“And you may work while we talk,” she added, her tone calm—deliberately so.
For his sake, she told herself.
His steady regard unsettled her in a way she was unaccustomed to—not because of the patch or the scar, but because she saw an unfamiliar warmth there. Or was that just her imagination?
For a moment longer, he held her gaze. Then, with a sharp shake of his head, he picked up the chisel and turned back to the bench.
Rosamund let out a slow, quiet breath and then waited until the rhythm of his work filled the room again.
“What was it like,” she said at last, “Growing up as the heir to…” She gestured around, and toward the manor. “All of this?”
He did not look up. “Normal,” he said shortly. “Seeing as that’s all I know.”
Fair enough. “Do you think fondly of your childhood?”
A pause. A grimace. “I suppose.”
“You don’t know?”
The chisel slowed, then resumed. ““I rode. I read. I stayed out of the way when it was prudent.” He shrugged. “I was not unhappy.”
She nodded, filing the answer away. “You signed on with the army.”
That earned her a glance—brief, assessing.
“My father served,” he said. “It was assumed I would as well.”
“Even as heir?”
“My father saw it as a rite of passage.” His jaw tightened. “When he purchased the commission for me, I went.”
“You didn’t have a choice?”
“No,” he said at once. Too quickly. “I did.”
“Your mother approved?”
“My mother had no say in the matter.”
Rosamund turned his answers over in her mind then circled back, gently, to his childhood.
And gradually, while he worked, he answered more and more easily.
He spoke of lessons—endless ones. The sort expected of any ducal heir: languages, history, accounts. Riding, of course. Shooting andarchery. Fencing drilled until precision became instinct rather than thought.
And then there were the lessons that had nothing to do with polish.
His father had insisted on them. Boxing, for one. Sparring not only with masters but, when it suited, with the sons of tenants—boys brought in from the estate to test him in earnest, where strength and reflex mattered more than birth. There had been no allowance made for rank in those moments. Only balance. Endurance. Control.
It explained things she had already noticed—the way he carried himself, economical and ready.
He had been trained not merely to lead, but to withstand.
As Rosamund listened, she quietly began to understand the man behind the title a little better.
“You can imagine my father’s disappointment,” he said, setting the piece he’d been working on to the side and replacing it with a new one. “All that training…”
“Your injury,” she said after a moment.