CHAPTER THIRTEEN
That night, Harriet came to his room again.
She didn't knock this time, simply opened the door and slipped inside, her dressing gown pale in the candlelight. Sebastian was sitting by the window, unable to sleep, his mind too full of everything that had happened.
"You're brooding," she said.
"I'm contemplating. There's a difference."
"Is there?" She crossed to where he sat and settled onto the arm of his chair, her weight warm against his side. "What are you contemplating?"
"How much has changed. How quickly." He looked up at her, this woman who had transformed his entire existence. "A month ago, you could barely stand to be in the same room with me. Now you're sneaking into my chambers at midnight."
"I'm not sneaking. I'm visiting. There's a difference."
"Apparently everything has a difference tonight."
Harriet smiled and reached out to run her fingers through his hair. The gesture was so casual, so intimate, that Sebastian felt his breath catch. She had never touched him like this before, with such ease and affection, as though she had the right.
Which she did. She was his wife. She had every right.
The knowledge still overwhelmed him sometimes.
"I couldn't sleep either," she admitted. "Too much thinking."
"About what?"
"Tomorrow. Going home." She hesitated. "What it means that Thornwood feels like home now, when a month ago it felt like exile."
"Does it? Feel like home?"
"It feels like wherever you are." She said it simply, as though it were obvious. "I didn't expect that. I thought home was a place, these walls, these gardens, the rooms where I grew up. But it turns out it's a person."
Sebastian didn't trust himself to speak. He simply pulled her down into his lap and held her, his face buried in her hair, his arms wrapped around her as though he could keep her there forever.
"Stay," he murmured against her neck. "Tonight. Stay with me."
"I was planning to."
"I mean…" He pulled back to look at her.
"Stay. Not just tonight. Every night. I don't want separate rooms, Harriet. I don't want doors between us."
"Scandalous," she teased, but her eyes were soft. "Wedded couples sharing a bed. Whatever will the servants think?"
“The world shall surely conclude that we are hopelessly devoted, and quite beyond the point of caring for the dictates of propriety.”
"How horrifying."
"Isn't it just."
She kissed him then, slow and sweet, and Sebastian felt something settle in his chest. This was real. She was real. They were real.
"Yes," she whispered against his lips.
"Yes?"
"Yes, I'll stay. Yes, every night. Yes to all of it." She pulled back, her expression fierce and tender all at once. "I'm done running, Sebastian. I'm done protecting myself from happiness. I want this. I want us. I want everything."
"That's fortunate." He stood, lifting her with him, and carried her to the bed. "Because I intend to give you everything. Starting tonight."
"That's very presumptuous."
"Is it?"
"I suppose I'll allow it."
"How generous."
They fell asleep tangled together, her head on his chest, his arms around her, the moonlight casting silver patterns across the bed. It was not dramatic. It was not the stuff of novels.
It was simply two people, choosing each other, building a life together one night at a time.
It was enough. It was more than enough.
It was everything.
***
The morning they left Fordshire Park, Lady Fordshire came to see them off personally.
She stood on the front steps, elegant despite the early hour, watching as the servants loaded the last of their trunks into the carriage. Sebastian could see the emotion she was trying to hide and the reluctance to let her daughter go, the pride in what Harriet had become.
"You'll visit soon," Lady Fordshire said. It was not a question.
"Of course, Mama." Harriet embraced her mother, holding on perhaps a moment longer than strictly necessary. "The mining negotiations will require our attention anyway. And I want to see the first extraction."
"Practical as always." Lady Fordshire pulled back, her eyes suspiciously bright. "Take care of each other. And Sebastian…" She fixed him with a look that managed to be both threatening and affectionate. "I expect regular letters. Harriet is a terrible correspondent, so the burden falls to you."
"I'll write weekly," Sebastian promised.
"See that you do." Lady Fordshire hesitated, then reached out and took his hand. "Thank you. For everything you've done. For everything you're doing. My daughter chose well."
"I'm the one who chose well, Lady Fordshire. I'm just grateful she eventually agreed."
Lady Fordshire laughed, a genuine sound that transformed her face. "You'll do, Lord Vane. You'll do very well indeed."
They departed shortly afterward, the carriage rolling down the long drive while Harriet waved at her mother's diminishing figure. She kept waving until they rounded the bend and Fordshire Park disappeared from view.
Then she settled back against the seat with a sigh.
"Well," she said. "That's that."
"Are you all right?"
"I'm wonderful." She smiled at him, but there was a wistfulness in her expression. "I'm just going to miss her. Which is ridiculous, because I'll see her again in a few weeks, and I spent most of my adult life desperate to escape her matchmaking schemes."
"It's not ridiculous. She's your mother. Missing her is normal."
"I suppose." Harriet took his hand, threading her fingers through his. "But I'm glad we're going home."
"Home," Sebastian repeated. "That sounds right, doesn't it?"
"It does." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "Take me home, Sebastian."
***
The journey back to Thornwood Park took three days, just as the journey out had done.
But everything was different now.
They sat closer in the carriage, Harriet's hand in Sebastian's, their conversation ranging from the practical to the profound and back again.
They laughed at the innkeepers who assumed they were newlyweds.
They debated the merits of various routes.
They planned renovations for rooms that didn't need renovating, simply for the pleasure of imagining their future together.
On the second night, at a posting inn somewhere in the countryside, the innkeeper apologised profusely for only having one room available.
"That will be fine," Sebastian said, and delighted in the lack of surprise on Harriet's face.
"Newlyweds?" the innkeeper asked, his expression knowing.
"Something like that," Harriet replied, and the smile she gave Sebastian made his heart turn over in his chest.
They talked late into the night, lying in the narrow inn bed, their voices low so as not to disturb other guests.
Sebastian learned that Harriet was afraid of thunderstorms and had been since childhood.
Harriet learned that Sebastian still had nightmares about his mother's disappointment, even though she had been deceased for years.
They shared secrets and fears and hopes, the intimate confessions that only happened in darkness, when the world felt small and safe.
By the time they reached Thornwood, Sebastian felt he knew Harriet better than he had ever known anyone.
And somehow, miraculously, she seemed to know him too.
***
Thornwood Park rose from the landscape on a grey afternoon, the sky threatening rain but never quite delivering.
Sebastian watched through the carriage window as the familiar shape appeared, the stone facade, the tall windows, and the grounds he had walked a thousand times. It looked the same as it always had. But it felt different now.
It felt like home.
"There it is," Harriet said quietly. "Our home."
"Our home," Sebastian repeated. "I like the sound of that."
"So do I."
The servants lined up to greet them, and Sebastian watched their faces as they took in the change, the way he and Harriet stood close together, the way she smiled at him without any of her usual guardedness.
Mrs. Crawford, the formidable cook, actually smiled.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
"Welcome home, my lord, my lady," Mrs. Crawford said. "We're glad to have you back."
"We're glad to be back," Harriet replied, and Sebastian could hear the truth in her voice.
They went inside, and Sebastian watched Harriet move through the familiar rooms with new eyes. She was seeing it differently now, he realised. Not as a temporary refuge or a necessary sacrifice, but as her home. Her place.
Their place.
"The library first," she declared. "I need to check on my chair."
"Your chair is where you left it."
"You can't know that for certain. Someone might have moved it."
"No one would dare."
"You'd be surprised. Servants get ideas."
They went to the library, and Harriet's chair was indeed exactly where she had left it, positioned by the tall windows with a view of the gardens. She settled into it with a contented sigh.
"Perfect," she said. "Everything is perfect."
Sebastian sat in the chair across from her, his chair, though he would never admit to the territorial impulse, and observed her. She looked settled. Comfortable. At home in a way she hadn't been when they first arrived.
"I should unpack," she said eventually, though she made no move to leave.
"Should you?"
"Probably." A pause. "But I find myself reluctant to move. This chair is very comfortable."
"It is indeed."
"Perhaps I'll just sit here for a while longer."
"An excellent plan."
They sat in companionable silence, the afternoon light fading around them, and Sebastian thought that he could spend the rest of his life like this, quiet moments in familiar rooms, with the woman he loved within arm's reach.
Eventually, Harriet stirred.
"We should go upstairs," she said. "Make the rooms properly ours."
"The rooms?"
"Our rooms. The bedroom, the dressing rooms." She met his eyes, something uncertain in her expression. "I thought... if you were agreeable... we might rearrange things. Make it truly shared, rather than your space with me in it."
"I would like that very much."
Her smile was brilliant. "Then come on. We have work to do."
They spent the rest of the afternoon transforming the master suite.
Harriet had strong opinions about everything from the placement of the bed to the colour of the curtains to the arrangement of books on the shelves.
Sebastian found himself surrendering to her vision, not because he didn't care, but because watching her claim the space filled him with a joy he couldn't quite articulate.
By the time the light began to fade, the room was transformed.
Her dresses hung beside his coats in the wardrobe.
Her books filled the shelves alongside his.
Her brushes and combs sat on the vanity, her writing desk had been positioned by the window, and her favourite shawl was draped over the chair by the fire.
It was no longer his room. It was theirs.
"Better," Harriet declared, surveying their work.
"Better," Sebastian agreed.
They stood together in the gathering dusk, looking at the room they had created, and Sebastian thought: This is happiness.
This is what it feels like. Not a thunderclap of joy, but a slow accumulation of small moments.
Not a transformation from grey to colour, but the gradual brightening of a world I thought would always be dim.
He took Harriet's hand, and she leaned into him, and outside the window, the first drops of rain began to fall.
"Welcome home," he said quietly.
"Welcome home," she echoed.
And it was.