Chapter Two #2
“Yes—the daughter of the previous baronet. Sir Edmund Ashwood died without making proper provision for her, and the family took her in. A gesture of family benevolence, one assumes.” The Dowager’s tone suggested she assumed no such thing.
“But that is scarcely relevant. Miss Georgiana is the candidate of interest.”
Sebastian filed away the detail about the poor relation without quite knowing why. Perhaps because his mother had dismissed the girl so swiftly—and his mother rarely dismissed anyone without cause.
“Who else will be present?”
The Dowager launched into a thorough catalogue of the guest list, her commentary displaying both her encyclopaedic knowledge of the ton and her unembarrassed willingness to share opinions on everyone’s lineage, accomplishments, and matrimonial prospects.
Sebastian listened with half an ear, his gaze drifting periodically toward the window, to the gardens, to anywhere but the conversation before him.
Helena Crane, he noticed, was studying her hands with the fixed concentration of someone attempting invisibility. He sympathised. Few people succeeded in being invisible in his mother’s presence.
“—and Lord Thornbury will bring his sister, though I cannot imagine anyone will pay her much attention; she has the most unfortunate teeth—Sebastian, you are not listening.”
“I am listening. Unfortunate teeth.”
“You were not listening to what came before. I was explaining the particulars of Miss Ashwood’s circumstances.”
“Her father is inoffensive, her mother ambitious, and she plays the pianoforte,” Sebastian replied, summoning a tired smile. “I assure you, I was listening. I am merely uncertain the information signifies, as I have no intention of marrying Miss Ashwood—regardless of her musical accomplishments.”
“You have no intention of marrying anyone. That is precisely the difficulty.”
“The difficulty is that I have not yet met anyone I wish to marry. Surely that ought to be a consideration.”
“It is a consideration in a love match. You are not seeking a love match; you are seeking an alliance. The sooner you accept that distinction, the sooner we may all proceed.”
Sebastian rose, abruptly unable to remain seated. He paced to the fireplace and back again, aware that he looked like a caged animal and unable to prevent it.
“I know my duty, Mother. You need not instruct me in the necessities of my position. But I will not—cannot—bind myself for life to a woman who sees me as nothing more than a title to be acquired. I have spent seven years surrounded by such women. I know their calculation, their performance, their utter disinterest in anything I truly think or feel. I will not live the rest of my life shackled to such a person.”
The Dowager was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice had softened.
“Sebastian. I do not wish you to be unhappy. That has never been my aim.”
“I know.”
“But happiness and duty do not always coincide. Sometimes we must accept less than we desire in order to fulfil our obligations. Your father—”
“My father married for duty, and spent the rest of his life treating his wife and sons as extensions of the title rather than as people. Forgive me if I do not find his example inspiring.”
Another silence. Sebastian saw the words land—saw his mother absorb them, consider them, file them away.
“I was fond of your father,” she said at last. “He was not an easy man—but I was fond of him nonetheless.”
“I know. I did not mean to suggest otherwise.”
“And I did not marry him expecting romance. I married him expecting partnership—and that is what I received. It was enough. It can be enough.”
Sebastian turned away, unable to meet her eyes. Partnership. Such a reasonable word. Such a sensible prospect—and yet the thought of it left him feeling more alone than ever.
“I will attend the house party,” he said. “I will consider the candidates you have selected. But I promise nothing beyond that.”
“That is all I ask.”
It was not, of course, all she asked. But it was as much as Sebastian was willing to grant—and the Dowager Duchess was wise enough to accept the compromise.
***
Later, after his mother had retired to rest from her journey and Helena Crane had disappeared to manage some aspect of the Dowager’s correspondence, Sebastian found himself in the estate office with Daniel Reeve.
Daniel was the best steward Sebastian had ever known—not that he had known many, having inherited Daniel along with the title. But in seven years of working together, Sebastian had come to respect his competence—and to value something approaching genuine friendship.
Daniel was also, not incidentally, one of the few people who spoke to Sebastian as though he were a man rather than a title.
“The drainage improvements in the eastern fields are progressing on schedule,” Daniel was saying, reviewing a ledger with the quiet intensity of a man who genuinely cared about such matters.
“The new channels should be completed before the heavy autumn rains, which will prevent a recurrence of the flooding that damaged the wheat harvest three years ago.”
“Excellent. And the tenant cottages?”
“The repairs to the Wilkins property are finished. The Hartley roof will be complete by week’s end.” Daniel looked up, his expression shifting slightly. “You seem distracted, Your Grace. Is something amiss?”
Sebastian considered deflecting. It was his customary response to personal enquiry—maintain distance, preserve the boundaries that prevented people from expecting too much of him. But Daniel was different. Daniel had earned something closer to honesty.
“My mother has arrived with her annual campaign to see me married. She has accepted an invitation to Lady Marchmont’s house party on my behalf and assembled a list of eligible young ladies she believes I ought to examine closely.”
“Ah.” Daniel’s tone was carefully neutral. “And you object to this arrangement?”
“I object to the entire premise. I am to spend a fortnight conversing with young women who have been trained from birth to tell me whatever they believe I wish to hear. At the end of it, I shall know no more of them than I do now, because none of them will have said anything genuine.”
“With respect, Your Grace, you cannot know that until you meet them.”
“I have met dozens of them. Hundreds. They are all the same.”
Daniel set down the ledger and fixed Sebastian with a look that would have been insubordinate from anyone else. “Perhaps the difficulty does not lie entirely with them.”
Sebastian blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“You approach these encounters anticipating falseness. You arm yourself against connection before any attempt at connection has been made. Is it any wonder, then, that you experience precisely what you expect?”
“Are you suggesting this is my fault?”
“I am suggesting that people respond to the signals they receive. If you enter a conversation with suspicion, your interlocutor will feel that suspicion and adjust accordingly. They become guarded because you are guarded. They perform because they sense you expect performance.”
It was, Sebastian realised with irritation, yet another rational argument. Today appeared to be a day for uncomfortable truths.
“And how would you have me approach these conversations instead?”
“I am hardly qualified to advise a duke on matrimonial strategy.”
“You are qualified to advise me on most things. Why should this be different?”
Daniel was silent for a moment, his gaze dropping to his hands—capable hands, roughened by work in a way no gentleman’s hands ever were.
He had been born the son of a tenant farmer, educated through the late duke’s patronage, raised to his present position by nothing but his own ability.
He occupied a curious middle ground—neither servant nor equal—and Sebastian had often wondered whether that position was as isolating as his own.
“I would suggest,” Daniel said at last, “that you approach these conversations with curiosity rather than suspicion. Assume, at least at the outset, that the person before you may surprise you. Ask questions to which you genuinely wish to know the answers, rather than questions designed to test for insincerity. Be willing to reveal something of yourself in exchange for what you hope to receive from them. Connection requires vulnerability, Your Grace. It cannot be achieved from behind armour.”
Sebastian absorbed this in silence. It was good counsel, he acknowledged privately. Whether he could act upon it was another matter entirely.
“You speak as though you have experience in these matters.”
A flicker crossed Daniel’s face—pain, perhaps, or embarrassment—before his expression smoothed into professional composure. “I observe, Your Grace. It is part of my position.”
“Observation and experience are not the same thing.”
“No,” Daniel agreed quietly. “They are not.”
He did not elaborate, and Sebastian did not press. Their relationship rested upon mutual respect and carefully maintained boundaries; prying into Daniel’s private affairs would violate both.
Still, Sebastian filed the exchange away—alongside the detail of the Ashwood poor relation, alongside countless other small observations that accumulated in his mind without conscious effort.
He was, it seemed, incapable of stopping himself from observing. Even when observation revealed things he would rather not see.
***
That evening, Sebastian dined alone.
His mother had pled fatigue—a diplomatic fiction that allowed them both to avoid resuming their earlier conversation—and Evan had vanished to some entertainment in the village.
Sebastian sat at the long dining table, surrounded by empty chairs and attended by more servants than any one man could reasonably require, and contemplated the particular loneliness of wealth.
His father had dined in this room. His grandfather before him.
Generations of Harcourts stretching back centuries—sitting at this same table, eating from these same dishes, served by the descendants of those who had served their forebears.
There was continuity in it, he supposed.
A sense of belonging to something larger than oneself.
But there was constraint as well. The weight of expectation. The knowledge that he existed not as himself, but as a link in a chain—a vessel for a legacy that would endure long after he was gone.
He thought about Daniel’s advice. Be willing to reveal something of yourself. It sounded simple enough. Surely, he could manage to reveal some small thing, some authentic piece of his inner life, without compromising his position or inviting exploitation.
And yet, when he tried to imagine it—tried to picture himself confessing to some young lady at Lady Marchmont’s house party that he was tired, that he was lonely, that he sometimes wondered whether anyone would notice if the Duke of Ashworth simply disappeared and a competent impostor took his place—he could not complete the image.
In his mind, the young lady regarded him with polite incomprehension—or worse, with the calculating gleam of someone who had just discovered a weakness to exploit.
He had been alone too long. Had built his walls too high. He no longer knew how to take them down, even if he wished to.
The meal concluded. The servants cleared the table with silent efficiency. Sebastian withdrew to his study and its reassuring piles of correspondence on drainage and crop rotation and all the practical matters that required no feeling at all.
Tomorrow, he would begin preparations for the journey to Kent. He would review the list of eligible young ladies. He would steel himself for a fortnight of performance and artifice—and the relentless pursuit of a connection he was no longer certain he was capable of forming.
But tonight, alone with his thoughts, his responsibilities, and the crushing weight of his position, Sebastian Harcourt allowed himself to acknowledge something he rarely admitted.
He was afraid.
Not of marriage itself—marriage was a contract, and contracts could be managed—but of the possibility that Daniel was wrong. That there was no one who might see past the title to the man beneath. That he would spend the rest of his life surrounded by people—and utterly alone.
He poured himself a glass of brandy and drank it by the fire, watching the flames dance and trying not to think of the future that awaited him.