CHAPTER FOUR
Dinner that evening was a strained affair.
Lady Fordshire had rallied sufficiently to preside over the table, though she ate little and tired visibly as the meal progressed.
Mr. Thornton had been invited, a courtesy Harriet found rather irritating, given his role in the day's more uncomfortable conversations as he filled the silence with interminable observations about the weather, the roads, and the state of the nation's finances.
Harriet pushed food around her plate and tried not to look at Sebastian.
This was proving surprisingly difficult. She had spent years avoiding his gaze, training herself to look anywhere but at his face when they happened to be in the same room. But now, after everything that had passed between them, she found her eyes drawn to him against her will.
He was seated across from her, which meant that any attempt to look at Mr. Thornton required passing over Sebastian's features first. He was listening to the solicitor with what appeared to be genuine interest, nodding in appropriate places, asking thoughtful questions, contributing observations of his own.
He seemed entirely at ease, as though the emotional gauntlet of the past two days had left no mark on him at all.
Harriet resented this. She felt wrung out, exhausted, her composure held together by sheer stubbornness. Sebastian looked as though he had merely enjoyed a pleasant country visit.
"Don't you agree, Lady Harriet?"
She startled, realising that Mr. Thornton had addressed her directly. "I beg your pardon?"
"I was saying that the current instability in the markets makes this a poor time to liquidate assets. Far better to hold and wait for recovery."
"If we had time to wait," Harriet said, "we would not be in this situation."
"Quite so, quite so. But one must always consider the long view…"
"The long view is a luxury we cannot afford, Mr. Thornton." Harriet heard the edge in her own voice and did nothing to soften it. "Our creditors are not interested in market fluctuations. They want payment."
"Indeed, indeed. I merely meant to suggest that hasty decisions often prove regrettable in hindsight…"
"Thank you for your counsel." Harriet set down her fork with perhaps more force than necessary. "I will take it under advisement."
A brief silence fell over the table. Lady Fordshire looked pained; Mr. Thornton looked startled; Sebastian looked... amused? No, not amused. Something else. Something that might have been admiration, quickly suppressed.
"Lord Vane," Lady Fordshire said, clearly attempting to steer the conversation to safer waters, "you must tell us about your sisters. I understand one of them has recently had a child?"
"Charlotte, yes. A boy, born in September. She's named him Richard."
The name dropped into the conversation like a stone into still water. Harriet felt something twist in her chest, gratitude, perhaps, or grief, or some complicated mixture of both.
"How lovely," Lady Fordshire said, her voice only slightly unsteady. "Richard would have been so pleased."
"He would have made an appalling godfather. All the spoiling with none of the responsibility." Sebastian smiled faintly. "Charlotte knew exactly what she was getting when she asked him. I believe that was rather the point."
"He was always wonderful with children," Harriet heard herself say. "Do you remember the summer the Wilson family visited? Their youngest was terrified of horses, and Richard spent three days coaxing her onto a pony."
"I remember. He nearly got kicked twice for his trouble." Sebastian's eyes met hers across the table, warm with shared memory. "She sent him a letter afterward, thanking him. He kept it in his desk for years."
"He kept everything. Every letter, every drawing, and every scrap of paper anyone ever gave him.
" Harriet felt a smile tugging at her lips despite herself.
"After he passed, I found a box in his room filled with theatre programs and pressed flowers and bills from taverns.
I couldn't understand why he'd saved any of it. "
"Because they were memories." Sebastian's voice was soft. "Physical evidence that he had lived, that he had mattered. Richard always said that life was made up of small moments, and he wanted to hold onto as many of them as possible."
"That sounds like Richard."
"It does."
They were looking at each other now, really looking, and something in the air between them had shifted.
Mr. Thornton was saying something, Harriet had no idea what, and Lady Fordshire was nodding along, but none of it mattered.
There was only Sebastian's grey eyes, holding hers, and the strange electricity that seemed to crackle in the space between them.
Stop it, Harriet told herself firmly. You're being ridiculous. This is Sebastian Vane. The man who laughed at your poetry. The man you've spent so many years despising.
But the reminder felt hollow, somehow. Like a door that had once been firmly locked but now hung slightly open, letting in light from an unexpected direction.
"Lady Harriet." Mr. Thornton's voice finally broke through her reverie. "Shall we adjourn to the drawing room? I believe there are some documents you should review before tomorrow's discussions.",
"Of course." Harriet rose, grateful for the interruption. "If you'll excuse me."
She fled the dining room with as much dignity as she could muster, not looking back to see if Sebastian was watching.
She suspected he was.
***
The documents were exactly as tedious as Harriet had expected.
Mr. Thornton had assembled a comprehensive accounting of the estate's debts, assets, and obligations, a mountain of paper that reduced her family's history to numbers in columns.
She sat in the drawing room, poring over ledgers, while her head ached and her eyes blurred and her mind kept wandering to places it had no business going.
Sebastian did not join them. He had excused himself after dinner, citing fatigue from the journey, and Harriet told herself she was relieved.
His presence was... distracting. She could think more clearly without him there, could focus on the figures without wondering what he was thinking, what he was feeling, whether he was looking at her.
"The primary concern," Mr. Thornton was saying, "is this note here, from Lord Davies. He is owed nearly eight thousand pounds, and he has been most insistent in his correspondence."
"Eight thousand pounds." Harriet stared at the figure. "How did we come to owe Lord Davies eight thousand pounds?"
"Gaming debts, my lady. Your father was... not fortunate at cards."
"Gaming debts." The words tasted bitter. "My father gambled away our future, and now Lord Davies is knocking at the door."
"I would not put it quite so bluntly, but... essentially, yes."
Harriet set down the ledger and rubbed her eyes. "Is there any possibility of negotiating with him? Arranging a payment plan?"
"Lord Davies has shown little interest in negotiation. He wishes to be paid in full, or he will pursue legal remedies."
"And if he pursues legal remedies?"
"The courts will likely order the sale of assets to satisfy the debt. Which, given the size of the claim, would almost certainly mean the estate."
Round and round they went, the same impossible circle. Every path led back to the same destination: ruin, unless some miracle intervened.
"What about Lord Vane's claim?" Harriet asked. "If he's willing to forgive the debt…"
"His lordship's forgiveness would help considerably, but it would not solve everything. Lord Davies's claim alone exceeds what we could raise through sale of peripheral assets."
"Then we need to find a way to satisfy Lord Davies specifically. What does he want? Beyond payment, I mean. What matters to him?"
Mr. Thornton looked surprised by the question. "I couldn't say, my lady. I've dealt with his solicitors, not the man himself."
"Then perhaps we should deal with the man himself.
Find out what he values, what might be negotiable.
" Harriet sat up straighter, feeling the first stirrings of a plan forming in her mind.
"If he's a gambler, he understands risk.
He might be willing to take a chance on future returns rather than immediate payment. "
"That's... an interesting approach, my lady."
"You sound skeptical."
"I am merely uncertain whether Lord Davies would agree to such an arrangement."
"We won't know until we try." Harriet stood, gathering the documents. "I'll write to him tomorrow. Request a meeting. It can't make things any worse than they already are."
Mr. Thornton looked as though he wanted to argue, but something in Harriet's expression must have discouraged him. "As you wish, my lady. Shall I draft the letter for you?"
"No. I'll write it myself. A personal appeal may carry more weight than formal solicitor's correspondence."
She bid Mr. Thornton good night and made her way upstairs, her mind churning with possibilities. It was a slim hope, Lord Davies might refuse to see her, or might prove entirely obstinate, but it was something. A thread to pull, a door to knock on.
Tomorrow, she would begin in earnest. Tomorrow, she would fight for her home.
But tonight, she needed to sleep. If sleep would come.
***
It would not.
Harriet lay in her childhood bed, staring at the ceiling, while her mind refused to quiet. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw numbers, debt figures, asset values, the endless accounting of her family's failure. And beneath the numbers, like a current running under ice, other images.
Sebastian's face in the firelight. Sebastian's hand on hers in the carriage. Sebastian's eyes across the dinner table, warm with shared memory.
This is ridiculous, she told herself. He is not yours to think about. He is not yours at all.
But the thought would not be dismissed. It lodged in her mind like a splinter, small but persistent, demanding attention.
What if she were to wed him?