Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
They worked for a week straight. Sebastian had never felt so bone-tired. Or so wholly alive.
For the first time in his life, he had a purpose entirely unmoored from his rank.
No one respected him merely because he was a duke; they respected him because he’d hefted sandbags until his shoulders screamed, because he’d waded into filthy water beside them.
Since Catherine’s death, he had been living in a fog, avoiding the world because of the way it had rejected him.
But here, now, his own people had opened their arms. It mattered more than a thousand ton approvals ever could.
Aurelia, too, embraced this new life. He’d catch glimpses of her throughout the day—sleeves rolled up, laughing as she scrubbed mud from a child's rescued toy. She had a gift for this, he realized. For making people feel seen. Every meal she served came with that luminous smile, and he watched villagers who’d arrived hollow-eyed leave a little lighter.
When they stumbled home each night, filthy and spent, they fell into bed together. And there, in the dark, they made love with a desperation that bordered on worship. Those moments—her nails in his back, his name broken on her lips—felt more real than anything in his gilded, empty life ever had.
Unfortunately, like all good things, it had to come to an end.
After the week of work passed, the village was largely put back together, and the other demands of the estate could not be ignored any longer.
Gully, the village bricklayer, came about with a collection of other men to repair the wall, and Sebastian went back to his entirely more tedious existence of writing letters and making calculations.
Fellows rapped on his study door later that afternoon. “Your Grace. Mr. Arnold is here to see you.”
“Mr. Arnold?” Sebastian laid his pen down. “Show him in.”
The door opened, and Fellows ushered the solicitor inside. As always, the bespectacled man looked rather out of place in Sebastian’s lush study. He adjusted his spectacles as he surveyed Sebastian. “Your Grace.”
“Surely, a letter would’ve sufficed, old chap. What’s so urgent that it required the journey from London?” Sebastian rose and gestured the slight man to an armchair. “Sit, please.” He rang for refreshments and took the other seat. “I presume this is about Her Grace?”
“Ah, yes.” Mr. Arnold removed his glasses and polished them with a small rag. “I take it you have settled into your marriage tolerably well?”
“Tolerably,” Sebastian said dryly. In truth, she had settled in far better than he ever could have anticipated, but knowing his plan—or at least, perhaps his former plan—to send her away, he kept that knowledge to himself. “Did you succeed in finding any members of her family?”
“I was unable to ascertain the identity of her father, although I have reason to believe he is a high-ranking member of the ton. Her mother came to London from the countryside under unknown power, and lived in the capital for several months before seeking out her brother.”
As always, whenever Sebastian thought about the despicable nature of her father, he felt a wave of guilt.
He had never done anything similar, but he could not deny that many similar men in positions of power took advantage of young women, then refused to provide for the inevitable consequences of their actions. And Aurelia had suffered as a result.
“Then what have you discovered?” he pressed.
“Her mother and uncle come from a modest family on the outskirts of Manchester. Her grandparents are both dead now, but there was a great uncle—her mother’s father’s brother—who had a son, who married and had two children, one of which is still alive now, also living in Manchester.”
“And their living situation?”
“Reasonable. The man—a Mr. Jeremiah Smith—works as a lawyer, and his income is, from what I can ascertain, acceptable.”
“Do they keep a carriage?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
A middle-class family that could not afford the upkeep of a carriage. Not precisely the situation he had hoped to send Aurelia into.
He could elevate them, of course. Purchase them a large property outright, pay for a carriage and horses.
Provide them with the life he wished Aurelia to live.
But then, if that were the situation and the case, would it not be simpler to keep her with him?
Then he could provide for her himself, in entirely closer quarters at that.
The prospect of loving her put the fear of God into him, but she was not Kate, liable to run away at the slightest provocation, and dissatisfied with the life he could provide.
“Thank you,” he muttered distractedly to Mr. Arnold. “I will give this… some thought.”
“What do you intend to do with the information, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“As a matter of fact, I do mind you asking.” Sebastian speared the other man with a sharp look. “My business is mine alone.”
“Of course, sir.” Mr. Arnold inclined his head with an awkward chuckle. “If that’s all, I will take my leave. May I give my best wishes to Her Grace before I go?”
Sebastian sighed. So that was the reason behind Arnold coming out all this way—for whatever reason, he’d taken some fatherly interest in Aurelia and wanted to check in on her.
Well, who was he to deny that?
“Tell her nothing of your investigations or your goals, if you please,” he instructed. “It’s likely she does not know of this family. Nor they of her.”
Mr. Arnold bowed himself out of the room, and Sebastian was left to the torment of his thoughts.
What was the best thing to do about her? He didn’t know—but until he did, he would tell her nothing of his plans. The less she knew, the better.
The day after Mr. Arnold’s visit, Aurelia decided to accompany Sebastian on his walk to the lighthouse for the first time.
He didn’t object.
They walked side by side silently through the sharp spring air, and she found herself marveling at how much had changed. That first week, she had been so certain she’d made a terrible mistake. Now? She relished being Sebastian’s wife—and the duchess—more than she could ever have anticipated.
But she wouldn’t let him waste the rest of his life in self-imposed exile. He had clawed his way back from grief and scandal. He deserved more than these same cliffs, this same path, day after day.
He deserved to live again.
“I have had several invitations since arriving here,” she began abruptly, her breath misting in the crisp air. “Most from London. I thought we might attend one.”
“We have already attended one,” he reminded her, flicking her nose teasingly. “The masquerade. Remember?”
“And that was a success, don’t you think?” She looked earnestly into his face, attempting to read his expression. “My thought is that, perhaps, we might accept another few invitations so that we are known in London. Think how successful we have been here!”
A muscle in his jaw tightened. “What do you expect me to do to endear myself to them, Aurelia? Repair their houses?”
“Be seen,” she said solemnly. “Not so much so that we are always to be in London—I would hate that—but to show our faces again. Think. Most people don’t know who it is you have married, and if we are absent for too long, then it will be even more a subject of gossip when we are seen.”
“And you expect to be seen?”
“I expect so,” she shrugged with a single shoulder. “Lady Mary Ann will be in London next year, and I suspect we shall be invited to her eventual wedding, if nothing else. And when we eventually have children of our own, we will have to take them to London, too.”
He sighed, tilting his face back to the sky. She understood his reticence—the world had not been kind to him. But if he hid away, he was losing his chance of freedom; no good came from being closeted up in a place because one had no choice but to be so.
The villagers had come to accept and respect Sebastian; she had hoped the ton would do the same. Perhaps it would take time, but she certainly had received enough invitations to convince her that she had not been slighted by every family in London.
“How about a simple music recital?” she asked coaxingly. “We can leave once it’s finished, and there’s less emphasis placed on speaking with other people. How does that sound?”
The corner of his face softened as he smiled. “How can I deny you anything when you ask me so sweetly?”
“If you tell me that, then I will only ask you for more things,” she said, grinning at him.
They reached the lighthouse, the enormous stone building rising into the air beside them. Here, the sea stretched out endlessly, nothing in its wake. Sebastian looked down at her, patient amusement on his face.
“I’ll grant you this,” he said, “but I can’t be certain the world will accept me as easily.”
“Then we will deal with that as it comes. Together.” She took his hand, linking her fingers through his.
He glanced at the contact, a tiny frown between his brows.
Her heart gave a nervous thump; she had not expressed herself directly and told him how she felt, but she was fairly certain he felt the same.
Still, the fluttering feeling didn’t ease until he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her body against his, kissing her with a blind disregard for whether they could be seen.
The wind tugged at her hair and bonnet strings, and she wrapped her arms around his nape, allowing the tiny voice of worry to dissolve.
If he didn’t want her, he wouldn’t kiss her like this. And so long as he wanted her, they would be all right. They were married, after all; he could hardly change his mind about her now. They worked well together.
And so, Aurelia released all her anxieties to the breeze and concentrated her attention on kissing him back.