CHAPTER FOURTEEN
That night, they lay together in their newly arranged bed, listening to the rain against the windows.
"I keep waiting to wake up," Harriet admitted quietly. "To find out this was all a dream."
"So do I."
"Really?" She turned to look at him. "I thought you'd be more confident by now."
"Confidence and certainty aren't the same thing." Sebastian traced patterns on her shoulder, his touch light. "I'm confident that I love you. I'm confident that you love me. But certain that it will last? Certain that I won't ruin it somehow?" He shook his head. "That kind of certainty takes time."
"How much time?"
"I don't know. A lifetime, maybe."
"That's a very long time."
"It is." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "But I can't think of a better way to spend it."
Harriet was quiet for a moment. Then she shifted, propping herself up on one elbow to look at him.
"I'm going to try," she said. "To be less guarded. Less defensive. To let you in properly, without all the walls I usually keep."
"You don't have to change who you are."
"I'm not changing who I am. I'm choosing who I want to become." She touched his face, her fingers gentle. "I spent seven years being angry and closed-off and alone. I don't want to spend seven more the same way."
"What do you want?"
"This." She gestured at the room, at him, at the space they had created together. "Partnership. Honesty. Someone who sees me clearly and loves me anyway."
"You have that."
"I know. I'm still getting used to it."
Sebastian pulled her down and kissed her, trying to pour everything he felt into the gesture, love and hope and the fierce determination to be worthy of her trust.
"We'll get used to it together," he murmured against her lips.
"Is that a promise?"
"It's the most solemn promise I've ever made."
She smiled, and the last of her walls crumbled, and they fell asleep in each other's arms while the rain washed the world clean outside.
***
Sebastian woke first.
The rain had stopped, and pale morning light was filtering through the curtains, casting soft shadows across the bed. Harriet was curled against his side, her hair spread across the pillow, her breathing slow and steady.
He lay there, watching her sleep, overwhelmed by the reality of it.
Seven years. Seven years of wanting, and she was here. She had chosen him. She loved him. He got to wake up like this tomorrow, and the day after, and every day for the rest of their lives.
The thought should have been terrifying. Instead, it felt like coming home.
Harriet stirred, her eyes fluttering open. For a moment, she looked confused and then memory seemed to return, and she smiled.
"You're doing it again," she murmured.
"Doing what?"
"Looking at me like I'm the answer to everything."
"You are."
"That's too much pressure for this early in the morning."
"I'll try to moderate my adoration after breakfast."
"See that you do."
But she was smiling, and so was he, and when she reached up to pull him down for a kiss, Sebastian thought that he had finally found what he had been searching for his entire life.
Not just love, though there was that. Not just partnership, though there was that too.
Home. He had found home.
And home, it turned out, was not a place at all. It was a person. It was Harriet, sharp-tongued, stubborn, brilliant Harriet who had somehow seen past his defences and chosen to love him anyway.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked, when they broke apart.
"How lucky I am."
"Luck had nothing to do with it. You were annoyingly persistent."
"Seven years of persistent. You'd think I would have given up."
"I'm glad you didn't."
"So am I."
***
The ballroom was too hot, too bright, and too full of people who had opinions about Harriet's womb.
She stood beside Sebastian near the refreshment table, a glass of tepid lemonade in her hand, her smile fixed in place like a mask she had worn so many times it had begun to feel like her actual face.
The Countess of Riverton's spring ball was the event of the Season, everyone who was anyone had come, dressed in their finest, ready to see and be seen.
Harriet would rather have been anywhere else on earth.
"You're grinding your teeth," Sebastian murmured, his voice low enough that only she could hear.
"I am not."
"You are. I can see the muscle in your jaw jumping."
"That's concentration. I'm concentrating on not throwing this lemonade in Lady Davies's face."
Sebastian followed her gaze across the room to where Lady Davies, the former Miss Arabella Sinclair, now wedded to Lord Davies for eighteen months and mother to an infant son was holding court among a circle of admirers.
She was pretty in a pale, insipid way, with watery blue eyes and a smile that never quite reached them.
She was also, as Harriet had discovered over the past year, possessed of a tongue as sharp as any blade.
"She's not worth the waste of good lemonade," Sebastian said.
"It's not good lemonade. It's barely adequate lemonade."
"Then she's not worth the waste of barely adequate lemonade."
Harriet almost smiled. Almost. But the evening had worn her thin, and the smile wouldn't quite form.
Two years of devoted affection and matrimony should have sufficed, and yet…every ball, every dinner party, every social gathering came with the same unspoken question hanging in the air: Why no children?
Some people asked directly, with the particular lack of tact that the aristocracy seemed to cultivate. Any happy news yet? Surely by now there should be an heir on the way. Lord Vane must be eager for a son.
Others were more subtle, their questions wrapped in concern and pity. Are you quite well, Lady Vane? You look tired. Perhaps you should rest more. I know of an excellent physician who specializes in... delicate matters.
And then there were the ones like Lady Davies, who didn't ask at all but simply smiled with that knowing, pitying expression that made Harriet want to commit violence.
"Lady Vane! How lovely to see you."
Harriet turned to find Mrs. Wellington approaching, a woman she knew only slightly from various social functions. Mrs. Wellington was plump, pleasant, and possessed of absolutely no boundaries whatsoever.
"Mrs. Wellington. How nice."
"You look simply radiant this evening. Matrimony clearly agrees with you." Mrs. Wellington's gaze slid to Sebastian, then back to Harriet with a conspiratorial gleam. "Though I must say, I had expected to see you in a more... interesting condition by now. It's been two years, hasn't it?"
"Two years and three months," Harriet said, her voice perfectly level.
“But it would be unbecoming to keep a precise account, would it not?”
"Oh, I'm sure it will happen soon. These things take time. My own sister was wedded for four years before she conceived, and then she had six children in seven years! Perhaps you simply need to relax more. Tension can prevent…"
"Mrs. Wellington." Sebastian's voice cut through like ice. "I believe your husband is looking for you."
Mrs. Wellington blinked, startled by the interruption. "Is he? I don't see…"
"Near the doors. He looks quite urgent."
He didn't, of course. Mr. Wellington was nowhere near the doors. But Mrs. Wellington, flustered by Sebastian's tone, made her excuses and retreated.
Harriet exhaled slowly. "Thank you."
"I've been wanting to do that all evening." Sebastian's hand found hers, squeezing gently. "Shall we go?"
"We've only been here an hour."
"And yet it feels like a century. I believe I have a headache coming on."
"Do you?"
"A terrible one. Possibly fatal. The only cure is immediate departure."
Harriet looked up at him, her husband, her partner, her person, and felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders. He was watching her with that expression he got when he was worried, the one he tried to hide beneath sardonic comments and dry wit. He knew. He always knew when she was struggling.
"I suppose we can't have you dying at the Countess's ball," she said. "It would be terribly inconvenient."
"And so inconsiderate. Think of the gossip."
"The gossip would be spectacular."
"All the more reason to leave before I expire. Much more dignified to expire at home."
Harriet didn't quite laugh, but something in her chest loosened. "Let's go, then. Before your condition worsens."
They made their excuses, Sebastian’s performance of slowly developing head pain was really quite convincing and escaped into the cool night air. The carriage was waiting, and Harriet climbed in with a relief so profound it was almost dizzying.
The door closed. The carriage began to move. And finally, blessedly, they were alone.
"I can't keep doing this." The words came out before Harriet could stop them, raw and exhausted and utterly defeated. "I can't keep smiling and deflecting and pretending that every question doesn't feel like a knife. I can't…"
Her voice broke. She pressed her hand against her mouth, horrified by her own lack of control.
Sebastian moved to sit beside her, his arm wrapping around her shoulders, pulling her against him. He didn't say anything. He just held her while the carriage rattled through London's dark streets.
"I'm sorry," Harriet managed, after a moment. "I'm being ridiculous."
"You're not."
"I am. Crying over a few impertinent questions. It's absurd."
"It's not absurd. It's exhausting." Sebastian's voice was gentle, but there was steel beneath it. "You've been enduring this for months. You're allowed to be tired."
"I'm not just tired. I'm…" She stopped, struggling for the right word. "Broken. I feel broken, Sebastian. Like there's something wrong with me, something I can't fix, and everyone knows it."
"There is nothing wrong with you."
"Then why…" She couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't give voice to the question that haunted her every night.