Read Chapter 20: Ashworth's Past

The rain had stopped by the time Ashworth found her in the walled garden, though the air still hung heavy with the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves. Maeve knelt among the dead rose canes, her gloves streaked with mud, tugging at a root that refused to yield.

“You will ruin your dress,” he said from the gate.

She did not look up. “It is already ruined. The hem has been muddy since March.”

He walked toward her, stepping carefully between the puddles. His boots were better than they had been when he first arrived—that she had noticed. The cuffs of his coat were fraying at the edges, but he held himself like a man who had once been dressed in better.

“I came to tell you that Sir Godfrey has withdrawn his inquiry,” he said. “The magistrate’s ruling was enough to persuade him, at least for now. But he will not stay quiet for long.”

Maeve yanked the root free and sat back on her heels, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. “He will find another way. He always does.”

“Perhaps.” Ashworth hesitated. “There is something else. Something I should have told you weeks ago.”

She studied his face. The lines around his mouth seemed deeper today, the gray in his hair more pronounced. He looked like a man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time.

“Then tell me,” she said.

He did not speak at once. Instead he looked out across the garden, toward the chapel ruins where they had dug together, toward the house that was slowly, painfully, being pulled back from the edge of ruin.

“I am not merely an agent,” he said finally. “I am the second son of Lord Ashworth of Hampshire. A barony that has been in my family for two hundred years—and that is now bankrupt.”

Maeve rose slowly, brushing the dirt from her skirts. The words settled over her like a cold mist. She had known he was educated, had suspected he came from more than he let on. But this—

“Why did you not tell me?” she asked.

“Because I was ashamed.” He laughed, a hollow sound. “My father gambled away the estate before I was twenty. My brother inherited the title and the debt. I inherited nothing but the name and the expectation that I would somehow restore it. When the position came open here, I took it. I needed the wages. I needed to prove that I was more than the failure my father made of me.”

Maeve’s hands had gone still at her sides. “You came to Ireland to prove yourself.”

“I came to Ireland to hide,” he said quietly. “And I found myself working for a woman who fights harder for a handful of potato fields than my father ever fought for a title.”

The words hung between them. She should have felt anger—deception was deception, whatever the reason. But looking at him now, she saw not an agent hiding behind ledgers but a man stripped bare, offering her the truth like an open wound.

“Why tell me now?” she asked.

“Because I trust you.” He stepped closer. “Because in all my years in England, I never met anyone who worked as hard as you do, or cared as deeply for those beneath her station. The tenants—you reduced their rent when you could have kept every shilling. You dug in the dirt beside your own laborers. You are not what I expected, Maeve Brennan-Kelly.”

Her name on his lips felt different than when he said it in front of others. Softer. More deliberate.

“And what did you expect?” she asked.

“A widow with a title and no sense. A woman who would sign whatever I placed before her and let the estate rot around her.” He shook his head. “Instead I found someone who questions every figure, challenges every decision. Someone who sees through me.”

Maeve looked down at her muddy hands. She thought of the letter from her father, still unread in her pocket, of the deed to far-off land, of the choice that pressed on her like the weight of the morning sky.

“My husband,” she said slowly, “did not die the way everyone believes.”

Ashworth’s expression shifted. “What do you mean?”

“The fever took him, they said. But the fever came after he returned from a trip to Galway, a trip he never explained. He was different after that. Agitated. Afraid.” She met his eyes. “I have never told anyone that. Not the priest. Not my tenants. Not my own brother in Liverpool.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because you asked for my trust,” she said. “And because I think you understand what it is to carry a secret that eats at you from the inside.”

They stood close now, barely a foot between them. The rain began again, soft and fine, like mist off the sea. She felt the cold on her cheeks, the damp seeping through her shawl.

“I am not asking you to trust me blindly,” Ashworth said. “I am asking you to let me prove I am worthy of it.”

“And if you are not?”

“Then I will leave. I will go back to England and never trouble you again.”

She should have stepped away. She should have reminded herself of who he was—an Englishman, an agent, a man whose loyalty belonged to the firm that held her notes. But looking at him, she saw not the uniform of his class but the weariness of a man who had spent his life trying to escape the shadow of his father’s failures.

She knew what that felt like.

She reached out before she could stop herself, her mud-stained fingers brushing the lapel of his coat. He caught her hand, his grip warm despite the cold rain.

“Maeve,” he said softly.

She did not answer. Instead she tilted her face up toward his, and when he kissed her, she let herself feel it—the surrender, the terror, the brief and beautiful forgetting of everything that stood between them.

The kiss lasted only a moment. She pulled back, her breath short, her heart hammering against her ribs.

“I should not have done that,” she said.

“Nor I.”

They stood in the rain, neither moving, the space between them suddenly wider than it had ever been. He was English. She was Irish. He worked for the firm that held her debts. She was a widow fighting to keep what little she had left.

“This changes nothing,” she said.

“It changes everything,” he replied.

She wanted to argue, but she could not find the words. He was right, of course. The kiss had opened a door she had not known was there, and she was not certain she had the strength to close it again.

“I should go inside,” she said.

“Yes.”

She turned and walked toward the house, her boots squelching in the mud, her lips still warm from his. At the door she paused, looking back over her shoulder. He had not moved. He stood in the rain, watching her, his coat dark with water, his face unreadable.

“Mr. Ashworth,” she called.

“Yes?”

“If we are to trust each other, I need to know the rest.”

He was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I will tell you everything. Where the debt truly came from. Why I was sent here. All of it.”

“Why not now?”

“Because I need time to find the courage.” He smiled, a sad, crooked thing. “I am not as brave as you, Mrs. Kelly.”

She did not know what to say to that. She turned and went inside, closing the door behind her, leaning against the wood as the rain hammered the glass. Her lips still tingled. Her hands were shaking.

Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed the hour. She pressed her palm to her chest, feeling the rhythm of her heart slow, and thought of the letter in her pocket, the deed in her drawer, the husband whose death remained a mystery she could not solve.

She would not read it tonight, she decided. She was not ready.

But soon. Soon she would have to choose.