At least with the wind gone, there was a little more signal for phones. After checking in with Adelaide and Evangeline, I’d learned that they’d made it out for their rescue mission just in time. The stream that wound through their land had burst its banks, flooding the only dirt road leading to the Fox and Hound Hotel.
That did not bode well for the rest of the village.
Thankfully, in such technologically centred times such as ours, there was an app for that.
Not all the roads were flooded—just the main one up to Arrowwood Estate, the road to the hotel, and some other minor areas in the village. A few shops near the river had taken minor damage, but the owners had enough sense to move their goods to higher ground, so their damage was minimal.
And for that, I was very grateful.
Aside from that, people had been displaced from their homes. The houses and cottages on low ground had taken a battering from the weather, and since the rain didn’t show many signs of letting up, there wasn’t a lot that could be done.
The only bright side was that nobody had been hurt or killed. That wasn’t unheard of in our storms, but it seemed as though everyone had been preventative as opposed to reactive in this occasion.
That didn’t calm Miles much, though.
“Are you sure they have enough food?”
“Yes,” I replied for the third time. “The hotel is run by my best friends, and I’ve known them my entire life. There’s no way Lady Vic would allow that place to be anything less than perfect.”
“Lady Vic? Beckham?”
I choked back a laugh. “No! Since when was she a Lady?”
He shrugged. “Thought David might have had his knighthood by now.”
“Not according to the media,” I retorted, hiding another laugh. “Lady Victoria Montgomery.”
“Your Lady or another kind of lady?”
“Mine, I guess.” I paused. “Her father is a Duke but she married a, um…” I trailed off. I hated the word commoner.
Trust me.
I’d seen some titled, fancy, upper-class people do some common as hell stuff, so the word just seemed horribly inappropriate.
“Commoner,” Miles said after a moment. “She married a working-class guy.”
“Yeah,” I replied slowly. “I hate that word. It seems so unnecessary.”
“How so?”
“Commoner? Really? In this age? Must we use it as an insult to people in a different position in life than ourselves?”
“All due respect, princess, you really don’t get it, do you?”
I was a hot second away from yelling at him about calling me that bloody nickname when I paused.
There was…something about the way he looked at me.
An earnest look in his eye. A genuine tilt of the head as he questioned me. An honest query that made me stop and stare.
“Don’t get what?” I asked softly.
“The truly classist nature of British society.”
He said the words so matter of fact, I couldn’t help but stop.
I glanced down at my hands.
Maybe I didn’t, you know?
I was privileged beyond belief. I was fully aware of that. I didn’t try to hide it. I wasn’t ignorant of that. And I most certainly never ever held myself on a pedestal the way people may have thought I did.
The question was—did Miles fully understand the truly classist nature of British society? Because I would put money on the fact he didn’t, either.
“Perhaps not,” I said after a moment. “But I’m always willing to learn and open myself to the opinions of other people. After all, nobody ever learnt anything by believing they were inherently right.” I paused. “And you’d know that, after the storm.”
He tilted his head in agreement. “You’re correct, of course. I was wrong, and I don’t mind saying so. I should have listened to you.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. But in the interest of our conversation, your hesitance to use the word ‘commoner’ is insulting. You’re right that we don’t live in medieval times, but I’m not ashamed to be a working-class man, Gabriella. I’m proud of what I do. I’m fucking proud of my ancestors and what they did. And you know what? You can hate the word ‘commoner’ all you like because it makes you uncomfortable, but you wouldn’t be in this house with your upper-class, aristocratic title if it weren’t for the commoners.”
I swallowed.
This had escalated very quickly.
“You’re right,” I said quietly. “But without my aristocratic title, you wouldn’t have a job here either.”
Silence held the room for a moment until I finally looked up at Miles.
“Great Britain is rampant with classism, from the top to the bottom,” I told him after a moment while putting my hands on my hips. “From royalty all the way down to abject poverty. It doesn’t make it right. We are all inherently classist, if we’re willing to be honest with ourselves. Being classist isn’t the issue, though. It’s what one chooses to do with that information that makes all the difference, and how we choose to help those in societal classes below ourselves. And you, Mr. Kingsley…” I straightened my back and tilted my head to the side. “If you are uncomfortable with the title I was born into and my family’s position in society, then perhaps you’re working in the wrong place, don’t you think?”
Miles’ jaw clenched, and he held my gaze for a moment that felt as though it lasted forever.
“If you think to tutor me on classism in my own home when you’ve barely said a kind word to me until the weather forced our proximity, I must confess that your desire to educate me is utterly misplaced and completely unnecessary,” I continued, jabbing my finger at him. “Despite your feelings about such things, I am not the kind of person who judges a person on where they’ve come from. If you cared to pay attention instead of judging, you’d know that my mother was what society calls a ‘commoner,’ and I couldn’t be prouder of the woman she was. Nor could I be prouder of the amazing people who were my maternal grandparents and all the family I have from her side.”
He stilled.
“But, please. Tell me more about how I don’t get it,” I finished dryly, folding my arms across my chest. “I’d love to hear it.”
Miles’ gaze focused on mine with such an intensity it made me want to shirk back, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t back down to him—I didn’t know what stick he’d put up his arse this morning after the power came back on, but he needed to understand that I was not the kind of girl who backed down from a challenge.
Any challenge.
Even his.
I was sure he had a different perspective to me. There was no way our views of the world lined up, simply because of where we were born, but—
The sound of a heavy door bursting open broke into my thoughts, and both me and Miles jerked into action.
“Hello?” Miles shouted, stepping in front of me. “Who’s there?”
“Lady Gabriella?” A familiar voice called into the void. “It’s—it’s Caleb, and Arthur, we—”
“Oh, goodness!” I shuffled past Miles toward the hall.