He looked at Norah. She was a disaster. Her black morning dress was coated in thick red clay up to her knees. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the harness.
Rain streamed down her pale face. She looked back at him. "Are you going to stare at me, Henry, or are you going to help Thomas unhitch the team before the axle snaps entirely?" Henry blinked.
A slow, incredulous grin spread across his face, entirely changing the architecture of his features. It made him look reckless. It made him look young. "Yes, Your Grace," he said.
They spent the next hour in the freezing rain. Henry and Thomas unhitched the horses and used a massive fallen branch as a lever to pry the wheel out of the sinkhole. Norah did not go back inside the carriage. She stood in the mud, holding the bridles of two massive draft horses, murmuring to them in the dark to keep them calm.
When they finally dragged the carriage back onto solid road, they were soaked to the bone and shivering uncontrollably. They climbed back into the dark cab. Thomas cracked the whip, and the carriage lurched slowly forward. Norah sat on the velvet bench.
She was freezing. Her teeth were chattering so hard her jaw ached. She crossed her arms, trying to generate a fraction of warmth. A heavy, wet wool coat was thrown over her shoulders.
She looked up. Henry had taken off his overcoat. He moved across the carriage, abandoning his side, and sat directly next to her. The carriage was not small.
There was no need for him to sit that close. "You will freeze," Norah said, her voice shaking. "I run hot," Henry replied bluntly. He didn't ask permission.
He reached over, grabbed her freezing, mud-caked hands, and folded them between his own large, calloused palms. He wasn't trying to be romantic. It was a purely practical attempt to transfer body heat. Norah stiffened.
The intimacy of it, the sheer physical reality of sitting hip-to-hip with a Duke in the dark, his hands wrapped around hers, was entirely overwhelming. "You ruined another dress," he noted softly, his thumb brushing over the dried clay on her knuckles. "I seem to make a habit of it around you." "I will buy you a hundred dresses, Norah."
"I don't want a hundred dresses," she said fiercely, pulling her hands back slightly. "I don't want silk, and I don't want a maid to brush my hair, and I don't want to host tea parties for women who would sell their own children for a better title." Henry let her hands go, but he didn't move away. He leaned his head back against the carriage wall, looking at her in the dim light.
"What do you want, then?" he asked. Norah stared at him. She thought about it. She realized, for the first time in her entire life, someone was asking her what she wanted, and they actually possessed the power to give it to her.
"I want ground that doesn't shift beneath my feet," she said quietly. "I want to be looked at, not seen through. I want a house where I don't have to apologize for breathing the air." Henry held her gaze.