CHAPTER EIGHT #2
She rose from her bed and pulled on a dressing gown, suddenly restless. Maybe a walk would help. Maybe the cool night air would calm the storm of anxiety swirling in her chest.
She found Sebastian in the garden.
He was sitting on a bench near the rose bushes, still dressed in his evening clothes, staring up at the stars. He turned at her approach, surprise flickering across his features.
"Harriet. What are you doing out here?"
"I couldn't sleep." She moved to stand beside him, wrapping her arms around herself against the chill. "You?"
"The same." He shifted to make room on the bench. "Sit. You'll freeze standing there."
She sat, careful to maintain a proper distance. The bench was small, though, and their shoulders nearly touched. She could feel the warmth radiating from him, could smell the faint scent of sandalwood that always seemed to cling to his clothes.
"Nervous about tomorrow?" Sebastian asked.
"A little. You?"
"Terrified, actually."
Harriet turned to look at him, surprised by the admission. "You? Terrified? The unflappable Lord Vane?"
"Even I have my moments of vulnerability." Sebastian's smile was crooked. “Entering into matrimony is rather a significant undertaking. Even when one is prepared for it."
"Are you? Prepared, I mean?"
"I've been preparing for seven years. I should hope I'm ready by now."
The words landed like a stone in still water. Harriet felt ripples of meaning spreading outward, implications she wasn't quite ready to face.
"Sebastian," she said slowly. "When you say you've been preparing for seven years..."
"I mean exactly what you think I mean." His voice was quiet, resigned. "I've wanted this…wanted you…for longer than I care to admit. The circumstances are not what I would have chosen, but the outcome..." He shook his head. "I'm not unhappy, Harriet. Whatever you might think, I'm not unhappy."
"But you're not happy either."
"I'm... hopeful." He turned to look at her, and in the moonlight, his grey eyes were silver. "That's more than I ever expected to feel. I'll take it."
Harriet felt something shift in her chest, a loosening, a softening, something that might have been the first stirrings of an emotion she wasn't ready to name.
"I don't know what I feel," she admitted. "I've spent so long hating you, and then not hating you, and now... I don't know. I don't know what this is."
"You don't have to know. Not yet." Sebastian's voice was gentle. "We have time, Harriet. A lifetime, in fact. There's no rush."
"What if I never figure it out? What if I spend our entire matrimony in this... this state of uncertainty?"
"Then I'll spend our entire matrimony trying to make you happy anyway." Sebastian shrugged. "It's not a complicated plan."
"It should be more complicated. This whole thing should be more complicated." Harriet laughed, a slightly hysterical sound. "I'm entering into matrimony with a man I spent seven years despising. That should feel like a tragedy. So why does it feel like..."
"Like what?"
She couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't put into words the strange, fluttering hope that had taken root in her chest. The sense that maybe, just maybe, this wouldn't be the disaster she had feared.
Instead, she said: "Like the beginning of something."
Sebastian was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, he reached out and took her hand.
It was the first time he had really touched her since the betrothal. His fingers were warm, his grip gentle but firm. Harriet felt her breath catch.
"It is the beginning," he said quietly. "Whatever else it becomes, it's definitely that."
They sat in silence for a while, hands intertwined, watching the stars wheel overhead. The night was cold, but Harriet didn't feel it. She was warm from the inside out, warmed by something she refused to put a name to.
Tomorrow, she would wed Sebastian Vane. Tomorrow, her life would change irrevocably.
But tonight, in this quiet garden with his hand in hers, she allowed herself to feel something she hadn't felt in a very long time.
Hope.
***
The wedding was a truly beautiful affair.
That was the word everyone used, afterward…beautiful, lovely, perfect. The sun shone, the flowers bloomed, and the bride looked radiant in white silk and her grandmother's pearls. It was exactly the sort of wedding that society expected and approved of.
Harriet barely remembered any of it.
She remembered walking down the aisle, her arm tucked through her mother’s, Lady Fordshire had insisted on giving her away, tradition be damned.
She remembered seeing Sebastian at the altar, his expression carefully composed but his eyes burning with an intensity that made her stumble slightly on her hem.
She remembered the vicar's words, washing over her like water, and the responses she gave automatically, barely hearing herself speak. She remembered the ring sliding onto her finger, a family heirloom, Sebastian had told her, worn by every Vane bride for four generations.
And she remembered the moment when the vicar pronounced them man and wife, and Sebastian turned to her with a question in his eyes.
They were supposed to kiss. Tradition demanded it. The congregation expected it.
Sebastian leaned in slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wanted. His lips brushed hers…gentle, almost tentative, nothing like the passionate embraces she had read about in novels. It was over almost before it began.
But something sparked between them in that brief moment of contact. Something electric and unexpected and terrifying.
And then everyone was applauding, and Sebastian was tucking her hand into his arm, and they were walking back down the aisle as husband and wife.
She was now the wife of Sebastian Vane.
The thought echoed in her mind throughout the wedding breakfast, through the endless toasts and congratulations and well-wishes. She smiled, she nodded, and she said all the right things. But inside, she was reeling.
What had she done?
***
They departed for Sebastian's estate in the late afternoon.
The carriage was comfortable, well-sprung, nothing like the hired vehicles Harriet had been forced to use over the past weeks. She sat across from Sebastian, her husband, she reminded herself, her husband and tried to ignore the nervous flutter in her stomach.
"You're very quiet," Sebastian observed.
"I'm tired. It's been a long day."
"It has." He was watching her with that careful expression she was beginning to recognise the one that suggested he wanted to say something but wasn't sure if he should. "Harriet, about tonight…"
"Don't." The word came out sharper than she intended. "I mean, can we not discuss it? Not yet? I need time to…" She broke off, gesturing vaguely.
"Of course." Sebastian's voice was gentle. "There's no pressure, Harriet. I meant what I said about separate lives, if that's what you want. I won't force anything."
"I know you won't." That was the problem, wasn't it? He was being so considerate, so respectful, so bloody noble about everything. It would be easier if he were demanding, if he gave her something to push against. "I just need time to adjust."
"Take all the time you need."
They lapsed into silence. Harriet stared out the window, watching the countryside roll past, and tried to sort through the tangled mess of her emotions.
She was a wife…a wife to a man .To a man who had given her his heart her and didn't expect her to return the sentiment. To a man who had offered her everything and asked for nothing in return.
It should have felt like victory. So why did it feel like failure?
Because you're being a coward, whispered a voice in her mind. Because you're hiding behind walls instead of admitting what you really feel.
And what did she really feel?
The answer was there, hovering at the edge of her consciousness. She had been avoiding it for days, weeks, maybe longer. But it wouldn't stay buried forever.
She felt something for Sebastian. Something real and terrifying and new. Something that might, if she let it, become love.
The realisation hit her like a physical blow. She loved him. Or she was starting to. Or she could, if she allowed herself.
But she wasn't ready to admit it. Wasn't ready to be that vulnerable, that exposed. Not when she still wasn't sure if his feelings were real, or just a noble fantasy he had constructed to justify his sacrifice.
So she kept her silence, and stared out the window, and let the miles pass in quiet contemplation of everything she wasn't brave enough to say.
***
Thornwood Park was beautiful.
Sebastian's estate spread across rolling hills of green, punctuated by ancient oaks and carefully tended gardens. The house itself was impressive without being ostentatious, a graceful stone structure that spoke of old money and older traditions.
"It's lovely," Harriet said, as the carriage rolled up the drive.
"It was my mother's favorite place." Sebastian's voice was soft with memory. "She used to say that the air here was different, cleaner and vastly more agreeable.”
"Is that why you spend so much time in London? To escape the memories?"
"Partially. Also because London is where the business interests are. And the politics. And the endless social obligations that come with being a viscount." He smiled ruefully. "It's not a particularly exciting life, I'm afraid. Nothing like the adventures Richard and I used to have."
"I always envied those adventures." Harriet hadn't meant to say it, but the words slipped out anyway. "You two seemed to have so much fun together. While I was stuck at home with my needlework and my deportment lessons."
"You could have joined us, you know. Richard was always asking you to come along."
"I was too proud. Too afraid of being in the way." Harriet shook her head. "I wasted so much time being afraid."
"We all did." Sebastian reached across the carriage and took her hand with that same gentle grip she remembered from the garden. "But we have time now. All the time in the world."