in the freezing stable, holding the beast's head in his lap while Vivienne administered warm herbal mashes.
He did not ask for Vivienne’s hand. He did not mention marriage, nor did he speak of the rumors that were circulating through the high drawing rooms of London regarding his prolonged absence from Parliament.
When the work was done at sunset, he sat at the Marlowe kitchen table, eating plain cabbage stew and brown bread, listening to Thomas read from the local farming gazette, or helping Tobias with his Latin lessons by the light of a single tallow candle.
"Why are you doing this?" Vivienne asked him one evening in February.
They were standing in the high loft of the hay barn, watching the full moon rise over the frozen expanse of the southern pastures. The air was so cold their breath rose in thick, white plumes between them, smelling of sweet dry clover and pine wood.
Alaric stopped pulling down a bale of sweet grass with his iron hook. He set the hook down, turning to look at her in the silver moonlight.
"Because six months ago, I sent a letter offering to buy your farm and settle your life as if you were a parcel of land I wished to annex," Alaric said, his voice deep and steady in the quiet loft. "I thought my name was enough. I thought my money was a favor."
He stepped across the packed straw, stopping inches from where she stood. He reached out, his thick leather glove gently brushing a fleck of dried hay from her hair.
"I am showing your father—and I am showing you—that I am capable of earning the bread I eat at your table," Alaric continued, his gray eyes shining with an absolute, unshakeable sincerity. "If I am to be your husband, Vivienne, I must be a man you can trust when the roof falls in, not just a man who can pay someone else to fix it."
Vivienne looked at him—at the faint scar on his chin from a slipping chisel three weeks ago, at the plain wool coat that was worn at the elbows, at the deep, quiet strength that had replaced the cold, aristocratic distance he had worn like armor when they first met.
"And London?" she asked softly. "Your sister sent three letters to the village rector this week. She says the Earl of Harrington has officially announced that you have lost your senses."
"Harrington is an idiot who thinks a title gives him the right to bully smallholders," Alaric said with a cold, dismissive chuckle. "He pulled his rail bill last Tuesday. Do you know what I did?"
"What?"
"I bought the controlling shares in the local canal company," Alaric smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "The rail line will not be built, but the canal will be dredged and widened by spring. Your father’s grain—and every small farmer’s crop in this valley—will be transported to the London markets for half the price Harrington’s rail line would have charged."
Vivienne stared at him, a sudden, breath-catching laugh escaping her lips into the freezing air. "You didn't."
"I did," Alaric said, stepping closer, his arms coming around her waist over her heavy wool coat. "I am a Duke, Vivienne. I have five hundred years of legal power behind my name. I used to use it to keep people out. Now, I am using it to make sure no one can ever touch this valley again."
Vivienne felt the heat of his body pressing against hers through the layers of wool. She raised her scarred hands, resting them against the lapels of his sheepskin coat, feeling the strong, steady beat of his heart beneath her palms.
"Alaric," she whispered, her voice trembling slightly as she looked up into his gray eyes.
"Yes, my love?"
"You don't need to shovel any more manure," she said, a mischievous, tearful smile breaking across her face. "My father admitted yesterday that you’re better with an timber-axe than he is."
May you like
Alaric froze, his breath catching in his throat. "Does that mean...?"
"It means," Vivienne whispered, leaning up on her tiptoes until her lips were inches from his, "that thirty-seven letters were enough. But three months in a cold barn proved you were telling the truth."
