Chapter 13 #2
"You are very quiet," Sebastian said finally, when the silence had stretched past what either of them could comfortably sustain.
"I was under the impression quiet was what you preferred from me at present."
"I did not say that."
"You did not need to. You’ve scarcely said a word since we left the house.
" She kept her eyes on the window, on London sliding past in its ordinary, indifferent way, entirely unconcerned with the wreckage of her own reputation.
"And after this morning I thought perhaps we had already exhausted everything you wished to say to me"
"I am attempting not to make matters worse."
She glanced at him then, and something in her voice softened despite herself. "You are allowed to speak to me, Sebastian"
"Given our conversation this morning, I thought silence the wiser course."
"Since when have you preferred the wiser course?”
His mouth twitched. “Since discovering the consequences of the alternative.”
A ghost of her old humor crept back into it, and she felt some of the tightness in her chest ease at the sound of it, familiar despite everything that had gone wrong between the library and this carriage.
"You were remarkably eager to agree to my terms, for a man who claims to prefer arguing every point I raise. "
"I did not think refusing you again would improve my case."
"No," she agreed. "It would not have."
The silence resumed and Sebastian looked out of the window. Amelia looked at her hands.
After a while, he looked at her. "You may stop looking as though marrying me is quite so dreadful."
"I am not."
"You are."
"I am merely thinking."
"That is generally more dangerous."
Her mouth twitched.
"There. You see? You can still be insufferable."
"I was beginning to fear you had forgotten."
"I have forgotten very little about you."
The words came out more quietly than she intended. Sebastian turned toward her and she immediately looked away. He watched her for a moment.
"I am glad."
She glanced at him.
"Why?"
"Because I was afraid yesterday had made you forget everything good."
Her expression softened.
"It did not."
Some of the tension left his face.
Then she added,
"Unfortunately, it also did not make me forget everything bad."
He sighed.
"Fair."
The carriage continued through the streets.
The clerk's office, when they reached it, smelled of dust and old paper and sealing wax, a small, cramped room presided over by a man who took down their particulars with flat efficiency.
The formalities were completed with solemnity. When they were asked to confirm that they intended to marry, Amelia's voice was steady.
"Yes."
Sebastian answered immediately after her.
"Yes."
"The earliest date available is one week from today," the clerk said, not looking up from his ledger.
Amelia inhaled softly. Sebastian looked at her.
"One week."
"That is rather soon."
"It is."
She looked down at the document before her.
"Then I suppose there is little reason to delay."
"That will do," Sebastian said, and Amelia said nothing at all.
Sebastian watched her sign her name in the register beside his with a strange, hollow feeling that had nothing to do with reluctance and everything to do with wishing the whole arrangement had come to her differently. Her hand did not tremble.
His did not either.
Everything was quickly settled, one week hence, a special licence in place of the banns to expedite the process and they would marry.
They stepped out into the grey afternoon light, and for a moment neither spoke.
One week.
Amelia had known that marriage would have to happen quickly. That had been the purpose of the special license. But knowing and hearing the date fixed were two different things.
Sebastian glanced at her. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” She drew a slow breath. “But I need some time to think, everything has changed so quickly.”
His expression sharpened.
"I do not wish to see you again until the wedding day."
He went very still, "Amelia."
"Please.” She looked at him then. “I have one week before I become your wife. I would like some time to sit with it without you standing in front of me making it difficult to think clearly.”
"I make it difficult for you to think clearly?" Something in his voice had gone rougher than the words alone accounted for.
Neither of them moved. The street went on around them, indifferent, a costermonger's cart rattling past, a pair of clerks hurrying by with their heads bent together, and they stood there with the whole of London carrying on obliviously while she and Sebastian remained fixed in place, the distance between them no more than the width of a single step, close enough Sebastian could see the faint movement of her breathing.
His hand rose, slow, as though he intended to touch her face, and he felt her whole body go still, waiting.
His fingers hovered a bare inch from her cheek, close enough that he could feel the warmth of her skin without the contact itself, and for one long, suspended moment neither of them breathed. Then he dropped his hand.
"A week," he said, low, rough, stepping back before either of them could undo the small, careful distance he'd just imposed. "I will not call before then. You have my word."
"Thank you." Her own voice came out more unsteady than she wanted it to, the loss of that almost-touch settling somewhere low and aching in her chest, considerably worse, she thought, than if he had simply touched her and been done with it.
She stepped toward the carriage. He caught her hand before she could climb inside. Not tightly but just enough to stop her.
She looked down at their joined hands. Then back at him.
Neither spoke.
His thumb moved once across the back of her glove.
A tiny gesture. Far too intimate for what they were pretending this was. Amelia's breath caught.
Sebastian released her.
"Goodbye, Amelia."
"Goodbye."
She climbed into the carriage. He closed the door. For several seconds, he stood there after it had begun to move. Watching her disappear.