CHAPTER THREE #2
Harriet looked at the documents spread across the desk, the ledgers and letters and legal papers that represented the sum total of her family's failure.
Somewhere in those pages was the story of how they had come to this: her father's gambling, Richard's desperate attempts to save them, the slowly accumulating weight of debt that had finally become too heavy to bear.
She thought of her mother upstairs, frail and tired, bravely pretending that everything would be fine.
She thought of Richard, who had died trying to fix what their father had broken.
She thought of Fordshire Park itself, the gardens where she had played as a child, the library where she had hidden to read, the drawing room where she had once stood and read her poetry aloud to a boy who had laughed.
She could not lose this place. She could not let it be sold to strangers, carved up and parceled out like meat at a butcher's shop. This was her home. Her family's legacy. The only piece of Richard she had left.
"Give me time," she said. "To think. To consider our options."
"Of course, my lady. But I must warn you, the creditors will not wait indefinitely. We have perhaps a month, perhaps less, before they begin legal proceedings."
"A month." Harriet nodded slowly. "Very well. A month."
She turned and walked out of the study without looking at Sebastian, without looking at anyone. She needed air. She needed space. She needed to think.
Behind her, she heard Sebastian's voice, low and urgent, saying something to Mr. Thornton that she couldn't quite make out. She didn't stop to listen.
***
The gardens of Fordshire Park had always been Harriet's refuge.
As a child, she had known every path, every hidden corner, and every secret spot where a girl could disappear and be alone with her thoughts.
The rose garden with its trellised archways, the herb garden with its fragrant borders, the wild garden at the far edge of the property where nature had been allowed to run somewhat riot, she had claimed them all as her own, territories mapped by years of exploration and escape.
Now she walked without seeing, her feet carrying her along familiar routes while her mind churned with impossible calculations. A month. She had a month to find a solution that fifteen years of professional management had failed to produce. The odds were not in her favour.
She found herself in the wild garden without quite knowing how she had gotten there.
It was overgrown now, more than it had been in Richard's time, he had always kept it just tamed enough to be navigable, wild enough to feel like an adventure.
Without him, the brambles had encroached, the paths had narrowed, and the little stone bench where she used to sit and read had been half-swallowed by climbing roses.
She cleared a space and sat down anyway, letting the thorns catch at her dress, not caring about the damage. What did it matter if her dress was torn? What did any of it matter, when everything she loved was slipping through her fingers like sand?
She did not cry. Harriet had not cried since Richard's funeral, and she was not about to start now. Crying solved nothing. It was self-indulgence, a luxury she could not afford.
Instead, she thought.
The debts were real. The creditors were impatient. The estate was at risk. These were facts, immutable and unyielding. But facts could be worked around, couldn't they? Problems could be solved, if one was clever enough, determined enough, willing to consider unconventional solutions.
Matrimony was one solution. Mr. Thornton had not been wrong about that, however crudely he had expressed it. A wealthy husband would resolve everything, the debts, the creditors, the threat to the estate. It was the traditional solution for women in her position, the expected path.
But Sebastian had refused. He had been offered the opportunity to purchase himself a wife, and he had declined.
Why?
The question nagged at her, refusing to be dismissed.
Sebastian Vane was not a romantic. He was not the sort of man who believed in love matches and happily-ever-afters.
He was pragmatic, sardonic, and thoroughly modern in his approach to life.
A matrimony of convenience should have appealed to his sensibilities.
And yet he had said no. Had said he would not be party to any arrangement that treated her as a commodity. Had said that if he wedded, it would be because both parties entered willingly.
It was almost as though he cared about her feelings.
Which was absurd. Sebastian did not care about her feelings.
Sebastian had laughed at her poetry and ignored her for three years and treated her with the same cool indifference he showed everyone else.
If he had refused the arrangement, it was surely for his own reasons, pride, perhaps, or some complicated masculine notion of honour.
It had nothing to do with her.
"I thought I might find you here."
Harriet startled at the voice, nearly losing her balance on the narrow bench. Sebastian stood at the entrance to the wild garden, his dark hair ruffled by the wind, his expression carefully neutral.
"Are you following me?" she demanded.
"I was looking for you. Mrs. Briggs said you had gone to the gardens, and I remembered Richard mentioning that you favoured this particular corner."
"Richard talked to you about me?"
"Frequently. You were his favourite topic, after horses and hunting." Sebastian picked his way through the overgrown path, dodging brambles with more grace than Harriet would have expected. "May I join you?"
"It's a free country. I can hardly stop you."
"You could ask me to leave. I would respect your wishes."
It was said simply, without any particular emphasis, but something about the words made Harriet pause. She thought of the study, of his refusal to participate in Mr. Thornton's schemes, of his insistence that she deserved a choice.
"You may stay," she said finally. "But if you've come to offer solutions, I warn you I'm not in a receptive mood."
"I haven't come to offer solutions. I've come to apologise."
"Apologise? For what?"
Sebastian lowered himself onto the other end of the bench, keeping a careful distance between them.
"For the conversation in the study. Mr. Thornton should never have raised the subject of matrimony, and I should have stopped him before it went as far as it did.
You deserved better than to learn of such schemes in that manner. "
Harriet studied him, trying to read his expression. His face was turned slightly away from her, his profile sharp against the grey sky. He looked tired, she realised. Worn. As though the events of the past day had taken something from him.
"You knew," she said slowly. "Before the meeting. You knew what Mr. Thornton was going to suggest."
"I suspected. His letter hinted at 'creative solutions' to the debt situation. I should have realised what that meant."
"Is that why you came? Why you made the journey in this weather, at such speed?"
Sebastian was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful. "I came because I was summoned. But I stayed, I involved myself because I could not stand by and watch your family be exploited in their moment of weakness. Richard would never have forgiven me."
Richard. Always Richard. Every kindness Sebastian offered, every consideration he showed, was attributed to his friendship with her dead brother.
"And if Richard had never existed?" Harriet asked. "If you owed nothing to his memory? Would you still have refused?"
Sebastian turned to look at her, and something in his eyes made her breath catch. "Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you are not a commodity to be traded. Because you deserve a choice in your own future. Because…" He stopped, seeming to catch himself. "Because it would be wrong. Surely that is reason enough."
"Most men would not concern themselves with what is wrong, if it benefited them."
"I am not most men."
"No," Harriet said quietly. "You're not."
They sat in silence for a moment, the wind rustling through the overgrown roses, the distant call of a bird somewhere in the trees.
It was not uncomfortable, Harriet realised with some surprise.
She had expected awkwardness, tension, the familiar prickling hostility that had characterised their interactions for years.
But here, in this wild corner of the garden, something had shifted.
"I used to come here with Richard," Sebastian said suddenly. "When we were boys. He would drag me out here to explore, convinced there were buried treasures hidden among the brambles."
"Did you find any?"
"Once. A rusted tin box containing three marbles, a broken compass, and a note in your handwriting declaring this to be the Sekret Headquorters of the Fordshire Adventurers Society."
Harriet felt heat climb her cheeks. "I was eight."
"I know. Richard kept the note. He showed it to me at least a dozen times over the years, whenever he wanted to prove that his little sister was more interesting than mine."
"You have a sister?"
"Two, actually. Both wedded now, both considerably more sensible than I am." Sebastian's lips curved slightly. "They were very fond of Richard. They wept at his funeral."
"Everyone wept at Richard's funeral."
"Not everyone."
Harriet thought of that day, the grey sky, the black clothes, the numb disbelief that had carried her through the service. She had not wept. She had stood beside her mother, dry-eyed and rigid, convinced that if she allowed herself to crack, she would shatter entirely.
"I couldn't," she said, not sure why she was admitting this to Sebastian, of all people. "I wanted to. I could feel it there, behind my eyes, waiting. But I couldn't let it out. I thought…" She stopped, shaking her head.
"You thought if you started, you might never stop."
It was not a question. Harriet looked at him, startled by the understanding in his voice.