“Just because people serve you doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be seen.”
Her earnestly delivered words brought Luke to a slow stop, and he stared off sightlessly into the distance as a long-distant memory whispered forward.
“But I like Willis, Mother.”
“There are no buts, Lucas. Willis is a servant, and you don’t play with servants.”
“He’s a boy.”
“He is a servant,” his mother insisted tersely.
Luke glared at his mother and his silent father. “Ewan plays with him.”
His father at last spoke. “Ewan will not be earl one day.”
“You are correct,” he whispered, and it was hard to say who was more shocked by that quiet admission, him or the woman beside him. Back in the moment, he looked to Merry. “My father and mother schooled me early on in my responsibilities.” A lone snowflake floated past, followed by another and another, until a soft swirl of white filled the air and dusted the ground. “Every expectation, every rule, everything from what I was to eat or not eat, on to who I was able to interact with was carefully specified.” Those born of his station would have likely received a similar elucidation. There were those who existed within the nobility… and everyone else. As such, he’d been reared on that principle. It had shaped him and his every interaction. Never before had he questioned the wrongness of it… until Merry. However, blame didn’t belong to his parents, it belonged to him for having blindly followed. “I’ve been a fool, listening and following expectations without ever thinking for myself.”
Her eyes widened into enormous pools that put him in mind of warmed chocolate.
Luke slashed his spare hand in the direction of where the footmen had stood when Merry had temporarily relieved them of their responsibilities. “They’ve been part of my household staff for two and a half years now,” he said, his words tumbling quickly over each other. “Two and a half years. Nine hundred and twelve days. And how do I know that?”
She opened her mouth, but he finished over her.
“Because I’m the one responsible for the finances and the ledgers detailing matters of business. Business, Merry. Business.” His voice crept up. “And I’ve not known their names.” He rocked back on his heels. “I’ve moved through life focused entirely on estate business and matters before Parliament, and well, there’s never been time for those details.” Even as that admission left him, he caught the conceit and self-absorption behind it, and along with that came an increasingly familiar sentiment—shame.
As she led them from the graveled path, through the grass, onward to a copse of trees, his strides grew quicker and more frantic. “And what has my devotion to rank and status gotten me?” His elevated voice carried throughout the gardens. “One brother whom I no longer speak with, the other brother whom I almost never speak to except for discussions on familial business.” It wasn’t every day that a man looked at himself, truly looked at himself, and saw that he didn’t like who he was. He didn’t like who he was, at all. And yet… closing his eyes, he tilted his head up toward the sky.
How very invigorating it was to simply own who he was and what he’d allowed himself to become.
Merry lightly squeezed his arm, bringing his eyes open. “Most noblemen will go their whole lives without changing,” she said quietly. “Without seeing servants as people or seeing any worth in those born outside their ranks, and yet you have.”
He laughed bitterly. “You heap praise where it’s undeserved.”
Her lips twitched at the corners, and she tightened her hold upon his forearm once more. “If you consider that praise, then there’s been a dearth of compliments in your life.” She softened that with a smile. Then the earlier seriousness returned to her expressive features. “I only speak the truth, Luke.”
Luke. She’d called him by his Christian name, and how very right it felt wrapped in her deep contralto.
“I daresay this is the beginning of a friendship between us.”
She laughed softly.
“You find that so very amusing?” he asked on a frown, equal parts hurt and offended. He’d not had a friend in his life, and having hung himself out there, vulnerable as he now was, left him with a strange little ache in his chest.
“Forgive me,” she said, her smile promptly dying, and he fought to keep his features immobile as she ran an astute and piercing gaze over him. “I’m not laughing at you, but rather, at the improbability of knowing